Procrastination - Fear's Beard

A new client came to me because she has a big project that she has been trying to complete forever.

But she keeps procrastinating.

She scheduled time to work on it but dreaded seeing it come up on the calendar.

Hated it.

"I don't feel like doing this at all."

"I'm not even remotely motivated."

"I don't know where to start."

"It's just too much."

"I need to do more research."

"I'm just not ready."

"There are too many other things to do."

"I don't have the right mindset right now."

And then inevitably she'd either stop working altogether or start doing busywork.

Procrastination Nation.

Jump on Facebook.

Amazon.

Instagram.

Vent to anyone that would listen.

You know the drill.

And then she'd feel exhausted at the end of the week with nothing to show for it.

Zero progress on the project.

We dove in to find out what was going on behind the scenes.

To find the ultimate fear that was causing her to procrastinate.

Because procrastination is kinda like fear's beard.

Procrastinating helps us hide from the ultimate fear that is preventing action.

For her, it was failure.

Fear of failing.

"It was completely out of her wheelhouse and way over her head."

"She was afraid that she wouldn't be able to pull it off."

Her story "behind the beard":

If she officially started the project, it meant that she also officially opened herself up to failure. But, if she never started, she technically couldn't fail. And if she were technically too busy (working on things that didn't really matter), she couldn't start the project. She could tell her boss that she was too busy.

She unknowingly took what felt like the easy out.

Her brain did that to protect her.

And her brain was trying to protect her from something harmless.

It was doing just the opposite.

It was guaranteed that she would fail because she never even tried.

Sure, she could use the "I'm too busy" card with her boss.

But she knew better.

She felt defeated, weak, and undeserving.

She was failing ahead of time.

She hated feeling that way so she would overwork to hide from those emotions.

And yet still, the project sat untouched.

She was exhausted.

Rinse and repeat.

She had put herself in a position where she was guaranteed to fail because of non-action.

The thing she feared so much was already happening. 

She already felt like a failure.

We had to peel back the beard so we could find and start solving the real problem.

The worst part of failure is what she makes it mean about herself, and she controls that narrative.

Well, she's learning how to control that narrative.

Peel back the beard to see what's going on in your situation.

Try to cut through the mental chatter and noise and be honest with yourself.

Hiding from it is significantly more difficult than facing it.

My procrastinating clients tend to put off reaching out to me (shocker, huh? lol)

Because they think:

They've already tried everything and nothing ever works.

They already know what they need to do. They just need to be more disciplined, focused, motivated, etc.

They know how to fix the problem, they just haven’t _________________ or they just need to be _____________.

They won't learn anything new – that I'm just going to tell them what they already know.

That I might not be able to help them because they are just too lazy, unmotivated, damaged, too far gone, etc.

They are all wrong.

You already have the results from what you know.

Nothing will change if nothing changes.

You can keep doing what you've been doing and getting what you've been getting.

You can also book a free consultation call with me to find out what would have to change for you to start seeing real, tangible results, and feel accomplished at the end of the week.

The choice is yours.

You can schedule your free call here 

Best,
Machele

Machele Galloway is a Certified Life Coach through The Life Coach School. She's based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and specializes in helping her clients manage their time and their minds. She firmly believes that you can't manage one without managing the other. She virtually coaches women nationwide. If she isn't coaching clients, she is studying concepts and techniques. And if she isn't doing that, she's probably playing with a dog or watching the Real Housewives of some city. - “Life is short. Play a little.”