I’ve never wrote a blog before, it’s one of the many things I’ve put off. I used to kick myself for not doing something I’d thought was a good idea, thinking I’m lazy or just not up to the task.
Since learning more about how our minds work, I now realise that procrastination is a way of keeping us in our comfort zone and our own limiting beliefs and fears, usually of failing, are the walls of that comfort zone.
When we are in our intellectual mind, we can make a proper assessment and usually laugh at ourselves and tell ourselves to get a grip. We can’t do that when our primitive emotional mind takes over and so procrastination wins. We’re not honest with ourselves when we’re in this state and we make excuses, such as I need to that urgent thing over there first, and don’t give ourselves too hard a time because we’ve been ‘busy’ doing other stuff.
I felt recently that I was procrastinating, this knowledge of what I was going through helped me to laugh at myself, but it still wasn’t enough to make me get up and finish the content for my website. My excuse was I’d lost my motivation, I needed to get my mojo back and gather momentum.
I now know that sitting and waiting for motivation to arrive is a long wait. I saw this phrase on twitter (a great tool to procrastinate to) ‘Motivation follows action, not the other way around’. It floored me because I’d been sat there waiting for the motivation bus when instead what I needed to do was just get stuck in and do it. When you think about it, it’s true. Sometimes the hardest thing is getting started but once you do, you’re in it, enjoying it, and you don’t want to stop.
It made me realise that motivation doesn’t arrive like a bus that pulls up and you get on. It’s more like riding a bike, when you get on you have to put the effort in to start and get going but once you do, you’re in the zone and everything rolls along easily.
I’ve started putting two hours aside to just get stuck in and start whatever it is I’m working on, including the content for my website and low and behold, here it is, my first blog.