Procrastination is a mental monster that can get the best of us. For many, it’s born out of feelings of anxiety, distorted thoughts about our abilities, and sometimes pure laziness. Whatever your goal, whatever your intention, and whatever area of your life you want to improve, you can choose to apply strategies to help you beat mental obstacles to accomplish the things you dream about in secret. Here are 5 QUICK Ways to Beat Procrastination & Accomplish Your Goals with Ease! 1. Start Now. Ok. I admit. This is kind of cliché. But things become cliches for a reason, right? The thing is - there’s no way around this. Even if it’s a small step, take it! For example, if you intend to get in shape and you’re daunted by even the thought of going to the gym. Today – take ONE small action. Do ten pushups. Or take a 5-minute walk around the neighborhood. Or go to the gym and just hang out in the sauna for 10 minutes. In physics class, we learn of the kinetic force called inertia. If you don’t use something [an object, a skill, a tool, a machine] it develops rust. It stops working properly. It loses its functionality. If it’s a skill, your brain begins to forget. Use it or lose it! It’s as if the less you do, the less you want to do. Your brain will get that way if you fail to keep it focused, directed and occupied. To fight against inertia, I suggest you do one of three things – or a combination.
Some people need to shock their system, others need to ease into things. Others need both. Of course, it’s uncomfortable, but the brain needs a certain level of stress to change. Movement is necessary. THINK ABOUT IT! That old machine that was out of commission in the back of the garage or out in the shed is squeaky, loud, crickety, and obnoxious when you start using it again. When you buy new shoes, as much as you like them, it might take a while for you to love them because it takes time to break them in. Similarly, whenever you start doing something new, as excited as you might be, know that you will also feel anxious and frustrated because you’ll be fumbling around, making random mistakes, and definitely feeling some level of discomfort. But, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Knowing what to look out for is half the battle. Remind yourself that your brain needs that pain and anxiety to shift and change – for the better. Gradually you’ll establish a flow and get into a rhythm. Before you know it, you’ll be in the middle of doing something amazing! 2. Pace Yourself. The best runners use a pacer to help them stay on point. Even super-athletes use pace-setters to help them stay on target. A pace-setter also helps a champion athlete manage their emotions and the understandable urge to speed up too. By so doing, the pace-setter helps the athlete avoid burnout and effectively manage their resources before they reach the finish line. I read this amazing statistic recently that men who had used a therapist the previous year, increased their earnings by at least 13% to subsequent year. Female clients increased their income by at least 8%. What does this mean for you? If you can afford it or have access to it, find a mentor, a therapist, a coach. Find someone to be your pace-setter! If you aren’t able to find professional support, you must learn to do it yourself. Read books. Listen to podcasts. Watch YouTube videos that teach on the subject you need help with. Google it! Self-pacing requires a level of patience, discipline and thought management. Why? Sometimes we want things to happen too fast. We hate to wait. We think because we started the diet on Monday we should be in the bikini by Saturday. Slow your roll. In the Caribbean we say, “Take it easy Man!” Pacing yourself doesn’t mean you’re being a lazy lush. Instead, learn to give yourself the best possible chance to succeed. 3. Make SMART Goals . SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and relevant, and above all, they are time- oriented. Research clearly states that you have a HIGHER chance of successfully completing a task if you use SMART model to draw up your blueprint of how you will successfully bring this goal to completion. Complete this Exercise: Use the examples below to see how you can easily make SMART goals. Then, identify ONE thing/idea/goal/intention you want to accomplish or create. Use the SMART descriptions to help you clearly define and structure your goal. Specific – State exactly what you want to create. I want to own and run an online store selling printed T-shirt’s sizes S to XL Measurable – You must have a way to confirm that you did exactly what you were going to do. I want to sell at least 10000 T shirts by the end of this year; earning a gross of at least $100000 in sales. Attainable – Ensure your goal is something achievable or you’re just dreaming. Not cute. Never hang your hat where your hand can’t reach. Ok. It’s probably too late to become an astronaut if you’re 50 and have not yet completed high school. I’m not saying it can’t be done. But uh... (side eye). Realistic –Focus on doing things you know can be reasonably accomplished. You can wish for wings like a dove if that’s what you want to do. But trust me, nobody else will be flying way up in the sky with you. Time Oriented. Put a deadline on things. You can’t leave your goal-completion target open-ended. That’s a recipe for disaster. You might still be “working on building my own business” twenty years from now. Don’t waste your time or that of the people around you who have placed their hopes in you. 4. Write Things Down. Everyone forgets! The most brilliant ideas can be lost because you didn’t record them. Architects and professional builders know to draw out their plans. Yes, you can envision the finished product in your mind. But because your brain is always wanting to make space for new data, it will sideline your fabulous ideas. If you’re not vigilant about capturing them, by the time you try to remember those awesome ideas that popped into your head while you were lying belly up in the sauna, your brain might have already said, “Buh-bye!” and lumped those suckers in with the other junk in your mental storage files. As fast as life happens sometimes, who knows what emergency might have transpired that required your complete attention and distracted you from that wonderful T-shirt company you were so passionate about last week. What else? Your child got sick at school, your work supervisor was on the warpath again, you missed your last Discover card payment and was forced to focus on negotiating a solution to keep your struggling credit in check. I’m just saying… Writing things down is powerful. Keep a journal Get a diary Use the NOTES section in your phone Record a voice memo Create a vlog 5. Take a Leap of Faith Finally, you know how THEY SAY, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die?” Sometimes, THEY talk too much! And, sometimes, THEY’re dead wrong. This time? THEY are right. You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to succeed! You have to be willing to be a human being and feel all the feelings human beings feel when they have to do new things. It’s that simple. The biggest success trick I know, is you must Do It NOW! If you refuse to do the things that are on your heart to do, a part of you will always feel as if you are a fraud. A liar. A disappointment to yourself. You’ll be the same person looking at your cousin feeling bad about yourself or even worse, feeling completely jealous at what they’ve accomplished. The only difference between you and your cousin is that your cousin made the choice to do new things that felt uncomfortable at the time but now they’ve become a pro at. Once you’ve identified your goal or the task you want to accomplish, direct all of your attention and efforts towards its completion. It might cost you a lot. It might hurt a little or it might hurt a lot. You will know it’s important to you if they thought of looking back when you’re sixty knowing you didn’t pursue that goal seems even more painful than doing it now. Be courageous! You have one life to live. Put in the time, energy, and effort and you will see results. Above all, remember that even if up to this point you’ve tried and failed and been disappointed and frustrated as you’ve tried to create and accomplish new things, there is only one of you in this planet. Therefore, you have a unique and special offering to make in this world. For all your imperfections, LOVE AND ACCEPT YOURSELF, anyway. In another blog, I will share how you can use powerful words, phrases, and affirmations to train your brain to focus even more effectively on success. All the great mystics and spiritual teachers warn: Whatever you focus on becomes bigger. You get more of it. So, will you focus today on that thing your heart really knows you must create? I hope these 3 affirmations will help you to forgive yourself for those past half-hearted efforts at creating the success you say you desire. Even though I’ve flaked on my decisions to create the things I want in this life, I love and accept myself. Even though I feel disappointed in myself for not creating the success I desire, I love and accept myself. Even though I haven’t done my best to accomplish my goals in the past, I choose to Do It NOW!
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Introduction _______________________________________________________________________________ We are all touched by broken relationships. Some friendships wither on the vine – one moved away to college, the other stayed back home. You married, they stayed single. Things change. Even the most loving relationships must end – after all, people die! That’s the nature of life. Who Should Read This:
One of the most universal losses in life is that of a broken romantic relationship. Relatively speaking, when it comes to life stressors, divorce, separation, and relationship breakups rank way up there with loss of a loved one to death. If you haven’t experienced it yet, I bet you know someone who has lost in love. SOMETIMES WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE HEARTBREAK IT'S AS IF A SWITCH GETS TURNED OFF. YOU START THINKING YOU'LL NEVER FIND LOVE AGAIN. YOU START TO WONDER IF YOU'LL EVER BE HAPPY AGAIN. HERE'S THE FIRST HALF OF A POWERFUL BRAIN-BASED 8-WEEK PLAN TO HELP YOU GET OVER A BROKEN HEART. FAST! Week One CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL That’s it. Week Two CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL. Yes. You heard me right. Take two weeks to throw a tantrum. Have a hissy fit. If it hurts, cry like a baby for the first two weeks. Get the pain, rage, frustration, disappointment, shock, and disbelief out of your system. Relationship expert extra-ordinaire (in my mind), and author of the classic romance guide, Getting to I Do, famously says, "Feelings are non-negotiable." That means you can’t command your feelings to magically appear or disappear. Would that we all could! It hurts to end most relationships (sometimes you can’t wait to escape)! But, you can't get over, under, or around a broken heart, without first going through the pain of loss, rejection, and disappointment. There's no other way. Face the darkness of your emotions. Rend your heart. Feel the depths of your despair. And in the beginning, I say, "Go hard!" IT'S DANGEROUS TO IGNORE YOUR FEELINGS From what I’ve seen in over 22 years of clinical practice, failure to acknowledge sadness born out of lost love, in fact failure to acknowledge your feelings in general can be psychologically harmful and leads to many unforeseen complications. f you don't allow your brain, body, and your mind to feel your emotions when they show up in your body, they will find a way for you to feel it. The thing is, if you ignore your feelings for too long, you probably won't like it when they show up when you're not looking (e.g. drugs, alcohol, overeating, poor relationship choices). Lying about, dismissing, avoiding, or suppressing painful feelings only delay and interrupt your healing process. On top of being inefficient, ignoring true feelings has a way of triggering a host of new problems you didn’t bargain for. Listen to Marisa’s Story to Hear Why You Should NOT ignore Feelings! Marisa came to me for help with a serious drinking problem; she admitted she was finishing off at least one bottle of wine each night. Her driver’s license was suspended, and she had a court date in the next two weeks because she recently ran into a neighbor’s gate. She was drinking too much. Worst of all, she as desperately as she tried, her efforts to find love again were coming up short. She had been married for 19 years to her high school sweetheart. They had two lovely children together. But, the marriage had ended in a brutal divorce 7 years ago. She thought she had dealt with it and moved on. But, she complained that since the divorce, her dating attempts had sucked royally and she kept attracting the same "type." When she found anyone who seemed like he would be a reasonable mate, she found a way to sabotage it to find an exit route. “I just can’t allow myself to go there again, doc,” said Marisa. “I want to love again but I’m so mad all the damn time. I feel as if the more I talk about it, the more there is to say – and I’m tired of listening to myself think about it.” If you want to recover from grief and loss, the choice to be made is this. Either you feel the pain of your loss NOW. As it's happening. In the moment. Or press pause and put it on delay. But, rest assured, you might be able to delay your grief but it will not be denied forever! If you allow yourself to feel your emotions in the moment, you have a chance to get it over and done with – and appropriately so. The more serious reason to fully acknowledge your emotions is that pain delayed tends to energetically freeze in place. The freely moving and completely natural emotional energy of sadness you feel today, could morph into the hard, edginess of sarcasm and bitterness. Matter coagulates, freezes, stagnates, and festers if it has no other place to go. This is not good news for your heart. A traumatic event that rightly generated intense feelings of pain and confusion that could have been handled decades ago, lands on my couch with twenty additional problems that mushroomed because you were too afraid or too proud to release them at the time of the wound. It’s a double traumatization, in my view. The original pain from the wound is there. But now, it also has babies – and they’re ugly! Here's my recommendation: Instead of creating new and unnecessary problems, just admit that Cupid got you this time. Shrug. Cry. Face the facts - Girl Boss down, honey! Someone, please call 911! Week Three – Start Rewiring Your Brain |
AuthorDr. Triphinia “Triphi” Margaret Wallace is a Licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. She is also an Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapist and Reiki Level III practitioner in the Usui tradition. After over twenty-two years in clinical practice, Dr. Wallace has developed a neuro-psycho-spiritual approach to her practice that is grounded in Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Neuroscience, Creole Psychology, and Psycho-spiritual techniques such as Hypnotherapy, Mindfulness/Meditation, and Reiki. Dr. Triphi graduated from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California and the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). Her published academic works include a doctoral dissertation on the association among problem-solving appraisal, hopelessness, and suicide among low-income, African American women, and co-authored peer-reviewed articles on the relation between alcohol use and intimate partner violence, and the utilization of routine health screenings in the diagnosis of depression among African American adolescent males. Dr. Triphi published her first book, Do It NOW! A 7-Step Plan to Beat Bad Habits that Block Success in February 2018. In November of 2018, her second book; a companion workbook/journal called, Do It NOW Workbook/Journal: Powerful Exercises to Fix Bad Habits that Block Success, was released. Dr. Triphi regularly volunteers with the Red Cross conducting pre- and post-deployment reconnection and resiliency workshops with active, disabled, and retired military service members and their families. Most who know her describe Dr. Triphi as an empathetic practitioner, and an engaging presenter with a ready smile who receives rave reviews from those who listen to her teach. Archives
March 2021
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