
How the super overachievers experience procrastination
Event though the general notion of procrastination means putting off work, procrastination may come in many other forms. There are some exceptional individuals who have mastered their habits and have proven a flawless mental capacity of producing the most effective results when it comes to their professional work. However, as the old saying goes “the devil never sleeps”, and procrastination creeps in other aspects of their lives, generally in their personal life, crippling them to into habitual hesitation and inaction.
Let’s imagine, for instance, that you are one of the clients I work with on a daily basis. You are very successful individual at the very top of your career and, and, for one reason or another, you have been single for various months and that one of your personal goals is to find that special someone (This could apply to losing weight, or any other personal goal). You are solvent, successful, healthy, and you have a great circle of people surrounding you. You attend events, dinners, and rarely have the time to consider how important it is to take massive action into finding a partner. You make some efforts here and there to meet new people, but your daily comfort makes you feel there is really no extreme urgency; you are happy, you have a life, you have it all.
Days, weeks, months, and even years go by, until little by little, you start to think about how great it would be to share your amazing life with someone who brings you up; someone you admire and love. You admit to yourself that love would definitely be fantastic, but somehow, days, weeks, and even months continue to go by. It is inevitable: procrastination has taken over your personal life. It is very difficult to act on and to measure the impact of this type of procrastination because you cannot measure how much romantic happiness is worth to you on any given day.
So, why would you, a very successful and capable person with all the resources, procrastinate so much on such an important and urgent matter such as love? Some of the reasons might be:
- It’s too easy to use work as a crutch to postpone: You may have so much going on in your professional life that it seems natural to continue putting “on hold” your personal life. Your busy schedule is the perfect excuse as you believe it doesn’t make sense to prioritize the unknown. Instead, you feel comfortable prioritizing the tasks you are used to doing and you’re great at. This vicious cycle paralyzes any progress or efforts.
- The task seems too difficult: You might have the belief that your goal is to unlikely, so why go out of your way if you can focus that energy on other things? You might also be hesitant to openly expose yourself as “available” as this may affect the way people in society perceive you. You don’t want to start receiving requests or suggestions to go meet people with which you probably won’t click. So, even though finding someone is something you desire, the task seems too overwhelming or unlikely and thus you will easily go off on a tangent or continue life as usual instead or taking massive action.
- The risk of failure is painful: You know it will take an extra effort to try dating different people until you find the right one. There is a feeling deep-down that you cannot afford to make more mistakes when it comes to love, and you definitely don’t want to waste too much time on trial-and-error. The expectations are high, and taking the risk of failure is too painful.
- It requires emotional optimism: Taking a step to get intimate with someone and to be willing to share half of your already settled life could put any action off. You are stepping outside your comfort zone, and this requires you to feel excited about meeting someone, to have hope, and to believe the efforts will bring positive results. Otherwise, procrastination will continue to possess your personal life.
- What if deep down you don’t really want to reach your personal goal?: What if the reason of consciously postponing such an important area of your life is because you don’t really want another person in your space? What if you don’t want to feel vulnerable? You are comfortable, happy, healthy, and in control. You have many amazing hobbies and have the freedom to travel and enjoy the pleasures of life. Maybe the idea of someone right next to you seems like a nice one, but maybe the fear that the person who joins your path might also come to disturb your beautiful settled life is much bigger.
From my experience as a Personal Life Advisor and Brand Amabassador at Ivy International, it is clear to me that even though our professional performance is one of the most typical ways of measuring success, we should not forget how important our personal goals are. May we apply the same standards, time, resources, and energy on our personal goals as we do on our professional ones. Otherwise, procrastination will always be there to take control and cripple our overall success and happiness.
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I am Fernanda Carcamo, a Personal Life Advisor and Brand Ambassador at Ivy International, an global relationship business specialized in elite matchmaking. My goal is to help you reach your personal goals, including that of finding love. Send me an email to fernanda@ivy-international.eu and I will be delighted to share more information about our memberships.
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