Stop Procrastinating for Good

How many times have you told yourself you are going to do something and you always procrastinate, you never do it, time goes by, you have excuses. Mainly that is going to take a lot of time, effort and the usual “I’ll do it tomorrow.” Eventually, time goes by and when you look back, you realize you could have finished by now, or at least made some progress, but you are still in 0%, not even started. Does that sound familiar? 20% of the population identifies as chronic procrastinators. Don't be that statistic.

The hardest thing of achieving something is getting started. It's necessary to set up very specific goals, organize them into small manageable segments, avoid distractions, and not forget to reward yourself because after all, we are always looking for incentives to keep us going.

Whenever you set up a goal and you achieve it, you feel success. I once heard that you are who you are today because of all the choices you have made and that success is all about self-expression. Feed your faith and start believing in yourself. It definitely sounds cliché, but as soon as you do so, everyone else will believe in you. Remember your reputation is your best advertising. We have everything we need in order to succeed, but we have to take the things that we have to get more of the things that we want.

Motivation is the desire to do something. At some point in our lives we have felt motivated about numerous things. We get up and start whatever it is that causes us a spark, but eventually, that motivation fades and we put everything aside, maybe by thinking it can be done later on in the future. One of my favorite quotes is “A goal without a plan, is just a wish” by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. So my question to you is, do you have a specific plan for every goal you wish to accomplish? Or an even better question, do you know what you want to accomplish? If your response was not immediate, take some time to think about what you actually want to achieve, and ask yourself why, what would reaching that goal mean to you, and how would it affect your life. Think about what kind of person you have to develop into in order to attain what you are looking for. Set your mind to work with you and not against you. If we allow the negative thoughts get to us like “I can't,” “I’m not good enough,” “it's too much work,” we are immediately feeding negativity to our subconscious mind and we will associate our process with “pain” and that's when procrastination comes in. Focus on the “I can.” You have the power to take control over your thoughts, so replace the negative ones with empowering ones. This is very crucial when it comes to making decisions and taking actions. We might not think about it too often, but have you ever stopped and think, how many opportunities have you missed out on in life, just because of fear, maybe because of the obstacles that may come across? It doesn't necessarily have to be something imperative such as a job opportunity that you rejected or a relationship you ended, but perhaps something as simple as a road trip with your friends you wanted to attend to but turned down because of many excuses you could have come up at the moment. Perhaps someone you disliked was going, maybe you have not reached your summer body yet, you have to walk your dog at night, your neighbor's dog. Whatever it may have been. You will never know what you missed out on because of fear. And just like that, we could be missing on great opportunities because we are postponing our dreams and not developing our potentials. Can you imagine if Steve Jobs had never pushed to pursue his dream? Not only he would have missed in millions of opportunities but the world but have never known Apple Technology. We are our biggest saboteurs. We really are the only ones getting in our way of our success. And as shocking as that may sound, it is absolutely true. Let's go back and analyze this absurdity. How many people do you know that have said they will lose weight? How many times have you started a diet? How many people do you think that have said to themselves, this is the year where I will get good grades, this is my chance to be the employee of the month or I will finish what I started. How many New Year's resolutions do people make and how many actually follow through? Everyone wants to better themselves in many sorts of ways. But what is the main factor that is getting in our ways? The answer is us. As previously mentioned, we usually start motivated, we may start to see changes and may be moving forward and closer to our goal, but eventually, when that motivation fades or you are having a period of change in your mood or dedication is when we must push ourselves to continue because let's be honest, we will not get anywhere relying on motivation only.