Why do you procrastinate on the important things that you need to do to change your life?
Why don’t you procrastinate about those things that you know you shouldn’t be doing but you cannot stop yourself? Some people don’t procrastinate when it comes to opening the fridge and eating their pile of chocolate, and for the men, there is no procrastination in bringing out the beer bottles, wine bottles and that’s for the gentlemen; then you have the Jack Daniels and Hennessy for the so-called big boys.
Procrastination is a serious matter though and it would help our community a great deal if we can steer people away from it and get people to develop personal initiative and self-discipline. It is a state of mind and it can be changed whenever you are ready. In my book ‘Goldmine of Your Mind – Your Fast Track to Abundance’ I devoted a whole chapter to the topic because it is one of the most common causes of failure particularly in business.
Sometimes, success is a dangerous thing because you may then feel that you are invincible and then lose those attributes that caused the success in the first place. A client of mine who has been in business for more than 10 years running a successful recruitment agency started experiencing dwindling revenue for more than 2 years. By the time he came to me, his business was barely surviving at break even; i.e. no profit but no loss either; you know that the following year he is likely to start losing money. To cut a long story short, one of the bad habits he developed when things started going wrong was to cope by procrastinating. This came out just 10minutes into our first session out of the series of meetings to diagnose and resolve the problems for him. We revamped his plan and the exercise that changed things for him is what I am going to share with you today. The good news is that he is doing well again, much better than his previous successful period. Does it mean he would never have any challenge in his business ever again? Not really, but procrastination is not going to be one of them!
When I coach successful entrepreneurs and they get miraculous results, they are apt to give me the credit but I usually don’t want to take it because the work was done by them; my role is to help them see things differently. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
This is how to kill procrastination dead in its track and it is an exercise you have to do for at least 66 days to entrench it into your psyche. Before we get to the exercise, let me quickly tell you about the wrong notion about potentials! Today, as you are reading this piece, you are operating at your full potential right now; yes, 100% of your potentials! If you think to yourself that it isn’t true that you are already at 100% of your potentials; then that should jolt you into action and help you take the actions I am suggesting to you now. Your unrealized potential is hidden in what we call in coaching ‘trapped energy’ caused by procrastination. Let me talk a little bit about energy here. Warren Buffett is one of the richest men in the world and he has a way with words that gets you into action. He said, ‘without passion you have got no energy and without energy you have got nothing’! You need energy to manifest any goals in life and if your energy is trapped because of procrastination then you are not doing yourself a favour. So how do you conquer this silent enemy within that is stopping you from getting to your greatness? It is really very simple but would you not procrastinate in carrying out the exercise too? Ok, this is it. Start where you are and take a sheet of paper and a pen. Make a list of three important things that you have been procrastinating about for some time now; pick the first one and do it now. Take note of your energy level after completing the first task, it would be much higher than before. Then take the second item on your list and do it and then the third one. Just to test it, pick things you can do within one or two hours and do then consecutively. By the time you finished this exercise, notice that your energy will be so high that you will be thinking, is there anything I else I need to do. Please don’t use your laptop or tablet for this exercise if you want to get results; because your brain is 40% connected with your writing hand. Andrew Carniegie was the proponent of this idea of writing down goals and he was one of the richest men in the world one hundred years ago. You can google his fascinating story from an illiterate nine year old boy taken to America from Scotland who became of the shaper of American history.
Knowledge is power? Rubbish! If you don’t know how to apply basic principles of life to get what you want then your knowledge is not that useful. I have found fulfillment in helping businesses thrive applying these principles that is potentially life-changing. It is a far cry from my days of juggling figures as a chartered accountant but all my business knowledge is now being deployed to help businesses succeed. If you want to have a chat with me on how to transform your business then go to my website www.mbckonsult.com or call 07939500053
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