Anxiety Control Center

I was reading an article on how Olympic athletes learn to achieve success in moving towards their goals.  I was delighted to read that they do just what I was  asking you to do in our online coaching workshop.  Successful people approach their goals in a very specific manner.

Olympic athletes set small daily goals, achievable steps they take, no matter what towards the bigger goal of being a top athlete.  In our coaching I asked all of you to “lower the bar” making the steps so small, that you can only find success. By making the steps so small you almost effortlessly glide towards the bigger goals you set.  First you set the goal, then you break it down into the smallest possible pieces, that will  take you towards your goals.

Remember making the goal so small that you can’t help but succeed, will end up motivating you to setting and keeping the next small step.  When you learn to keep your commitments to yourself, by achieving these small steps you will find your motivation to take the next step grows.

To recap: When fear, or procrastination seems to stop you. Take another look at you goals.  And ask yourself these questions:

1. Are the steps  small enough so that you will take the step, even when you are tired, or not in the mood?

2.  Is the larger goal you’ve set really important to you ? What will you feel like after achieving the goal?

3.  What else is important about achieving the goal, what is underneath the desire?

Typically the reason we get stuck with goals is that they take us out of our comfort zone.  But, if you sit down and create tiny, baby steps towards the goal, and make a decision to take the steps, before you know it you are tapping into your full potential, moving in the direction with comfort, energy, joy and creativity.

Making it a habit to do something towards your goals every day, keeps you on course.  It becomes a habit. I gave one example in yesterdays post.  Here is another example of setting the bar so low you can only succeed.  I’ve asked many of you to read the book I recommended on how to get others to listen when you speak.  If you set a goal of just 2 pages a day, by the end of the week you will have 14 pages read.  By the end of the month 60 pages will be read.   And in two months you will be more than half way through the book.  All because you kept to you commitment to yourself to read 2 pages a day.  And in addition you’ve established the habit, finding the power of moving towards you goals, one tiny step at a time.

To get more information on the online coaching group.  Go to action ends procrastination.

Hope to have you join us in this journey of self discovery.

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Finding the underlying issues that fuel procrastination is one of the steps that will lead to changing this dis-empowering habit.

If you procrastinate it is possible that you’ve asked yourself why you procrastinate when it ends up causing stress, overwhelm and bad feelings.

There are a number of reasons people procrastinate and they fall into a few different categories.

You can begin to uncover the underlying reasons by looking at the things you do when you are procrastinating.   For example, some people will think about the task at hand, and feel like they need to eat.  Other people will feel tired or like energy is draining out of them.  Some will not be able to sleep as the mind races with lots of “have to’s”.  Although eating or needing to rest doesn’t move us in the direction of getting the task done, it does provide a certain feeling of comfort.  Even if later you might regret using that activity to postpone what you “need” to get done.

Both sleeping and eating when stressed fall under the category of comfort. .  Sleeping does provide comfort and. eating of course is another way we comfort ourselves.

There are many other things people do when they procrastinate, but let’s look at the need for comfort that is gotten by eating and sleeping.  The first step to stop the procrastination  habit is to change what isn’t working.

So this leads to the question to ask of yourself.  What would you need to provide comfort that would work better than eating or sleeping?

1. Do you need to reassure yourself that you’ll get the task done?

2. Do you need to remember a time in the past when you accomplished a similar task?

3.  Is there information that is needed so you can feel more comfortable tackling the task?

4.  Is your goal so big that it is overwhelming?

5.  Do you need to learn how to set goals in a way that you will move towards them?

According to the answers to these questions you can begin to get a plan of action to help in move you towards your goals while getting comfort.

The second step is to look for the underlying emotion that causes us to need the comfort.  Fear is one of those emotions.  I just had a client this week that came up with two fears that were underlying his procrastination.   The first was feeling of not deserving to be successful, and the second was the belief feeling he could ever measure up.  In his case we can see why he might rather do anything else but the task on hand.  The underlying issues were fueling his moving away from even beginning the project.  It wasn’t about the task at hand it was old beliefs that needed to be re-programmed.   This is something that can be done.

One problem with trying to do things without going underneath the surface problem of procrastination is that the problem isn’t on the conscious level.  It is held in the unconscious.

To get more information on the online coaching group.  Go to action ends procrastination.

Hope to have you join us in this journey of self discovery.

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One of the skills of moving past procrastination is to be able to access  feelings of power, security and courage whenever you desire.   There is a way to trigger powerful feeling automatically.  It’s like we “borrow” positive feeling we have within us and then use them in an area where they are needed. When we do this it gives us courage to do new things and also give us a way to deal with and move past procrastination.

There are a number of ways to trigger new more powerful feelings.  One technique is  called anchoring.
We use a three  step process
1. First we “anchor” the feelings we need in the feared situation
2. Next we use the power of the mind to make the positive feeling even stronger
3. We then “anchor” this new positive feeling and set up a trigger to access them.

Once the anchor is set we can use “touch off” the trigger and up come the positive feelings.  After a while it becomes an automatic response.  Can you imagine how great it will be that whenever fear or feeling stuck starts you can do something about it and change the feelings to ones that move you forward.  Having positive feelings whenever you desire is a real possibility.

And another favorite technique I like to use is from Neuro-linguistic Programming called a “map across”.  We’ll discuss this more in the upcoming workshop in February.

For more information on the Workshop go to  actionendsprocrastination.com.

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Question:   Why do people procrastinate?

There are a number of reasons people procrastinate, they fall into a few different categories.

You can begin to uncover the underlying reasons by looking at the things you do when you are procrastinating.   For example, some people will think about the task at hand, and feel like they need to eat or sleep.   Although eating or needing to rest doesn’t move us in the direction of getting the task done, it does provide comfort.  Even if later you might regret using that activity.

Both sleeping and eating when stressed fall under the category of comfort. .  Sleeping does provide comfort and. eating of course is another way we comfort ourselves.

So this leads to the question to begin to find other ways for gaining comfort.

Question to ask yourself: What would you need to provide comfort that would work better than eating or sleeping?

1. Do you need to reassure yourself that you’ll get the task done?
2. Do you need to remember a time in the past when you accomplished a similar task?
3.  Is there information that is needed so you can feel more comfortable tackling the task?
4.  Is your goal so big that it is overwhelming?
5.  Do you need to learn how to set goals in a way that you will move towards them?

As you answer these questions you can begin to plan on trying new ways of gaining comfort that will move you towards your goals.  This is just a short sketch but you get the idea.

For Information on the upcoming 4 Module Course on
Stopping Fear, Panic, Anxiety
with a focus on Procrastination and Goal setting
go to http://www.actionendsprocrastination.com/workshop

If you would like to get a mind calming exercise go to the upper right
side of this page and sign in.

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