The Reason You Procrastinate

“You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge .”― Dr Phil McGraw

Get real with yourself about your life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn’t working in your life. Stop making excuses and start making results. If you are unwilling to acknowledge a thought, circumstance, problem, condition, behaviour, or emotion – if you won’t take ownership of your role in a situation – then you cannot and will not change it.  

Let’s say you decide to write a book about your life story where you’ll share your passions and interests, experiences on what has worked and not worked in your life. This is something you feel strongly about. What happens when you make a conscious decision but at the subconscious level, you have a disempowering belief? At a conscious level, you want to write a book, but underneath the surface you have this belief that says, “Well, who am I to write a book?” What do you think is going to happen? 

Let’s go to another example. You’re in a relationship that’s not great and after however amount of time, you are not happy, not fulfilled and there isn’t that connection anymore. You think that maybe you should leave and you get excited about it initially but then, what if in your subconscious mind there’s that little voice that says, “What if you don’t find somebody else? What if you end up back in the same situation again? Better the devil you know than the one you don’t! What if you leave and feel lonely?”

Let’s look at the last example. Let’s say you’ve a job right now and maybe you’re happy and fulfilled in it or maybe not and you say, “You know, I’d really like to start my own business. I want to be my own boss. I want to control my destiny and time.” What if in the subconscious mind there’s a little voice that says, “What if you don’t earn as enough income to take care of yourself, your family and the all the things you want to do? What if it takes longer than you anticipate? What if things don’t work out at all?”

So, can you see how conscious and brilliant decisions can be held back by our disempowering beliefs in a subconscious mind? This can be changed by firstly acknowledging it and secondly by understanding why and how it happens the way it does. When you have a conscious goal but have subconscious patterns like disempowering beliefs: I’m not good enough; I’m not smart enough; I’m too young; I’m too old, you’re going to experience something called neural chaos. Neural chaos happens when there’s a part of the brain that wants the goal and the dream but another part of the brain that is going to fight you. It is this neural chaos that will keep you in your current state, your comfort zone.  This state is the main cause of procrastination. I can talk a lot more about the left and right brains as well as the conscious and subconscious minds relationship but for now I just wanted to give you a little bit of knowledge about why we procrastinate and sabotage our good intentions.

In addition to your conscious decision-making, wanting brain, if you don’t understand the power of the subconscious mind which is driving ninety five percent plus of your decisions and your emotions, chances are that you may be having one foot on the accelerator pedal and another foot on the brake pedal. 

So, when you have a belief that you know is a disempowering one at the subconscious level, here is a really first step trick:

1.    You need to understand that a belief is nothing more than cells that have connected and reinforced. 

2.   Identify the disempowering belief and write it down. 

3.   Now, re-write the empowering belief in this way – “In the past I used to believe that…” For an example: Empowering belief – I’m not good/smart enough. Rewrite this in this format: “In the past, I used to believe that I wasn’t good/smart enough.” 

4.   After the new format, follow by this statement: “And now I’m learning how to feel and be more than good/smart enough to achieve my goals.” This will then read like this: “In the past, I used to believe that I wasn’t good/smart enough and now, I’m learning how to feel and be more than good/smart enough to achieve my goals.”

5.   This will help you form new neural pathways. 

When you use language patterns that are certainty based language, which means I’m certain about this, this is the truth and that you say, “okay, in the past…” and then write the opposite of that. So, whenever you pick some disempowering beliefs that are holding you back and stealing your dreams, start applying this one of the few simple tricks and then affirm it over and over again. This will surely help you win yourself and your power back and beat procrastination to the ground. 

Procrastination is not that all bad if used to your advantage. Procrastinate trivial or no value activities. Procrastinate on watching TV. Procrastinate on visiting or talking to your friends that are toxic to you. Procrastinate on eating junk food, etc. This is how procrastination can be used to your favour. Your dreams have long been calling you, beat that procrastination and answer the call!

Veli Ndaba is a Professional and Motivational Speaker, Life-Coach and Neuro Linguistic Programming Practitioner, Author of four books (You Are Born to Win, Your Dream is Calling You and SWITCH ON! And Set Your Soul On Fire!), Newspaper Columnist and Entrepreneur. To book him to speak at your next event or to help you and your team unleash your greatness, contact him on [email protected], www.velindaba.com or +27 83 304 9773