Antidote To Procrastination

Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Be the change that you want to see in the world.’ I say, ‘Give yourself permission to be the change you want to see in the world. Today, I’m gonna explain you this notion. Warm regards to the OCA, fellow role takers and this lovely audience.
Everyone’s been there when it’s really easy to make decision and then at other times it isn’t. Those times when it’s easy to make a decision is when we feel confident, focused, on track and somebody can say happy. And, there are those other times, those times when you get caught up in the push-pull of the decision making processes and we procrastinate — Do I, Don’t I, Do I, Don’t I, Do I, Don’t I. Often we end up with the ‘don’t’. Why is that? Have you ever stopped to consider who is making your decisions? There are unwritten rules in the society that definitely determined and dictate some of our decision-making processes, I get that. What I’m curious about though are those other decisions, those times when you do get caught up in the procrastination. Who is making your decisions? Is it your conscious mind or is it you unconscious who is ruling. I’d like you to stop for a moment and think about this. How do you make your decisions? What are they based on — fact or fear? Reality or illusion? I’m going to share with you two examples of decision based self-talk. And, the first example goes like this — I wanna go give a speech. I have always wanted to speak my heart out or. I reckon it’ll be fun to express the feelings. There’s the conscious mind. ‘Who do you think you are?’ says the unconscious voice of resistance. You have got no charisma in your body, what a stupid idea. And, the conscious mind responds — I’ve always wanted to give a speech. The unconscious voice of resistance swings in with — what a diabolical disaster that’d be! It’ll be just like all those other things that you suck at! You’ll never succeed and you’re just no good at it. Give up now and save yourself the bother. And the conscious mind responds — ‘What was I thinking? What a stupid idea! I haven’t got any charismatic part in my body. I don’t know where that came from.’ Second example — ‘I wanna go give a speech. I have always wanted to speak my heart out or. I reckon it’ll be fun to express the feelings. There’s the conscious mind. ‘Who do you think you are?’ says the unconscious voice of resistance. You have got no charisma in your body, what a stupid idea. Well, maybe I have or maybe I haven’t, says the conscious mind assertively. I’ve always wanted to speak my heart out and I think it’s time for me to find out how I will perform. Now, how could I do that? Hmm… Go to events on public speaking, put a post up on Facebook, or I could probably even search YouTube and find some lessons because one way or another, I want to speak up and I’m gonna learn. Now, what’s the difference between those two examples? Pretty obvious. In the second example, we don’t go on to the battlefield with the unconscious voice of resistance, do we? In fact, the conscious mind dominates, dictates, takes control and takes action because it can. Now, some people are natural decision makers and I get it, that might even be you. Chances are — you grew up with this decisive mindset or you may have learned somewhere along the line how to develop this decisive mindset. Most of us don’t grow up with the decisive mindset but we can certainly learned how to develop one. Some of us are so unable to make good decisions and it’s so bad that you spiraled into feeling anxious. We live in constant fear playing out war games in our head. Talk about paralysis by analysis, we would procrastinate to the point of panic/anxiety. And, all because of the fear of what people would think about us. There is this concept that talks about ‘Power of permission and the magic of maybe’. We can teach ourselves to say things like — I’m going to make a good decision, I’m a grown-up, I’ve made some good decisions at some point in life, and now, it’s time to make the damn decision. Now, you can learn this too if you play with procrastination. And, I’m here to give you the antidote for procrastination. And, I know you all want it. The beautiful thing is — it’s easy. It’s straightforward. It’s the permission is the admission for change. So, whether you like it or not, I’m going to give you this antidote, today. There are five simple steps that if you follow, you can get yourself out of that rush of procrastination and panic. The first step is — Give yourself permission to change. The second step — Get really specific about what you want to change. The third step — Identify something you can do to create the change you’re seeking. The fourth step — Take action even if it’s a small step, take action. And, the fifth step — Rinse and repeat, move on to your next decision. I told you it’s straightforward, didn’t I? It’s this beautiful old saying that we teach what we most need to learn. Well, that’s why I’m telling you this. So, I wanna give this to you now, in a way that it’s going to land and make sense. So, if you’re up for it, I want you to stop now and think about something, just one thing that you would like to change in your life. Thinking heads on. Just one thing. I’ll give you 10 seconds. I’m good at counting. 10,9… Is everyone got their one thing? I’ll take you through the steps — Give yourself permission to change. Step 2 — get really specific about what is it that you wanna change. Step 3 — Identify something you can do to make that change happen. Step 4 — Take action, even if it’s small steps. Small steps are better than no steps. And, step 5 — Rinse, move on to your next decision and repeat the cycle. It’s not rocket science. The way to create effective and sustainable change is to give yourself permission to do so and to then take action. Go forth decision makers. Take this antidote for procrastination and give yourself permission to be the change you want to see in the world BECAUSE YOU CAN.
