YoYo’s World

         Supposedly those who are right-brained tend to be absent-minded and suffer most from procrastination. I am both right and left-brained so I guess that explains why all my life I have been majorly affected by procrastination. = ) I thought it was fun to mentioned right or left-brained dominance, but through my experiences, procrastination doesn’t seem to discriminate when it comes to what side of the brain you use most often.

            As with many others, I’ve been going to school all my life and it’s frustrating to procrastinate doing class work. I can imagine that it doesn’t pay to procrastinate in the workforce either; I’ve only worked in the food industry, what do I know? = P. By the time I reached my sophomore year of college, I was completely fed up of pulling all-nighters to work on papers and study for tests that I had known about for weeks. For me, I felt it is so unproductive to force myself into pressure situations like that and I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. So when a new semester came about I decided to take my time management in a whole new direction. I was determined to avoid those stressful situations I always put myself in throughout my schooling career.

            The first thing I did was educate myself with different methods others have used to bust procrastination out of the water. All of the articles and blog posts I read were very helpful, but in the end I felt I didn’t build a ladder tall enough to reach the moon; there was something I was still missing in the equation.

            As some of you may know, I am an avid Northern Shaolin practitioner. I have many books on Shaolin Kung Fu that I read most everyday and I learn very insightful things about life and goal achievement-it’s safe to say that these warrior monks were the cream of the crop when it comes to successful people. I was revisiting past lessons one day and I realized that there were two things that I learned that can be applied to beating procrastination, 1) relax and just go head on and 2) want to do what you’re doing.

Relax and Just Go Head On:

            In Kung Fu, students are taught to relax the body when experiencing moments of physical pain. Tensing and contracting your muscles and ligaments actually makes the pain worse. Kung Fu students are taught to accept the pain and through this acceptance your mind and body are relaxed and you suddenly turn a stressful situation into a more relaxed experience.

            The same can be applied to every day life. Let’s say you work as a project manager and you are required each week to give reports on your team’s progress. You hate everything about them and it is a real struggle to get yourself to put in the work needed to get the job done. When you struggle, reject and procrastinate performing duties you are responsible for, which makes for a very stressful situation. Your mind and body tense up and you are unwilling to comply. It seems as if you have to literally push yourself to work on these reports.

            The only person that can make the task harder is yourself. You know that in order to keep your job and support yourself you need to do these reports. There is no going around the situation. You are in a room and the only way out is to walk up to the door, grab the knob and simply open it, yet you are unwilling to even look at it. If you learn to accept your situation and accept the fact that if you want to keep your job you need to do your assignments, you reduce the stress-level tremendously. With acceptance, you cancel out any anxiety and strain you bring to the situation and with this extra space you have given yourself, you have room to get down and dirty.

            Learn to fully accept the situation and you make the doing a much easier process. (Of course, if you sincerely don’t like the situation then by all means change it via quitting your job, etc, etc. If you are unwilling to change the situation, then don’t complain about it. Now with this, we’re going into a whole new topic that I’ll cover another day.)

Actually Want to Do It:

            “If I want to do it, nothing is difficult. If I don’t want to do it, nothing is easy.”

-Sifu Shi Yan Ming

            This quote is probably one of the most influential ones I’ve ever read and applied to my life. I have never learned so much from one quote. If you take this to heart you will become unbeatable. It is never that you don’t have the ability to accomplish your goals and getting things done, it’s mastering and ultimately deciding exactly what it is you want. If you convince and focus yourself to want something, you will become unstoppable and you will bring your ‘heart’s deepest desires’ into reality.

            As corny as that may sound, think back to old Disney movies and things you were told when you were a wee youngster; hold your dreams in your heart and mind and your they  will come true. Choose to go 100% down a certain path and you will reach your destination. The only obstacle is yourself and completely choosing your path. Many find themselves torn between many different options and their indecisiveness makes them vulnerable to procrastination, underachievement and stagnation.

            I tell my younger brothers this and each time they get mad at me for saying this. I tell them, if you want to get an A in your chemistry class you will, but if you don’t want to you will surely not.

            As Steve Pavlina taught in his podcast, Faster Goal Achievement, the same applies here. When someone tells you about a goal they want to achieve, you can basically tell whether or not they will put in the work to accomplish it. Steve illustrates this perfectly when he says, “You know they will achieve their goals because they get it. Their end result resonates within them.” This is another way of saying they have chosen, 100%, to achieve their goal.

            You may be familiar with the quote from Archimedes, “Give me a lever, a place to stand and I shall move the world.” Master your ability to make complete decisions and the world will kneel before you.

Just remember, pass it on.

-YoYo

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