If you watched me long enough, you would probably swear that I am a procrastinator. I plan to do things, maybe I even write it down, maybe I even schedule it, and then I don’t do it for a long time, maybe ever.
I don’t consider myself a procrastinator:
you need to have a should to be a procrastinator.
By definition, procrastination is not doing what you should be doing. I have no shoulds, even if I said I would do something, it doesn’t live like a should for me.
I do things when I do them, and when I don’t do them, I look at them with curiosity, interested to see something about them, but that’s all.
I am happy to do the things I do, even if I don’t particularly enjoy the activity, and never force myself to do something: when I do something, I do it because that is the thing to do because that is what I am doing. I never do anything I shouldn’t, I always do what I do.
I know I sound like I was dropped from Mars… sorry about that. But sometimes only outsiders can see things the insiders can’t see.
There is a conspiracy of shoulds and out-to’s, and I think is what is underneath them is the Original Sin: Right and Wrong.
Right and Wrong, should and should not serve to create pressure, to pit what isn’t real against what is, and disempower people, so someone else can take power over them.
I don’t play that game, that is why I often sound like a Martian or like Spock.
Now, that I have shed some light to the top layers of procrastination, let me dig a little deeper.
As I have said in previous articles, an aspect of every human is Ego. Ego is largely misunderstood: Ego’s job is to keep you alive.
Ego records your life and sees what keeps you alive. In other words, Ego’s job is to keep you the same, keep you from changing. Especially changing for the better. It also keeps you from caring, loving, asking for forgiveness, telling the truth, admitting to your mistakes or weaknesses, asking for directions. Ego considers these counter to survival… and often they are.
Ego keeps you closed, separate, calculated, all deemed by the ego to be necessary for survival.
Survival is thin, and gives you a live of no joy, no fun, no victories… All the fun is in the stuff that Ego says no to.
This is based on the Ego’s thousands, tens of thousands of years of experience: it is not safe to love because you can be betrayed, and sadness follows. It is not safe to care because someone can take all you got if you give them an inch. It is not safe to strive for greatness: the higher you go the deeper you fall. It is not safe to be happy because life will feel even worse after than.
So Ego’s idea of saving you from all that is to save you from all the good stuff.
It is much like Lithium that they give to those afflicted with bipolar disease, the condition of alternating between mania (aka high) and depression (aka low). Life is a lot like bipolar: it is hills and valleys, but Ego doesn’t like it. Ego thinks that like the medical establishment: we’ll cut away your joy and then you will not fall so deep…
Life can be survived in a state of quiet desperation longer than living full out, going for it, enjoying the highs and weathering the lows. But Ego doesn’t like it.
This is where Soul comes in, another aspect of a human:
the one that wants you to live fully, to go for it, to attempt flying even if it means risking splat falling on your face.
Ego has been dominating your life, and procrastination is a sign of internal struggle: the Soul wanting you to do something and the Ego saying no, firmly gripping the reins.
No matter what you hope, no matter what cheap two-bit solutions you are waiting for, there is no two-bit solution to you returning to a life of quiet desperation where you can do a little bit of living dangerously…
Living dangerously is the spice of life. Doing things that are not cut and dried
..allow you to have adrenaline rush, to perk up, to feel alive. Walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Valley of Quiet Desperation is living in fear, not doing anything “because” of fear, it is being a slave to fear, it is unbecoming to a human being.
But you can’t just yank you out of there, you need t get Ego’s permission and Soul’s support.
Soul has stopped supporting you because of the fact that you have long abandoned its cause. You have been totally unreliable to act on your dreams, to “finish what you start”. You have been a liar, a cheat, a killer of dreams.
Recovery from that addiction will take work, it will take time.
But it is possible. You need to resume your authority in your life, and rein in the aspects of you, the Ego and the Soul. You need to allow them, encourage them to embrace and take you out of the Valley of Quiet Desperation, slowly but surely.
You can’t hesitate.
You can’t tumble. You need to be sure. You need to be steady… like you have proven that you can’t be…
Chances are you won’t… but those of you who can, you can get energetic support with my activators, and you can get total support on my coaching calls.
It’s really up to you. No one can make this decision for you.
Read the original article: What is the deepest reason for your procrastination?