Do you ever find yourself stuck when under pressure and canât seem to get going? Many people do. It can be difficult to concentrate on tasks when external or internal pressures create brain fog that affects your ability to do your best work.
When distractions are causing pressure that makes you feel immobilized and unable to move forward, there are ways to get around it. Let’s start by taking a look at what makes us feel pressured and why it stops us in our tracks.
Most people have goals. Personal goals, professional goals, fitness goals, and many other types of goals. Some are short term and are achieved quickly and easily. Others may take much longer. Some goals may literally take a lifetime.
We generally have goals over the course of a day or week. And can check them off our lists with little difficulty. But what about the bigger goals? Or goals we donât really want to do in the first place? What if we have goals set for us by our boss or other obligations that we need to accomplish but just canât seem to get to? And now itâs overdue. Time is running out and we havenât even started. What then?
What if youâve procrastinated too long on your goals and now you donât even know where to start?
Procrastination.
The dictionary defines this as something we delay or postpone that should be done. Sound familiar?
Weâve all been down that road at one time or another, where thereâs something that needs to be done but we just keep putting it off. Weâre perfectly aware of it. Weâre expecting to do it at some point. There it is on our âto-doâ list, staring us in the face. But for whatever reason, we push it to the back burner and tell ourselves weâll get to it eventually.
Are you a chronic procrastinator? Do you often have thoughts like âOh, itâll be fine if I save this for tomorrowâ or âThatâs so far away, I donât have to worry about it yetâ?
If you find yourself procrastinating regularly, youâre probably stuck in a habit of procrastination. Eliminating your procrastination will mean eliminating your habit. But completely eliminating a habit is a difficult thing to do. Instead, itâs much easier to replace an existing habit with a new one.
Of course, the best way to do this is to replace your procrastination habit with a âget things done!â habit. That way, everytime you would have gone to procrastinate, you now do something else instead – your work!
Here are a few different strategies you can use to replace the procrastination habit with a âget things doneâ habit and finally kick the stress, anxiety, and overwhelm.
As a child, I was terrified of horror movies – as many children are.
Whenever I watched one, I would bundle up in my blanket in fear, and then stay up all night vigilantly keeping an eye out for any monsters hiding in the closet or lurking outside the window.
But that all changed when I changed my approach to watching horror films. Instead of hiding from the screen, I started sitting forward. Instead of cowering, I would punch the air whenever I thought a monster was nearby. I would even yell out things like âCome and get me!â or âI could take you!â at the screen when I felt particularly frightened.
