Procrastination is often your internal fear materialising as conscious actions.

Procrastination is a form of self-sabotage and directly relates to your mindset and relationship with yourself.

Do you find yourself doing anything but what you should be doing? You sit down to start a priority task but make a quick cup of tea instead – or scroll through Facebook – or put the washing on as it won’t take 5 minutes?!
These behaviours will 100% stop you in your attempt to be happy / successful / achieve your goals .

Today – try to be mindful of what you set out to do – and what you actually do. Start being really conscious of when you are actively procrastinating and how often this occurs. Maybe even keep a diary.

You may initially be disheartened by the realisation of how much you do participate in this act of self-sabotage but reframe your thoughts and see it as a positive thing – The first step to stopping procrastination and changing your life is recognising that you do it in the first place. Being aware is the first step to change as you cannot change something you are not aware of.

The next step is to work out why?

Ask yourself “What triggers you to procrastinate? Why are you procrastinating? What are you afraid of? What are you worried will happen if You take immediate action? What are you moving away from? What are you avoiding? Is it pain, rejection, loss, failure and / or criticism?”

For example I would avoid important tasks – such as writing my assignments when studying for a scholar qualification – it would take me weeks to complete something that should take me days. I got it done in the end and I came out with distinctions throughout the course (so logically I knew I could do it) but still I’d sit down to write the assignment – then do pretty much anything but what I should be doing.

So I started to analyse WHY?!! logically I knew I was capable but yet still I had this pattern of self-sabotage. When I dug deeper I started to recognise patterns – I had deep-rooted beliefs from childhood that I was not good enough. Your outer actions will ALWAYS mirror your inner belief patterns so I then started to work on changing my mindset. I was procrastinating because I didn’t believe I was worthy of success – so I was self-sabotaging my efforts which then made my inner belief systems come true – which then sets up a vicious circle.

Procrastinating is a behaviour that we do to stay in our comfort zone -Our outer world directly mirrors our inner world. So if we are procrastinating on tasks it is often due to deep-rooted beliefs that we do not have the knowledge or that we are not capable. So to get past this we need to work out what extra things do we need to learn to be confident that we can smash the task in question without procrastinating? What knowledge or extra skills do I need ? Or what attitude must i develop?

Whenever I set myself a new important task I now ask myself “ do I have the knowledge, skillset and positive mindset to achieve this goal? If the answer is no to anything of these I then explore what steps or actions I can take so that I learn and fill in the missing pieces.

To overcome procrastination you must

• Figure out a plan of action that reduces the risk of it causing you emotional upset
• Gain the necessary knowledge needed
• Learn the skills needed that you may be short in.
• Explore any limiting beliefs that are holding you back
• and finally, look at and cultivate a growth mindset; as even if you have all of the above – if you do not truly believe it you will achieve nothing.

When we feel secure and confident, that’s when the action happens. When we are free of fear we do not procrastinate and that’s when goals are achieved which only motivates us further to achieve more.