Are you a prize procrastinator? Here’s how to stop it today.

What are you putting off until………… (sometime in the future that never comes).
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The thing with procrastination is it rarely makes us feel good.
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In the short term perhaps (‘phew, I avoided that discussion today with a cobbled-together excuse’).
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But that constant negotiating with ourselves is energy sapping and demoralising.
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And once we give ourselves that label, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here’s how I get myself out of procrastination and you can too:

Firstly, I look at re-framing the thoughts that are getting in my way.
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‘I don’t know how to do it’ becomes ‘I don’t know how to do it yet but I can make a start by asking x or reading y’
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‘It’s boring so I don’t want to do it’ becomes ‘who else could do it?’ or ‘it has to be done so get stuck in and then have chocolate or a glass of wine as a reward’. (And honestly, there’s so much you can outsource these days – oven cleaning, grout cleaning… you name it, someone will do it for you).
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‘I’m scared of making a fool of myself or getting it wrong’ – When that thought and feeling kicks in it’s so easy to get stuck in creative avoidance – doing everything but the thing we need to do. When those thoughts kick in, I talk through them with my coach and always get back into action feeling much more confident and clear as a result.
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The key thing to remember here is to examine our thoughts FIRST. Because once we change those we feel better and take action from a place of feeling good! Which means we get better results.
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Taking action from a place of fear or desperation rarely ends well.