A year from now you may wish you had started today — Karen Lamb
So I came to tell you that your best time is now!
Have you been thinking that you can’t do much from where you are? Do you feel overwhelmed by your goals, dreams or vision? Are you scared of making mistakes? Are you scared of launching out?
I’m all out for you, stretching out my warm hands of care and love through words, I will cover 6 things that will enlighten you and cause you to make decisions and take actions.
I see how people get to say, they will do this, this and that in the future and I get to smile gently because I have been there before and I now understand better, I know they don’t really understand how the future thing works. I will tell you something for free and it’s okay for you to tell everyone you love that “it’s your responsibility to make the future happen”
My dear, when you have a vision in your heart, it happens very easily that you keep pushing it forward for different reasons. Pushing it forward brings you to a place where you feel like you have wasted a lot of time, your mind starts being stressed and you begin to have issues with self-esteem. You begin to doubt if you are good enough to birth your vision to your world.
It’s commonly said that procrastination is a thief of time…truth be told, it’s not just a thief of time it’s a thief of accomplishment, relevance, impact, money and progress. When you keep procrastinating on birthing your vision, dreams and your ideas, you cheat the people you have been sent to impact and the value that will come back to you as a result of adding value to others is also stolen by the thing called procrastination.
6 TIPS TO BEAT PROCRASTINATION In the tips I will share below, I will help you see the reason why you push your goals till later and how you can do better.
1. SELF DISCOVERY
One of the reasons people push things until later is because, they are not sure of their ability to do those things. You can only do so much from the place of your identity. If you are unsure about your ability and capacity and you see yourself lower than who you have been made to be then you will function less than your initial design.
Let’s paint a scenario of a child who was born and abandoned in a loafing shed with goats, he will grow up to see that the grass is the only thing he can feed on and that forms in him an understanding of how to live, he won’t live higher than the level of the goat because that is what he knows.
In the same way you have to know who you are, then be who you are, then live out who you are i.e. KNOWING takes you to a place of BEING and BEING takes you to a place of DOING. When you are assured of yourself, it’s easy for you to do that which you want to do.
Get to know who you are, assure yourself of it and live from it. Sometimes the doubt will come but your responsibility is to silence its voice with the knowledge of yourself that you know.
2. CLARITY An absence of clarity fosters the need to push things forward — this means that a person is not sure of what to do so there is really no drive to do it. Clarity makes everything easy.
Wait a minute! Should you even do anything at all till you know what to do first? It is very important for you to have clarity on what you want to do, put it down on paper, do not store it all up in your head, in the process of writing it down you begin to see some other things you never thought of when you stored all in your head. After doing this, you can then start breaking it down to the things you need to do to birth the whole big picture.
Let’s be practical now, for example, A lady is clear on helping young people build a career in music (Clarity) Things to do: Get a training syllabus Learn how to train probably from a trainer And so on… Clarity always makes things easier!
3. BREAK DOWN THE WORK Most people feel overwhelmed by the workload hence, they push things till later. Dear Super man/woman, you are not “super” just because of the big things you do at once but for the small things you do consistently. There are different ways a tank of water can be filled, it can be by filling it with several buckets, bowls or cups as your capacity can handle but the key thing is to be consistent to see it through.
Learn to break what you want to do to the smallest chunk of work that you can handle, this way you feel you are able to do it in its small form and guess what if the tank is being filled with a little cup consistently it will be filled up eventually. Don’t overburden yourself with so much to do, it affects your ability to be on top of it.
4. DON’T BE TOO SCARED TO FAIL (fail forward) It will surprise you that the reason you haven’t started what you desire to do yet is because you are scared to fail.
It’s okay to fail, yea I said that! When you fail I know you feel bad because we have been trained to feel that way, but most importantly, do a retrospective of what you have done wrong and how you will get better next time. This evaluated learnings help you get better on the journey.
For every silent voice you hear that tells you “what if you fail” respond and say “I will get better and move forward when I fail rather than not trying at all”
5. SPEAK ASSERTIVELY Quite a number of people have trained their minds with the wrong words. Don’t talk about your dreams in a hopeful manner.
The words you speak informs your mind, then your thoughts, then your actions and ultimately your results. Quit using words like “I hope to”, “I wish to”, “I’d like to” rather use words like “I can”, “I must”…
This helps you to commit yourself and your mind with your words. I set goals every week, I don’t write sentences like: I will like to complete the strategy for this project, rather I will say I would have completed the strategy for this project by the end of this week. Do you see? It helps you to commit more to it.
6. GET YOURSELF AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER An accountability partner is someone you are accountable to with respect to your dreams, vision, goals or plans. The person has to be aware and clear of what you want to achieve and follow up with you to get it done, this person must be genuinely interested in your accomplishment of it.
The relevance of an accountability partner is that they stand to put you in check so that, if for some reason you decide to quit, you can’t just take the decision on your own you have someone to explain to who can also help you.
I hope this helps you to stop pushing the things you can do now till later and also help you create quick wins in your life and go on to accomplish bigger wins.
Cheers to your achievements!
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