Are you a perfectionist? If you are, can you relate to getting less done because you procrastinate rather than produce?
Do you ever question Why? If I can’t do it perfectly, why bother?
Do you make funny decisions and stop taking action because you think it has to be perfect!
Does it? Really?
Well, I can relate.
Truly, I can.
I’m very good at setting grand plans for what I want to achieve. I outline projects – I’ve got stacks of them.
They’re all good ones too. But, like most people I have to work on my limitations, accept what’s holding me back. And, like most people I have to face my fears, self-saboteurs and limiting decisions. And, isn’t it easier to put it off what needs to be done than face your fear that it won’t be perfect? And, around in the circle we go.
How can you make someday, this day?
Let’s look at what happens in the procrastination or perfectionist cycle.
We know what we want to do – we dream about what it will look like, how it will work, who it will help.
It all seems clear – big maybe, but clear!
We all have different places we get stuck in the cycle, usually hung up on the pieces we’re less good at, the places we feel less confident and certain. Oh, the energy we spend in guilt and worry. If we could harness all the energy from all the women who worry and wait and feel guilty, we could probably power the planet.
How can we bring it back to the ‘level of one’ and power our own work?
Do any of these beliefs, thoughts or ideas ever plague you:
- Failure is unacceptable
- People will dislike me, ridicule me or exclude me if I don’t do it right
- Success is dangerous – if I do something it might work, and then what? How will I keep up? How much more do I have to give?
- I’m afraid of what the future will bring
- No one will buy from me so why bother?
- Someone else has already done this better….
- I just don’t want to do it and you can’t make me
Maybe at this point you have been putting doing some of the stuff that needs to be done. Perhaps it was planning a trip or trying to take action on your business. Or maybe it is just that you just don’t want to do it
You can stop the procrastination cycle!
One way to deal with this is to picture the worst case scenario. What are the worst things that could go wrong and what would the outcome of those things be?
Try this – write down or speak aloud whatever comes to mind for you.
Don’t judge the answers. Keep answering until you run out of the easy answers.
You know, the answers like “I’ll be happy” or “everything will be different”.
Eventually, you’re going to drill down deep enough to get to your truth and you’ll realize you’re holding yourself back from your own good. Have you ever heard that definition of F.E.A.R: False Evidence Appearing Real? That’s all it is!
Explore all the beliefs you are holding about the things you are afraid to do and keep asking yourself: What is the worst thing that can happen?
I have a friend who has a client who is terrified to make the phone calls she has decided to make to generate new business.
As a perfectionist, she created a ‘terror chart’ to put near her phone.
It relates to how she feels on the terror scale with 1 being watching a movie with her family to a 10, a bomb hitting her house.
She decided that a phone call is about a 2. It makes her laugh and allows her to get on with the task!
Shakespeare once said that ‘all the world is a stage and we are merely players on that stage’.
Each of us has a star quality within us to play our role in his world- let your star come out!
Try the worst case scenario drill down – it works brilliantly for me and for so many of clients and I believe it will work just as well for you.
