The loop of Motivation-Procrastination-Urgency-Exhaustion

Are you stuck in the loop of Motivation-Procrastination-Urgency-Exhaustion?

The loop looks like this:

You feel motivated to do something, you plan in detail what you will do and then when you sit down to do it- you get distracted, you engage in other things and delay it until it becomes urgent. You wait until a deadline is on you or someone is pushing you and you have to do everything on a time crunch.

If you operate like this- you are operating in the Urgency-Exhaustion cycles.

Such people have beliefs like-

1. I work great on deadlines. When there is a lot of time, I procrastinate and I need an external push to do something.
2. I feel I work the best in high pressure environment.
3. I find doing things daily boring, I can only do them intensely for a short duration of time.

Repercussions of operating this way-

1. You are not able to form and follow through long term goals. As a result achieving big goals with a vision becomes very difficult.
2. You are always chasing some short term high to feel a sense of rush. As a result you are always distracted and cannot sustain focus.
3. Your performance and productivity goes down as you go up in your career because you cannot function long term. You wait for things to get worse and the higher up you go in your career- your consistency is what gives results, not urgency.
4. You are unable to trust yourself. If you want to take a chance on yourself, start something new- you go in the loop of criticism. All the times you did not follow through on your promises haunt you and you lose self confidence.
5. You often feel exhausted with your overthinking about what you did not do and overplanning on what you will

Why does this pattern exist?

1. People who operate in the urgency-exhaustion-motivation cycle learn this as a child. We often see this in people who have the Overachiever’s trauma where in you (the child) starts to tie their self worth with how much you achieve. This starts in school when you would drive yourself to the extreme to get the best grades then in your college and other exams where this whole “urgent motivation” cycle benefitted you. (This hyperactive drive to achieve doesnt come from ambition, it comes from seeking love, respect, attention and appreciation from one or both the parents)
2. This patterns forms with the repeated sentence in head “Let me just excel in this and get through this”. And similarly everything becomes a short term stint where you push your body and mind. Your body doesn't know what "playing the long game" is. It only understands pushing yourself to the extreme in the short term.
3. Your mind and body equates urgency and exhaustion with progress. Your mind believes that there needs to be an external push the way it was in childhood. As you start working as an adult- your body is unable to cope with the fact that consistency is what creates results and urgency isnt working anymore and this where you feel disillusioned and drown into criticism.
4. You start to believe that you arent as "smart" and "hardworking" anymore when in reality the overachiever's trauma and the fear of not achieving is what created the coping mechanism of always pushing.

How to resolve this?

1. Kids who grow up with overachievers trauma go through this cycle of Motivation-procrastination- urgency and burnout. Unless the root cause of this pattern isnt resolved- this continues
2. We resolve this by going back to the time (through Inner Child Healing) and see when did you make the decision that your identity and life is all about achievement.

(Focused ambition lasts long, urgent ambition backed by impatience is a result of unhealed trauma)

3. We then see- whose love and appreciation is this Inner Child deprived of which is pushing you into this cycle.

4. We then help you reparent your Inner Child in subsequent coaching sessions and make the child feel safe in your body. When the child feels safe- he starts to become consistent.

When we do this deep inner work over several weeks- you step into a version of yourself that pursues his/her goals from a place of sufficiency. Your ambition comes from a happy place over scarcity driven motivation.

You start pursuing life with ease, contentment and discipline. There is no critical voice inside your head telling you "your life is over if you dont achieve this". Instead it is replaced with deep amount of self love and self belief.

If you want to heal your pattern of exhaustion, procrastination and burnout and bring in ease- Book a 1:1 session with me and I will help you the way I have helped 100s of my clients so far.

Book your session here