In a recent class, one student, Janie, admitted that she had trouble starting difficult tasks.
As we explored the issue, she described how she was afraid that she would not be able to do them well enough to meet her own extremely high standards.
Knowing that she had a very common problem did not help. Lots of people procrastinate because they are afraid of not being able to accomplish the result they want.
The important question is what story you tell yourself to explain why you need to reach this particular goal and what will happen if you don’t.
In Janie’s case, she remembered a very dismissive college professor. He told her she should transfer to an easier class because she would not be able to pass his demanding one.
Janie was furious and determined to prove him wrong. She did exemplary work and earned the highest grades in the class.
BUT the story she told herself was that she would fail if she did not always produce perfect work.
When she remembered the scene with the professor and used the 3 sentences to retrieve her energy from her story, she stopped procrastinating.
What stories are you telling yourself that no longer serve you?
This paragraph is a comment I wrote about a passage on Page 76 of Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®.) You can see the passage in the book. You can also see the excerpt here. This link will take you to Bublish.com, where I regularly publish comments on parts of this book. This is a site where authors share of their work. You can subscribe to my musings, there, as well as to the musings of many other authors. It’s a great place to learn about new books and I recommend that you visit.
