How To Stop Procrastinating

Put yourself in a routine, put yourself in a circumstance that is going to make you take action when you take action.

Steven Scoggins is a best selling author. He challenges people to break through their obstacles. Coming from a broken home, years of struggle to launching what would become a multimillion dollar construction company. Ladies and gentlemen, Steven Scoggins in the.

You know, a lot of people struggle with procrastination. In fact, early on, when I was going from homelessness to where I'm at today, I spent the first half of my life in this heavy set of procrastination. And I would get trapped there. Honestly, what felt like by accident, but also felt like it was on purpose, meaning it felt like something I couldn't actually break through. The reality was as I was telling myself a lie. And I find a lot of people we work with are also telling themselves the same lie, which is that procrastination is something that can't be overcome. But before we understand that, we've got to understand what procrastination is versus what it's not. You see, procrastination is not something that should impede your overall success. Prostitution, on the other hand, however, is a distraction mechanism to help you deal with the stress of the uncertainty of the thing you don't want to do or the thing that's standing in your way. So at the end of the day, we need to understand that if you're going to break free from procrastination, then you've got to understand that procrastination always leads to distraction. So here's what I mean, check this out. Procrastination fuels distraction. We just got through talking about that. However, distractions impede your aspirations to become a reality. If you think about it, if you know what you need to do and you're not choosing to take that moment, that step in the moment, then if you don't take it in the moment, inevitably you're not going to take it in further moments or additional moments. So much of actually breaking things down and breaking free from procrastination comes down to some different traits. I'm going to give you five tips today to help you actually begin to break that down. So first of all, one of the things you got to do immediately is get outside of your own head. You have to actually let go of the emotional rigmarole that's actually causing you to have that anxious feeling in the moment anyway. Instead, what you've got to do is you have to take a step out of it. Almost like you're watching a movie Rather than being, like, in the movie, like, where I'm talking to the camera right now, I'm now going to step outside and look at myself as the director and look at my character like, okay, why is my character so afraid in this moment? Why is my character not taking the time to look for other opportunities? Why is my character not taking advantage? Oh, there's a route. And then I trace the route back to actually get out of my own head. Now, if you think about it, when you go and watch a movie, how many times have you been to a movie, to a horror movie or something like that, and you're like, no, don't go in the closet. Don't go in the closet. The boogeyman's in, right? And you know it ahead of time. It's because you're watching the movie and not living the movie. So what I want you to do to get out of your own head is I want you to stop yourself in the moment and I want you to step outside and just. And look at yourself objectively and ask where the fear is coming from that's actually leading to the procrastination to begin with. Because when we do that, we're able to accelerate the feeling of actual aspirational identity rather than procrastination identity. Right. Procrastination identity is the person you fear you're going to become. The aspirational identity is the person you are going to become if you keep moving forward. Okay. Number two is let go of instant gratification.

Okay? People who look for instant gratification or instant gratification ultimately shoot themselves in the foot. Because everything is about a process. Everything is about the next step. Everything is about going to the next level. But we've got to battle back in that moment and understand because it's a process. Much of it takes time. However, the time clock doesn't start ticking until you start taking action. So if you're procrastinating about taking an action today, right now, in this moment, then ultimately you are not allowing that time clock to start to actually take you through the process further, faster. So how do we do that? We want to let go of instant gratification. We don't want to or we don't mandate. We see immediate results to keep us moving forward. Instead, we're going to trust the process. We are going to trust that we are heading down the right direction. Yes, there might be a battle for a little while because. But if we just keep going, great things will happen. And I believe that great things are inside of you. Just waiting to happen. Okay, number three. Let's go ahead and jump to number three. Break it down into smaller bites or smaller chunks. Okay. A lot of time with procrastination, we're thinking about all 100 steps rather than thinking about step one. Putting the domino that we've talked about before on this channel and setting it up in such a way that knocks down the other dominoes behind it. You can only do this by actually slowing things down and taking the most important immediate action. And you want to do it immediately. The reason you want to do it immediately is the longer it takes you to make that action a reality, the less likelihood that that action is going to become a reality. It's the difference between knowing what you need to do right now and taking that step right this very second and then saying, I'll get to it tomorrow, I'll get to it next week, I'll get to it next month, I'll get to it, I'll get to it, I'll get to it, I'll get to it. And then lo and behold, the whole year has gone by and you're like, I knew I should have done that all along. It's the definition of shooting ourselves in their own foot. And I don't want you doing that any longer. Okay? The fourth thing, turn the stress into a redeemable routine.

One of the things that I like to try to do, if I can, is, is I like to limit my ability to procrastinate by putting myself in circumstances or putting myself in an environment where I physically can't. I physically can't procrastinate. It's kind of like when you're actually like going on a bus and you're at your bus stop, right? You either get off the bus or you miss your stop. This is the same technique. You want to put yourself in an environment that is conducive or forces you to use a redeeming ritual. Meaning put yourself in a routine. Put yourself in a circumstance that is going to make you take action. When you take action. So what is that for you? You'd have to look at your specific circumstance to really break that apart and break that down. But at the end of the day, these are simple techniques to help you win. Alright. Number five is tie your emotional reward to the future you. Okay?

Right. Here's what I mean by that. A lot of times when we procrastinate, a lot of times we don't take the action is because there's no immediate reward. Might remember the gratification thing up Here there's going to be work involved. When it comes down to tying your emotional reward to the aspirational you, all you're saying is, I'm envisioning the future version of me. That person is happy. They're go lucky. They've got it figured out. Their finances are good, their relationships are good. And I literally will try to envision that so clearly in my mind that I can actually feel the emotions that are tied to that moment. Because here's the crazy thing. Your brain doesn't know the difference. Your brain doesn't know the difference of the life that you're living and the life that you're replaying in your mind. The tricky part is just like a movie camera, you can determine what film goes on the camera. So rather than replay the emotions behind not having it or not following through or not getting the result you want or not getting the relationship you think you need, or not getting the job or the finance or whatever, you can either repay the garbage or you can replay the future you. And for some reason, I don't know if it's the universe, I don't know if it's God, I don't know what the deal is. But for some reason, when you replay this version of yourself, this aspirational you consistently, all of a sudden, all the opportunities that lay that groundwork and that structure, if you will, are heading you right down that road. Right down that road. And it's all because you're actually tying an emotional experience to an aspirational version of yourself. That reward, if you will, when you do that, you experience that. And again, your brain doesn't know the difference between reality and the movie that you're playing in your head. And the more that you tie the movie in your head to the reality that you want rather than the reality that you have, the more your emotional state and your mental capacity expands and allows you to head down that direction. Let me get this out of the way for just a second. The core bonus of reducing the need or the desire or the feeling of anxiety actually comes from the environments and the communities that you put yourself in. Now, one of the things that I chose to do a long time ago in this specific area was actually create a continual community. What is a continual, continual community? Well, a continual community is oftentimes a community of people who are very similar to you, who are on a similar journey as you, and also currently elevating themselves by. Through a strategic process, maybe through seminars and books and things of that nature. A lot of things that happen in the continual community actually help you bring down your level of anxiety because you are having shared experiences with, with people who may be a little ahead of you, but they're able to keep you out of the victim mentality that oftentimes we like to find ourselves in when we struggle with anxiety. So these continual communities do a few things. Let's jump into this for one second here. So the first thing that you do with that continual community is you actually have a healthy level of support. Okay. Oftentimes in the continual communities or community groups, I found early on to help me break free from anxiety, these groups actually allow me to speak what was going on with the lens of helping me understand what it is they wanted me to be empowered by from the lessons that they learned. Okay? So when I'm getting support from someone else who's already been there, done that, and got the T shirt, as you can imagine, I have a greater level of wisdom and understanding about where I'm personally at in that moment. And that's one of the things that a continual community does for you. The second thing that a continual community does for you is it actually gives you an outlet. Okay? The outlet itself is the design work, if you will, of taking yourself through a process of filtering your own thoughts, actions and behaviors. Because unlike most things, anxiety is strictly starting at the thought process first. That then influences the emotional state. The emotional state then influences the actions and the actions or results. So when we have an actual outlet for us to filter things through based on the experiences and the, well, the visions of other people that have already been there and done that, inevitably what happens is we can see things ourselves from a completely different angle. Number three, one of the third things that we do here with our continuing community is now we have the ability to pour out.

With those who need to be poured into.

Now, one of the things that's so important about pouring into other people is you have to be prepared to do so. Which is why the support group and the outlet actually help you get prepared over the course of six to eight months. Because the last thing that you want to do is pour out some of the negative beliefs and limiting things that are limiting you into someone else who's already struggling themselves. However, in that six to eight month window when we actually focus there on getting ourselves together first, we are setting ourselves up to then pour out into other people who used to be where we were six or eight months earlier. So in that sixth to eighth month window, it's your job to be a student, a learner, spending a lot of time learning about the information you need, about the techniques you need, about some of the maybe mindful practices you need, or meditation you need, or prayer you need, or books you need to read, or seminars you need to go to. But inevitably, you are in a community where you are in fertile soil, allowing you to grow. That way, in six to eight months, you are ready yourself to actually pour into somebody else who was exactly where you used to be. If you're going to win at life in your career or whatever, whatever it is for you, if you're going to win at that thing, you're going to have to take a step towards that thing on a daily basis.