We all procrastinate and sabotage ourselves at times, but it becomes a real problem when we have a strong desire to make a change or go after something, and yet we face a huge amount of resistance when we try, and we keep finding excuses and procrastinating.
The first key mindset shift is understanding that we don’t procrastinate because were lazy or unmotivated, lacking in discipline.
Pushing and shaming yourself and being very critical of yourself for being lazy or unmotivated is only going to damage your confidence and self esteem, and make the procrastination harder to break out of.
Procrastination is a symptom or warning that we’re dealing with inner conflict and we’re out of alignment.
We’re in conflict between our goals or desires and the protective parts of ourselves trying to hold us back, to keep us safe and keep us living within our comfort zone.
We end up stuck, frustrated and we can’t move forward.
This is all normal because we’ve naturally evolved to resist change.
Our animal brain isn’t interested in personal growth, empowerment and self actualisation – its concern is safety, familiarity and comfort, and it’s safer to stay where we are, even if we’re not enjoying it – at least we’re safe and alive.
When we treat procrastination as an issue of discipline or laziness, we end up feeling more frustrated and more disempowered than before, and the result is often very critical and self-shaming inner dialog – Why am I so lazy? Why is this so hard? What’s wrong with me? I know what I want to do so why don’t I just do it?
Procrastination as I said is just a symptom of inner conflict, and it shows up as a symptom of a few different things.
For example, a lack of confidence or low self esteem, fear of putting yourself out there, fear of judgement or rejection, perfectionism, or a strong negative inner dialog/inner critic
Sometimes, we just have a lack of clarity on what our priorities and goals actually are.
When we treat procrastination as a symptom rather than the problem itself, we can go about addressing the real problem – the inner conflict, and then healing from it.
Inner conflict comes in many different forms, but once we identify it and get to the root cause, we have something tangible to start working with rather than going round and round in our heads, fighting with ourselves and getting very frustrated and stuck.
The worst thing we can do is to be hard on ourselves – to criticize or shame ourselves for simply trying to stay safe.
So the question becomes, what’s the inner conflict? Is it really a fear of showing up, is it a fear of failure or what people think? Is it a lack of confidence – that you couldn’t possibly achieve what you want?
Once you work through and heal the conflict and resistance and what’s keeping you stuck, the procrastination disappears by itself.
