What is Procrastination all about?

We’re all guilty of procrastinating at times.  Those days we’ve set aside to do our Tax can soon be swallowed up by diversions and distractions, “I’ll just put one more load of washing in the machine”, I need one more cup of coffee before I start”, “I better take the dog for a quick walk first” We all have our own distraction methods and you know what yours are!

Everybody does it now and again, distractions are so readily available to us they’re even built into our workstations in the form of Social Media, Online News,  and random Google searches on just about anything that comes into our heads. Our attention spans have been eroded.

What if it’s becoming detrimental to your life?  What if you can’t seem to concentrate on anything, even enjoyable tasks? You start things but never seem to finish anything. This is becoming an increasingly common issue for more and more of us.

What is it that stops us from completing the tasks we set ourselves, or that have been set for us by Teachers, Parents or Employers?  Have you ever considered that it might be anxiety?  Perfectionism can be a form of anxiety the need to have everything perfect can be so overwhelming that the easiest means of avoiding the fear of failure in achieving perfection becomes inertia.  By doing nothing we put nothing out there for ourselves or the world to find fault with.  Sometimes we have developed a subconscious fear of criticism.  If growing up you had e.g. critical parents, you may have learnt that no matter what you did nothing will be good enough, so you remain hesitant in attempting anything when you’re not 100% sure of the outcome, you may still have that parental voice in your head telling you “you’ll never be able to do it”, so you’re discouraged before you even begin.

Sometimes if we’ve experienced trauma, we work incredibly hard to maintain our emotions in a state of equilibrium.  We are so fearful that they may be tipped into a heighted state of fear again that we avoid anything that creates even the slightest ripple in our emotional response.  This can result in us avoiding unpleasant, boring or difficult tasks, but it can also result in us procrastinating about doing enjoyable tasks.  We get that uneasy feeling that our emotions are about to be disturbed and it doesn’t matter if it’s in a positive or negative way, instinctively we stop whatever it is that is triggering the disturbance and we distract ourselves with something less likely to register on our emotional scale.

In my opinion a large percentage of the population try to exist with their emotional register locked in a neutral position, avoiding the sensations of life’s unpleasant tasks and consequently denying  themselves  the ability to truly experience life’s pleasures.  Being able to regulate our emotions is a critical skill required to live a full and rich life.  Too many of us live a kind of numb existence, because we have been hurt and emotionally scarred in the past, so we protect our core self by finding a level of emotional being that we can bear and locking it in.

Hypnotherapy is a highly effective method for creating the emotional resilience required to unlock our full range of emotions.  A trained Hypnotherapist can provide a safe place to guide a person through the process of increasing their emotional range.  The psychological safe zone can be extended so that the client can live to their full potential, and develop confidence in their ability to make choices and decisions, accepting that mistakes are part of life and without being paralysed by the fear of failure.

The next time you catch yourself procrastinating ask yourself  these questions?

 “What am I really afraid of here?” 

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

 “What’s the outcome I want?” (really visualise the outcome you want, and imagine how you will feel, how will your posture be when it’s achieved, what will your expression be when this task is done”

“What do I need to do to achieve that?”

Close your eyes and meditate on those questions for a few moments. 


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