It’s quite intriguing to pick up on this topic after an absence of a couple of weeks. Someone dropped me a message and said that the content that I had mentioned in a previous procrastination post had too much common sense and the reader demanded that I put up information that doesn’t contain such motherhood statements.
I thought about it for some time, and I began to reflect on certain situations that people tend to leave themselves in. For example, it was fascinating to see how someone would be interested in an article on stomping procrastination and found that might advice was common sense. It just didn’t compute. If it was common sense, you wouldn’t have to read it. If one did need to read it, then most obviously one would continue to be procrastinating up to a point where you accept and utilized the advice.
So I had an internal arguments with myself to figure out what was going on. Upon reviewing “How To Stop Procrastinating #1″, I discovered that it was true that most of the information there appears to be quite straightforward and a whole bunch of common sense. It therefore dawned on me that there are individuals who will read it, but can’t use it.
The concept of vicious cycles tells us that there is far more than meets the eye from the behavior standpoint. You want something, but the more you want it, the further away from it you get. For example, it is highly likely that someone who needs a set of behavioral interventions will read the first article and find it useful. they will go out and execute the behaviors. However, several people who have a deeper rooted issues beyond the ‘behavior’ level may find that a behavioral intervention will be insufficient, hence, “common sense “.
As much as I’d like to avoid diving into two large detail, which Watzlawick mentioned in his book “The Language of Change”, and is the cause of many interventions going wild, and being seemingly without end, I believe that for the raw knowledge of people reading this could be beneficial.
Suppose someone is procrastinating. It could be that he wants to invite a girl out on a date, and he stops short. There are a number of things that we logically knows he should do. For example, he’s got to simply ask. And if he gets rejected, he should ask again, preferably in a different way. However, we know that there must be something else that’s preventing him from accomplishing his goal. One such invisible force could be his hidden understanding of rejection. For example, he might believe that rejection is the end of the world. This, indicates the need for a deeper rooted intervention dealing with the reframing of his belief patterns. Alternatively, it might have to do with his inability to come to terms with his parents’ divorce when he was five years old. This might indicate an issue with his self concept, or identity. In this instance, it would be possible to institute a Change Personal History session to help him reconfigure his identity.
However, before we get ahead of ourselves, it is essential that such strategies are implemented by someone who is well versed in interventions. A lot of the time deeper rooted issues may have a backlash – if we attempt to push against it in usually pushes back , causing even more procrastination.
most of the time therefore, we need to find the right kinds of emotional triggers. For example, the reader who sent me this irate message probably did not realize that he was able to procrastinate getting certain things done, but didn’t hesitate sending me and irate message. It is the ability to control and manage our emotional states that enables us to shift from state to state.
One of the ways to do this is by understanding anchoring. Anchoring, which is a behavioral process of association, and literally eliminate your feelings of procrastination. In the context where you are procrastinating, you can use that environmental stimulus to trigger off facilitative negative emotions such as frustration, anxiety, and fear. Or these could be facilitative positive emotions like enthusiasm, motivation and drive.
It takes a little bit of practice to know where these emotions reside. Reliving these emotions can set one on the pathway to realizing that emotions are our achievement joystick. Test it – whenever you don’t get something done, use an appropriate emotional state and link with it by intensifying the image, sounds and feelings of negative faciliation. You might see yourself failing or hear people mocking you. When you get closer toward your goal, associate it with positive emotions by viewing the images and intensifying those. You could possibly view yourself as happier, and hear sounds of cheering or acknolwedgement.
Do note that these are only possibilities, and the best way for you to really take charge of these emotional states is to learn the skills that are taught in NLP. Some readings to learn NLP are here. My detailed Practitioner training program can also be taken up online by staying tune to that website.
