ILLUMINATION Book Chapters
Powerful Life-Changing Hacks That Truly Transformed My Life- Chapter 9
Beating procrastination and gaining motivation
Introduction
In this chapter, I will touch on two critical success factors to overcome procrastination and gain motivation and inspiration. I structured the summary of this chapter under two sections to make it easy to read.
If you are experiencing procrastination and lack of motivation, this chapter might provide helpful perspectives.
1 — Personal Responsibility
The best lesson I learned from my parents was to take full responsibility for my actions. This approach has been one of the essential transformational guides in many aspects of my life.
By using this principle, I refrained from blaming people for the consequences of my life. Blaming manifests as a default mode in our minds.
It is effortless to blame people or processes for undesirable outcomes. The appropriate challenge is to take full responsibility, including in the face of difficult situations.
Whenever my brain went into blame mode for any reason, I learned to make a special effort to stop myself. I re-framed the situation and switched my perspective to find gratitude points.
In hindsight, most of my problematic points and undesirable situations turned into blessings in disguise. This awareness changed my mindset and helped me become more mindful, grateful, and accepting.
Many intelligent and emotionally mature people enjoy trying unconventional approaches only by taking personal risks. They refrain from blaming consequences when their trials don’t work.
Instead of blaming an individual, a book, or a company, intelligent people choose to change their path and take responsibility for their results.
It is necessary to point out that I don’t recommend anything to anyone, but instead, I love sharing my experiences and narrating them naturally, without hype or bias. Even though the personal sharing of facts may put me in a vulnerable situation as a writer, they are still worth sharing.
There is always the risk that some people may try to take advantage of others’ vulnerability. We need to be aware of the risks and share them using logic and the proper context.
Now I want to touch on taking timely action related to personal responsibility.
2 — Taking Timely Actions
Living in the moment is considered to be a success factor in personal and professional life. Actions happen in the moment we live, not in the past and not in the future.
Many disciplines, such as business, commerce, psychology, religion, economy, medicine, engineering, and art, teach us to focus on the moment to create successful outcomes.
Successful outcomes are created by taking immediate action for the things that genuinely matter. This principle applies to prioritizing tasks requiring completion.
Procrastination is common and natural. It is critical to learn how to deal with procrastination. From experience, an effective way to deal with procrastination is to notice it and take immediate action.
For example, as soon as we see our mind go to the default procrastination mode, we can have a friendly conversation with ourselves and kindly remind ourselves to turn to action mode. Most of the time, our brain obeys when approached nicely and with care.
A straightforward implementation of this solution is that if we believe the task at hand can be done in a few minutes, we should not leave it to a later time.
However, if a task in our list requires further analysis and deeper thinking, we can plan an appropriate time to undertake it. We can take action based on the plan and the task’s priority.
Suppose the job cannot be completed at a specific time. In that case, the best approach is to deconstruct the task into smaller chunks and tackle them in priority order for each identified portion.
Working on smaller tasks and completing the high-priority ones earlier can motivate us. Experiencing the success of completing small tasks, our brain can reward us with good-to-feel hormones.
We start feeling enthusiasm instead of withdrawal or procrastination symptoms.
Small gains can give us motivation and inspiration. When we are motivated and inspired, we can easily and quickly move out of our comfort zone. Successful people operate in a stretch zone.
Being in the stretch zone allows them to create their future by taking timely actions and personal responsibility for their actions.
Being an action-oriented person helps us to become more courageous. Despite our fears in scary situations, we can consistently produce with the help of timely actions.
Taking timely action has been a critical tool for me to overcome my fears. Taking timely actions can generate courage. Delayed efforts can intensify fear and may even paralyze us by demanding we stay in passive mode.
Before starting to write this content, I felt natural anxiety and slight fear leading to procrastination. As a habit, I asked why I felt this way at that moment. There was no particular answer, but I felt the anxiety and concerns slowly disappear.
Then I reinforced with more powerful questions: What could be the risk, and what could be the worst-case scenario for writing this piece? The only risk I came up with was being misunderstood and judged by the reader.
And the worst case was the reader would not choose to read my content. It was not a deadly consequence, so my anxiety reasonably disappeared, and I started writing.
Sharing ideas, opinions, and personal experiences always puts the creators in a vulnerable position, but we cannot create, influence, and grow without showing our vulnerability.
I overcame my anxiety, fear, and procrastination by gently having this robust self-conversation. I wrote this piece in a flow state and my stretch zone with ease. I hope you read it in your stretch zone to understand these simple yet powerful life lessons.
Reading these transformational points can make better sense in the stretch zone. If readers read a piece of content in their comfort zone, they may miss the critical points and important messages.
I explained my perspectives and experience on starting new initiatives in an article. I hope you find valuable points in this story.
Conclusions
Actions by taking personal responsibility are critical success factors.
One of the most effective ways to eliminate procrastination and gain motivation and inspiration is by taking action timely and achieving small gains. Each small growth can give us more energy and keep the motivation rolling.
When motivation kicks in, procrastination naturally gets silenced or entirely disappears.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
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Previous Chapters
Chapter 9: Powerful Life-Changing Hacks That Truly Transformed My Life
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