I would love to explore life with you and discover together the connections that matter. To let ourselves loose on the current of life; drifting, falling, and rising toward a kind of overflowing life that flows into our soul and flows out into the lives of our loved ones and those with whom our paths cross.
How do you move through change in your life?
Bet you thought that staying put and not moving forward was the essence of procrastination? Yes, and no! Delaying a task by turning away and habitually engaging in something else is more like it. You are trying to replace the negative emotion that you are experiencing when confronted with that unpleasant or difficult or challenging task with a more positive emotion.
Staying put can be the first important step to quit procrastinating that particular task. If you procrastinate something, chances are you almost always procrastinate that same something. So run through the ingrained scenario in your head. Is there an actual physical space or two in which you usually procrastinate this thing?
For example, you want to eat healthier foods. You have been to the grocery store and have stocked up on your favorites. You are in your car coming home and you think, “Tomorrow I will start eating healthy, but tonight I will stop for fast food.” Your place to stay put is in your car, headed towards home. If you make it home, you will probably not go out again, you will prepare dinner from the delicious, healthy foods you have there.
Or, you need to study for a certification exam and even though the test date is looming up ahead, you keep putting off the thorough study you know you will need to do. Where is your stay put place? In front of your computer? At the dining room table? In the library? Designate that spot your stay put spot. And do whatever it takes to not move forward by turning away.
Stay put and chances are you will start that task and it won’t be so bad. Couple this with a new emotion. Reward yourself with a positive i-statement, or mantra or affirmation, that can start replacing that negative emotion! “I did it, I am strong!”, “I am changing, I like that!”, “I am tough!”, “I am intentional”, “I am eager to see this through!”, or “I have guts, I am doing this!”
Or, find a Bible verse or a quote that motivates … some of my favorites are Proverbs 21:26, All day long one man is craving, while the other gives and does not hold back. Galatians 5:1, It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
For some comprehensive information on this subject, a great book is Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Timothy A. Pychyl.
The Art of Work by Jeff Goins: This is an interesting book I just received free, from a great author! I have been stressed from work and trying to get a handle on it … maybe this book will help. It’s a new way to look at your “calling.” 😃 Easy reading, but so thought and action provoking, I hope you might enjoy reading it with me. Go to artofworkbook.com for your free copy!
I have gotten used to project work, where the work gets done and I feel like I can breathe before the next project. But now work seems so ongoing and never stopping for a breath!!!! And it feels like I am doing this alone in my attic garret. This is a great way to work and gives me flexibility and reach and significance which wouldn’t be possible with only face to face encounters … but I do miss personal touch and visual cues and sharing a meal!
Do you feel the same way? I’d love to hear about your attic garret and how work FEELS for you! You can comment below.
Making procrastination work for you doesn’t mean gutting it out with more discipline: use it as a prod to evaluate.
If there is a task you don’t like and have been procrastinating, first make sure you evaluate whether it is something that actually needs to be done, “What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do this thing?” Sometimes it was just something you thought you needed to do or something you thought you wanted to do, but not essential to you moving forward. If that is the case, “can” it (use the trash can delete button!) or move it to a “maybe something I’d like to do in the future” kind of list.
If it is something that does actually need to be done soonish, evaluate your plan to complete your goal and see if there is a different way to reach it, a way that fits your strengths or personality or timeline better and will ensure that you do it.
If you just don’t feel like working on something when you have it scheduled and it is something you really need to do, evaluate your overall schedule. What is its deadline? Can you rearrange anything so that you can work on it at a different time when you might feel more like tackling it? Can you find something you had scheduled for a later time that you feel like doing NOW?
“Discipline” can be manipulated and softened and reworked! It doesn’t have to be puritanical: set in stone and stiff and stern! Make your calendar and task schedule work for you, don’t work for it or you’re bound to get fired!
I have a lot of projects I would like to get completed this week! And, because of Labor Day, it’s a short week! So, I was reminded that I really needed to self-coach. Apply what I do with others to myself!
I was writing an email to a new client about my commitment to transformational coaching as opposed to transactional coaching and it hit me that I was getting ready to plan my week in a transactional way. Duh!
Transactional coaching: Not always bad, coaching on a practical topic where getting it done is very easy to measure.
Transformational coaching: Coaching on a practical or a personal topic where getting it done may not always be easy to measure. It involves self-discovery, learning to think differently and connect emotionally or spiritually to refine the task according to your personal vision and then to complete the task. When you are confronted with the same or a similar topic in the future, then you should be able to handle it with ease!
How does the process differ in my case? My first thought is to head immediately to my list to prioritize it and to my calendar to schedule in the hours I think I will need to complete these projects. Whatever time management processes would seem to work best would be applied. And I would slug away at them, hoping to keep to my schedule and to complete them in the time allotted. This is transactional coaching.
The better way would be to ask myself some awareness questions that would help me understand the importance of each project and connect it with my vision of how each finished project would change something vital for the big picture and move me forward toward this big picture goal. The enhanced commitment and emotional connection will make this week’s work a more compelling journey instead of a forced march!
Awareness: What will it mean for me, practically and emotionally, to finish these three projects this week? Is there something I am dreading that could sabotage my commitment to completing these tasks?
Vision: How do they fit into the big picture of my work? What would be the greatest impact of these finished projects?
If you have something in your life that you have a vision for or want to do but just can’t seem to get started or feel stuck, connect with me for a complimentary coaching session and start to move forward now!
Face it! (Or should that be Facebook it). Yesterday’s highly criticized virtual reality has become today’s social reality. Yesterday’s faking it online is becoming today’s making it real code of authenticity online. Now more healthy people are using social media as a legitimate means to keep in touch, get in touch and touch new friends! Fakers are more easily spotted and hopefully drowned out by this influx of people committed to the new social reality.
What kind of experience have you had with fakers, friends and “faces”, either as a social media user or presenter?
Please hold me accountable to be authentic on this blog and on other Social Media sites I use to “keep in touch, get in touch and touch new friends.”
Reframing a tough day can change your perspective, your attitude and your forward motion. As Steven Furtick from Elevation Church in Charlotte says, “You can nurse it, curse it or rehearse it … but God can help you reverse it!” When you realize you are nursing or feeding a bad attitude, or cursing someone who got in your way, or rehearsing a negative comment, just stop for a second! Look at the big picture, look for a spiritual principle or review the way you really want to live. A badly framed picture will always look askew or somehow just not right! If you could measure it, you might find that it is only off a tiny amount.
A different perspective can reverse the impact for the rest of the day. So what was off just a little bit in your tough day?
I realized that my frustration with the new gatekeeper at my condo was affecting the perspective of my whole day! By consciously choosing to see my actions through his eyes, I saw my perspective reversed and I am flooded with feelings of well-being instead!
This Sunday I was listening to my pastor share the sermon and realized that I wasn’t just listening to him, but at the same time I was hearing God ask me pertinent questions! As a life coach, I am usually the one doing all the asking, listening to my client and being led by God during a session to craft compelling questions that will pull out an important and connecting awareness. Try it for yourself next Sunday or the next time you hear an inspiring talk. Don’t just listen, take notes and file it away! Connect with Him, your inner voice and what important things are going on in your life that you need answers for, or courage to complete or an expanded vision to move forward with … listen for the pertinent questions. And answer as best you can in the moment. Your Sunday Life Coach will lead you forward!
I would love to hear what your Sunday Life Coach asked you this week!
He asked me to elaborate on why I believe that He totally understood a recent pain in my life …
So wow! What an interesting movie! The cinematography was a bit cartoonish and unreal (I saw the 3D version, maybe that emphasized it), but the director certainly got the desperate celebration and excess down. The relationship between Gatsby and Daisy was poignant and tender. Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio did an excellent job of that. Daisy’s letdown was mysterious and dark, but not too much, just shadowing Zelda’s future mental state. The depiction of the book was very true, which is always a recommend for me. I hate when they change the ending, or the characters.
Some of my favorite quotes from the movie (directly from the book):
“All the bright precious things fade so fast … and they don’t come back.” Daisy.
“Can’t repeat the past? … Why of course you can!” Jay Gatsby.
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Gatsby’s dying fall is very elegantly portrayed and (spoiler here, sorry) I mean the fall of his dreams of a life with Daisy and his fall from a gunshot into the pool.
Did I get sucked in (again)? Yes! I did find myself rooting for the love relationship over the relationship of convenience Daisy had with her husband Tom. And, feeling distressed over Daisy’s vacillation over committing to Gatsby and the deep love she professed to feel and the unknown against the comfort of a secure future with her husband. The following quote sums up her final decision:
“They were careless people. Tom and Daisy –they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Do you have a favorite quote from The Great Gatsby? How does it make you feel about your own life?
FLUX & FLOW 