In this article, I share powerful insights on how you can stop procrastinating and create the fulfilling work-life your dream of.
I know where you are at.
For as long as I can remember, I have always wondered how I could find true fulfillment in my professional life. It took me about 6 years in my active work-life to get an idea of what would fulfill me. But then it took me another 6 years to stop procrastinating and to overcome my fear of taking real action toward creating the professional future that I knew would truly fulfill me: becoming a career coach.
Why did I procrastinate on it for 6 years if I already knew what I wanted to do? Because I was afraid that by taking action toward creating the work-life I aspired to, I might have realized that I was not as good or passionate as I thought I would be. So, I kept postponing... taking baby steps to get closer to it... waiting for the "right" moment to jump.
It is only when I realized how I was subconsciously keeping myself stuck, and that no moment will ever be ‘right’ enough, that things unlocked themselves.
In this article, I am going to show you:
1. How your mind tricks you into procrastinating when it comes to creating your fulfilling work-life.
2. The one essential prerequisite to overcoming your procrastination and creating the fulfilling work-life you deserve.
3. The one most powerful habit you can create right now to help you build confidence and resilience over time.
How your mind keeps you procrastinating on the fulfilling work-life you desire so much
How the mind works
There might be several reasons why you procrastinate on taking action toward a more fulfilling work-life.
Maybe you feel you do not have enough money (if you dream of starting your business)…
or that you can’t take any risks because of some responsibilities you have…
or that you do not measure up against other people whose achievements seem out of this world...
or that staying in your current role is the rational thing to do and that those who go after more are just dreamers anyway...
Whatever the justification, even if apparently legitimate, if you procrastinate on your fulfillment, it means that most likely fear is holding you back at some level.
Now, regardless of where you are, the cause, or the intensity of your fear, you can overcome your procrastination.
The very first step to overcome your procrastination is to understand why you are procrastinating in the first place.
Your mind comports two parts: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.
Your conscious mind is your ‘intellectual mind’.
You use your conscious mind anytime you think, analyze, reason, or decide. Basically, anytime that you do some mental activity.
Your conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time, a little bit like a binary system “do I go left, or right?”
Your conscious mind is connected to your five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, as well as to your feelings.
Every time you think a thought, this thought travels from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind and creates an emotion in your body.
Your subconscious mind is your ‘feeling mind’.
Your subconscious mind accepts the thoughts your conscious mind gives it.
Your subconscious mind relates to your entire body and is responsible for everything you do not need to think of, including breathing, walking, or driving.
Your subconscious mind is where all your thoughts, associated emotions, and beliefs about yourself and the world are stored since you were born. It is just like a giant library where each book represents an event of your life and the emotions you felt related to this event.
Now imagine that all the thoughts and associated emotions that you have experienced throughout your life are stored in various 'categories of beliefs' or 'programs", such as “how I relate with money”, “how I relate with fulfillment at work”, “how I relate with my own right to be happy in what I do”, etc.
All these programs are deeply anchored in your subconscious mind and, put together, form your identity.
Did you know that we think on average 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day and that 90% of these thoughts are the same as the day before? This is because 90% of the thoughts you think daily originate from the programs you have created in your subconscious mind. And so, your daily habits - how you act in your daily life - are the external manifestations of your daily thinking, and originate from these subconscious programs, made of accumulated emotional experiences.
Therefore, realize that your subconscious mind, which governs your emotions, beliefs and habits, represents an astonishing 90% of your total mind power, leaving only 10% of your personal power to your conscious mind.
How your mind leads you to procrastinate on your professional aspirations
Now, the reason why you procrastinate is that this 90% of your total mind power is not properly programmed to help you move forward. In other words, some programs contained within this 90% do not believe that it is in your interest to reach fulfillment in your work-life. And if you look for the seed of these limiting programs, you will find what we call ‘limiting beliefs’. Two of the limiting beliefs that I encounter the most in my clients, which I too have been suffering from for years are “I am not enough” and “It is going to fail”.
This means that whenever you find yourself switching on the TV, or sitting to play video games, or Facebook or Instagram binging, instead of working on this project that you have been postponing for weeks, months, years and that is constantly haunting you… you are following the habitual rhythm imposed by some limiting beliefs anchored in your subconscious mind.
And now that you know that your subconscious mind represents 90% of your total mind power, it explains why it is extremely complex for you to only rely on your sole will power, meaning the power of your conscious mind, to overcome procrastination and maintain resilience over time as you work toward creating your fulfilling work-life.
Now, you might be wondering… if my willpower alone is not enough to change things, what can I do?
The secret lies in learning how you can make the best use of the 10% contained in your conscious mind to reprogram the information contained within the 90% of your subconscious mind so that you can build the foundation of your future fulfilled you.
And now, I am now going to show how you can do just that, empower your subconscious mind.
The one essential prerequisite for you to overcome your procrastination and start creating the fulfilling work-life you deserve is to Write a vision for yourself in which you imagine the future fulfilled you.
The very first step you need to take in order to overcome procrastination, which is literally putting to tomorrow what you can do today, is to show your mind what you want ‘tomorrow’ to be made of. Having a clear idea of where you want to be within three years from now, and the person you need to become in order to get there, is going to create a new model of reference that you will subconsciously relate to. Do this even if you are not completely clear on how you want your future to look like. Focus on what you know you want. So, write down, in the present tense and using only positive and emotionally charged words, that resonate with you, three years from now…
How do you feel?
How are you spending your days?
Who do you spend your time with?
How much do you earn?
What do you do with your money?
And any other affirmation that resonates with you.
The one most powerful habit to help you build the confidence and resilience you need to create your ideal future
Lastly, I wanted to share with you what I believe to be one of the most powerful habits (if not THE most powerful habit) to help you build confidence and resilience over time and create your ideal future: creating a morning routine for your mind.
We all have a physical morning routine, consisting of waking up, taking a shower, or brushing our teeth. As we do so, we get rid of all the sweat and bacteria we have accumulated the previous day and during the night. Oddly enough, though, very few of us have a morning routine for our mind. Yet, without it, we keep carrying on the same doubts, worries, and stressful thoughts that we went to bed with. So, not only does a morning routine allow you to freshen up your mind, but when you start your day in the way that YOU consciously choose, you send a signal to your subconscious mind that you are the one who sets the tone, that you are going to prioritize certain types of thoughts and emotions which are aligned with the person you envision to become.
Here are three suggestions for your morning routine:
1 - Read and connect with the emotions contained in your vision.
Do you remember what we said about how you created these limiting beliefs in you? Repetition. Beliefs simply are specific layers of thoughts that you have repeated to yourself again and again, until they became your identity. So, you want to use the same technic to start anchoring this new reality inside you. Whenever you imagine where you want to be in three years, you will experience positive emotions and most likely negative thoughts too. The negative thoughts will tell you that this is b*shit, that you will never get there, that you are not good enough, that you will fail, that you will end up without money, in the street. It is just your existing programming speaking. Do it anyway.
One person who has been instrumental in helping me solidify my vision is Bob Proctor, who is one of the founders of personal development. I have included a link to his incredible program called “Six Minutes to Success” here. I really recommend you check him out because you will receive daily success business and wisdom messages for a full year, which will help you tremendously in growing your new model of reference.
2 - Do breathing exercises. Breath is the bridge between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. Most of us usually breathe in a shallow way, due to the stress we accumulate throughout the day. Conscious breathing exercises send the signal to your subconscious mind that you are the one in control of your breath, and not your stress. You can do the following exercise:
Close your mouth and inhale through your nose to a count of four...
Hold your breath for seven seconds...
Exhale through your mouth for eight seconds.
Repeat the cycle three to four times.
3 - Meditate: Even just 5 minutes a day. Whenever you sit and close your eyes, you can start paying attention to everything that is going on in your mind. Once you start observing all the messy thoughts that are in your head, you operate a dissociation. You are no longer your thoughts. What happens is that over time, you will start noticing all the fearful thoughts and limitations that are popping up in your conscious mind, and you will be able to recognize that these fears are not part of you. So, you can do just that, sit and observe, or you can also do a more guided meditation, which is an excellent way to get started. I would personally recommend the app Synctuition, which specializes in helping you both meditate and increase your intuition. Here is the link to the app.
Habits take time. Also, I suggest that you start implementing one element from the following list, for the next month. First, choose the one you feel most comfortable doing. Then, once you feel comfortable, you can start implementing another element.
Now you might be wondering… great, all of this makes sense. I am sure it works for other people, but I don’t think it will work for me.
The best thing about these exercises is that you can really pick what resonates with you. It has proven to work for many different individuals, regardless of where they are at, how stuck they feel with their procrastination habit, and how bad their habits were… all you need is the strong desire to move forward and the faith to follow a set of practices that have been proven for over hundreds if not thousands of years. If you are tired of letting procrastination decide for you and really want to create a fulfilling work-life, be it by starting your business or within a meaningful role, it will work for you too.
If you liked what you just read, and that you want to know more about how you can create a more fulfilling work-life for yourself, and how you can use your core talents to do so, click here, and download your free report '7 steps to efficiently turn your talents into a profit'.
And if what I just taught resonates with you, and that you see yourself as one of the people I can best help, and if you are ready to overcome procrastination, and gain lasting fulfillment by starting your business or growing professionally, book your free call “Overcome procrastination now” with me here. I promise you will get 3 to 10 times the value that you got here.