Month: December 2015

Categories
English Growth Mindset Procrastination

Seeing the future.

Hello readers. I won’t count you today because we are on holidays and maybe you are not here, you’re all on vacation somewhere. So, from the title you might enquire that I have gone metha or something. Nothing further from that, except we are going to talk about VISUALIZATION (in upper case for all you skimmers). Again some might ask “What does visualization have got to do with fighting procrastination?” Glad you asked, and the answer is a lot. When you visualize you are bringing attention to something that is not real. You can visualize about anything, and let’s do a quick exercise right now. Please, if you will, close your eyes and visualize your best friend from elementary school and see him or her, then after a little while open our eyes again. Go ahead, do it, I’ll wait right here. Did you do it? Good. Now, think about how hard that was. It wasn’t, was it? And that’s all there is to it really. You can visualize things that are not right there and that are tucked away in your memory. Now, can you visualize non existing things?Visualization Yes you can, just as easily, as long as you don’t try to cram too many details all at once. You have to let your mind build the visualization on the fly. So, you may ask now what does this have to do with procrastination? Good question, and the answer is better. You see, when you visualize you are creating the subject of your visualization. No, I’m not talking about the law of attraction or something like that. What I mean is that the image you are creating in your brain is pretty real, in your brain, so you might as well use it like that. So, for our purpose of procrastination let’s put it to the test. Let’s say you have a pending task that you are dreading, finishing a report for instance, and you need some data for that, and the only person who can give your this data is someone you can’t really stand. I can see it right now, you are dreading doing the report because you are dreading getting the data. You procrastinate, and then some more. Making matters worse you know you are procrastinating, which makes you anxious, and then more anxiety comes from you imagining the dreadful encounter. You are visualizing the encounter and materializing in your brain over and over and over and you get the point, right? No? Let me explain. By postponing the dreadful task you are suffering much more than by executing the dreadful task, how crazy is that? Now that we know a little bit what is happening we can do something about it. The first option is the “band aid method” that it minimizes the suffering by going at it fast and in one single motion. That’s the best option if the fear is not paralyzing. The second option is the “Nike method” and “just do it”, similar to the first but here the speed is not in the process but in going at it as soon as you know you have to do something unpleasant, go get it done and relax after that, you’re done. Again, pretty good advice, minimizes suffering by not allowing you to suffer except for the task itself. This two advices are pretty good, when you’re not paralyzed by fear. The last advice is a little more complicated and here is where visualization comes in. You are paralyzed by fear, you are dreading the task as much as a condemned man dreads the gallows. What you can do is start visualizing what it will be like after you’ve done what you dread, how it’s all OK now and how much better it is now that you’ve done this. Visualize it again and again. Even if you know this is pretty unlikely, visualize it, you won’t “make it happen” but your brain will be better prepared for it, and your fear will subside. When your fear subsides enough that you can move then you can “Nike” it and “band-aid” it and then you’ll be done. This has helped me recently on number of occasions when I needed it. I hope you can benefit from this little technique, if so, or not, leave a comment and tell me what has helped you fight your procrastination when you dread the task so much you’d rather book an appointment with the dentist.

Categories
English Growth Procrastination

What kind of procrastinator are you?

Hello my triad. Read the title of this week’s post again. Right, now, you might say “hey, wait a minute, I am not a procrastinator” to what I’d have to answer “Baloney”. If you are not then I need to CAPTCHA this site and fend off machine readers because, if you’re human, you’re a procrastinator. So, we’ll talk about different kinds of procrastinators and you’ll be able to identify yourself. It’ll be a fun experience in self exploration, you’ll see. I’m in no way saying this classification is final, if you google “different kinds of procrastinator” which I did, Google’s a procrastinator’s best friend, you find that there are many posts like this one, some even better, and that they don’t have the same numbers. So I’m going to use a simple one, and then on future posts we’ll be able to elaborate. The simplest classification would be a couple, but that’s not going to cut it this time, so we’ll go with a triad, hey, just as many as my readers, maybe there one of each in here. So, the three types of procrastinators very different amongst them, the reason they procrastinate is not the same and the things they procrastinate on are not the same either.Napping The first one we can remember, and that’s the person who suffers from the “student’s syndrome” and is proud of it. We’ve all been students here, some for a longer time others not that long ago but we’ve all been there and done that. The majority of students tend to put off work to the last possible moment, for instance, if an essay is given now, just before the new year’s break, and it’s due on, let’s say the third week of February you’ve got a better chance of winning the lottery than having half of the class start the work on the week that they come back from the break. “What’s the rush” they might say, “I need to do more research” might be another “reason” that’s a rationalization and not a reason. But hey, let’s be fair, not only students suffer from this, if that was the case then they wouldn’t be so long lines and online jams on tax return season, or other mandatory tasks that governments and organizations make us do. And most of them are easy to do, but yet they’re put off to the last minute. So, why do we do this to ourselves? Well, some research combines two reasons. Our lack of vision and our like of cortisol and adrenaline. Our lack of vision makes us think that a certain task will take less time and will not be plagued by interruptions and accidents. When we estimate the time a task will take to be finished we remember how much a similar task took. The problem is our memory isn’t flawless and we tend to make good things bigger and minimize bad things. This is nice and leads to a healthier life, but it’s awful as a measuring stick to do a benchmark on. Compound that with the fact that we also tend to forget that Murphy exists, and all hell breaks loose. Now we have less time to do our task, we must decide how to do “the impossible” and that’s where the second reason kicks in. With the stress we caused our bodies and the fear that’s starting to materialize the hormones start rushing on our system. We feel cortisol but also adrenaline levels rise and we get a rush out of it. We feel that rush and we work nonstop to finish the assignment, the project, a report. Lucky for most we can turn in a good enough work, and we feel happy about our heroics, but we know it wasn’t our best effort, but hey, under the circumstances, in the end, we pulled it off on such a short amount of time. We put ourselves into an ego boosting trip. If the work is good then we are ecstatic for the amazing job we did, if the work is not good enough we find tons of excuses of why that was, most of them have to do with not having enough time or being hit by Murphy when we know it was us who decided to start working much later. There you have it. The first kind of procrastinator, the student. I know I behave like this sometimes, much less now than when I was an actual student. Do you remember when you acted like this? Leave a comment if you’d like to share with us.

Categories
English Growth Mindset

Where was I? Oh yes, a post on focus.

Hello again my faithful triad of readers. After friday’s post maybe I’ve convinced a fourth one to come join you so you will be a quartet from now on. If you don’t know what post I mean go check it out, it was fun, not funny. Again, where was I? Laser focus Right, FOCUS, I was going to talk to you about focus. As I see focus is the ability to concentrate one’s efforts or thoughts on a single object or idea. Pretty simple right? Well, as we’ve seen I am a little odd so focusing for me is very difficult. I get distracted by almost everything, or everything, I’m not sure. I really have to work hard to be able to focus, and that’s where problems start, because you see, I use part of my energy just to be able to use my energy, very silly if you ask me. So, to overcome this, I am exercising on pure and simple focus right now. In my morning meditation I focus on different parts of my body and I cycle through them. And I go like that for 30 to 40 minutes. Again, it sounds silly but I know better now than to dismiss practice. You know, unlike most of you I didn’t practice a sport regularly as a boy, so that part got missed by me, this is something I have to learn now, and it’s not easy. Back to focusing, see what I mean. During my day I have to worry, as you might have to, about many things pertaining to my work, home, or personal spheres. Each one requires my attention. And I try to focus on each particular task, until something else pops up that is. This is where productivity experts of many sorts have been able to help most of us. Many of you have already a productivity routine in place, but some don’t. I’ve found out that the most important part of this routines is being able to focus anew on the task at hand when focus gets broken. We can try to prevent external interruptions, and we must, but there will always be internal interruptions that can’t be muted, sent to voice-mail or unattended in some way. And those are the most frequent ones. So, in the coming weeks I’ll try to post regularly on this topic, much more pertinent this blogs unstated mission (note to self, write the mission out, not just think about it) of helping people fight procrastination. If you are asking “how a productivity hack can help me prevent procrastination?” then either you need this more than you think or the cause of your procrastination is deeper, and that’s another subject that we’ll take on on another post. In the mean time, how do you think that focusing and regaining focus immediately would help you finish your tasks better? How about achieving your goals? How about having a better life?

Categories
English Growth Stories

Masquerade and vocabulary…

Maschera per il carnevale
Maschera per il carnevale

Hello my readers, all three of you. I’m here out of schedule because of something that happened to me recently and I’d like to share with you. I’m terribly disappointed as I’ve been duped by someone I trusted. We all use masks, that is the way we protect ourselves and we present ourselves to others so they will like us.

Maschera per il carnevale
Maschera per il carnevale

This masks might be more or less complex and we all know it, but there is a point where the mask detaches itself and transforms completely into it’s own distinct persona. When that happens and you are made to believe this persona is somebody else then there is something wrong, then there is pretense, there is trickery, there is deception. Deception, even with the best of intentions, is still deception. It destroys one’s confidence, sets you back to a point before the lie started and makes you question all the decisions you’ve made from that point on. And I can honestly say that if I hadn’t grown mentally as I have in the last months this would have been a terrible blow. But I have and it isn’t. I am, yes, disappointed, but that’s it. I am not angry because I’m really trying to expunge that feeling from my life. A few days ago I heard a Tony Robbins track where he speaks precisely of this in a way that was new to me. What he said was, to me, so new and so right that as soon as I heard it “became evident”. I am sure you know the feeling, it is the same feeling you have after solving a complicated riddle or a problem and finding the solution to many more from that, well, that was the feeling. He was saying how growing one’s vocabulary helps us growing one’s set of emotions. He used the example of anger. If the only word we have for it is anger then, mentally, we won’t differentiate between feeling a little angry or a lot, because the underlying emotion is the same, and even if it varies in intensity the effects on ourselves are the same. Now, if we have many words for that emotion, describing each one a different degree of the emotion, the underlying effects are not the same. The next step should be to ban from our vocabulary the word that has the most damaging effect on us. It may be because it takes us back to a moment so terrible that we are in a way reliving it because of the simple use of this word. Words may not be so powerful as smells triggering memories, but they are pretty good at it. So, back to this that happened to me. I’ve been set back and duped by people close to me, but I’m not angry, I’m just “peeved”, because getting all worked up about this will in no way help me getting my life back in place, it will take longer and more work, yes, but I’ll do it regardless. And you, what words will you ban from your vocabulary and thus create that change you need in your life?

Categories
English Mindfulness Stories

Love yourself first, second part

Hello my two readers. Well, I may have to change that because I’ve received a lot of comments on the last post, so many that I had to write this one. I firstly have to agree with many of you that it wasn’t my best effort that put through that piece, it was hurried and it showed, and for that I apologize. Then again, see the sign on the door to this blog, yes, that one, what does it say? “Procrastinator’s Den” that’s right, I hurried my last work because I procrastinated, of course I did, I had a good excuse to do it too, but that I’ll tell you tomorrow. Let me get started so I don’t take too much of your time. I had many questions regarding the amount of love, what amount of love was too much or not enough. That was never the point. I don’t think of love as a measurable entity. Some will say love is infinite, let them. I can only say that within each one of us there is enough to seem infinite and that’s all the love we need, and if it seems we are running out, we can create some more, so not a problem. What if we love ourselves much more than we love others? Then we are not really loving ourselves because real love is a love that transcends our bodies and expands around us. It’s stronger within us, then our closest family or friends, then people we know, then the rest of the world. Please, don’t ask me if it follows an inverse-square law because as I said before, it can’t be measured and therefore doesn’t have a unit of measure, but if I was forced to answer I’d say it was sort of like that. There are exceptions like people suffering from NPD you won’t “love” anyone but you. On the other side of the spectrum, you can be a “Francoise” and love and worry more for an unknown person living on the other side of the world than for people close to you. sea-dawn-sunset-boatsBut those cases are extreme. Now, on the other hand, people who don’t love themselves enough or not at all are much more common. I myself am going through an episode right now, when self doubt and loathing were part of my routine, as you can deduce from my earlier posts. Loving myself means respecting myself, doing what is right and good for myself, not letting others hurt me or the ones I love as suggested on a comment somewhere, all of that and much more are components of my love of self. As mentioned in the previous post this includes shutting down my inner bully. You may think “not that inner bully again…”
Believe me, it’s very real. It even comes out in certain circumstances, like, when we are driving. Yes, that’s him/her that screams like a mad person to the other driver that he’s the most stupid person that ever lived on this or any other planet in this or any other universe just because he had the terrible idea to change lanes in front of you. How dare he! Well, it’s the same creature. But it screams and shouts at you all the time if you let it. It’s tell you “you’re fat, but go ahead, eat that muffin, you deserve it… fatty” and once you ate it will recall you “you shouldn’t have done that! It’ll go straight to you belly or hips! Whatever… fatso!” or something of the sort. That bully inside our heads prevents us from truly loving ourselves, that’s why we need to silence it. I’ve been using Mindful Meditation for a few months now and it’s helped me so much. The same question, and now I’m leaving a poll what do you do to try and shut down that little bully?

Categories
English Mindfulness Stories

Love yourself first

Love yourself first. Yes mi dear readers, both of you, you have to love yourself first. Does this mean only love myself? No, that’s why I end my sentence with “first” and not “only”. Why should I love myself first? You should love yourself first because it is the only way you can have real love in your life, or could you love your spouse, your kids, your friends or your pets with a heart that has hate in it? Some are saying “wait, I don’t love myself first, but I don’t hate myself, that’s going too far” But is it really? Tell me, if you don’t hate yourself, then why do you let that little bully inside your head call you all those names that it does? Wouldn’t you let someone else treat you like that? Or wouldn’t you, at the very least, be alarmed if you saw someone been treated like that? We are our worst critics, that we know, but sometimes criticism is over the top and turns into plain old abuse. And abuse ourselves we do, and a lot, don’t we? Not only with the little bully that lives inside our heads, but by our actions or inactions. Some of us drink too much, or smoke or abuse drugs. Some of us find comfort in food. Some of us don’t like to move to much, let alone exercise. Reality TV? Yes please! Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all we can. It’s been 5 minutes, selfie time. All this actions and inactions don’t come from a place of love of ourselves. We indulge in this behaviours because we hate ourselves? Not necessarily, mostly because we don’t even care to find out why we do them. We end up in patterns that feel good by accidents or because we intentionally put ourselves there, but with another end in mind. Little story follows to illustrate the point. I started smoking as a teenager because it was cool, I was short and that let me feel older, bigger in a way, so I smoked, really smart. Like all smokers I didn’t even like it when I started, but the feeling I got from other people looking up at me, or even noticing me more than compensated for it. And then I got used to it, the displeasure changed into pleasure, yes, smoking is pleasurable, and then both combined and that was it. By the time I quit smoking I was burning through 30 cigarettes a day and 15 years had gone by. Did I really love myself during that time? Certainly not because by then the dangers of smoking were well known by all and by me. Do I love myself more because I don’t smoke anymore? Yes, a little. So, to love myself I only need to quit vice? Not that fast my friend. Yes you should quit vice, but it’s not the only thing.sun-741812_960_720 To love yourself you need to go deeper and silence the little bully. You need to love you so much that your love irradiates from you to the world. It sounds terribly corny but it’s right. True love irradiates from you like light from a candle or a star. It’s brighter near the source and fades with distance, and the only way to shine bright enough to illuminate the whole world is to shine stronger at the source, and that’s within yourself. So, please, love yourself first.

 

Categories
English Procrastination Stories

Patience is a virtue, so they say

Marshmallows

So here I am, waiting for some news from a client on what will happen with a project I’ve been pitching. They haven’t given me an answer, not a yes or a no. It gets to be really annoying doesn’t it? Waiting, expecting, imagining a bunch of “what ifs”. These “what ifs” feed our wild imagination that goes to places we wouldn’t have thought even existed in our minds. They build their own worlds with wonderful scaffolding that grows upwards in the most beautiful dreams, and that digs down dip into the most awful nightmares. Because we imagine great futures with this result as a starting point, don’t we? Nah, I’m sure you’ve never done it, am I right? But dreaming is not the problem here. The problem is when our next decisions come with the dream as a starting point. Because you know, “what if”. So we need now to be patient. We must take a page from meditation and learn to bring the focus to where we want it when our mind strays. Curiously this also happens to have something to do with procrastination. because one of the characteristics of a certain type of procrastinator is his inability to delay gratification. This procrastinator is impatient. He wants it all and he wants it now as the song says. His limbic system wins the battle over his prefrontal cortex and then he loses all control over his impulses. Whatever brings the most immediate pleasure is what gets done, what is important gets shoved to the later drawer.

Marshmallows
Marshmallows

This is the basis of the famous marshmallow experiment conducted at Stanford some 40 years ago by Walter Mischel. If you don’t know it I’ll give you the basics here. In this experiment the investigators tested the ability to wait of children of both sexes aged 7 to 9. What the kids had to wait for was, as the name may be implied already, eating a marshmallow. More precisely the experimenter left the kid in a room with a marshmallow and then told the kid that he or she could eat it immediately, but if they waited for him to come back a few minutes later he’d give them another marshmallow, so they could eat in fact two. The experimenter left the room and filmed the results. This is pretty much it. Then there’s the follow up studies, after many years follow up interviews were done with these kids, and the results were that those kids that showed more restraint, more patience, were the ones with better grades, were better adapted and more mature. Does that mean that we are screwed if we’re impatient? No, patience is an ability we can develop, like many others, the funny thing is that it requires dedication, and that means, yes, some patience, so it’s a little of a catch-22, but not that much. You can exercise patience by giving yourself a buffer time before making a choice or taking some action, like 5 minutes before pushing that “buy now” button on the web site, or sleeping on it when you have a big decision to take. I like to meditate. What do you like?