"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
~ Albert Einstein
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We asked Maikel Bailey, a world-renowned expert on sales and professional development, to comment on the reasons behind our success-limiting procrastination.
Maikel is in the process of completing a sensational new book entitled The Rules Of Insanity: The Fears That Drive Us—The Desires That Inspire Us.
As we say in our Miracle of The Goal TeleSeminar, people have three primary fears:
The fear of success...
The fear of failure...
And the fear of the future.
As you will see, these fears are easily vanquished!
We are happy to present Maikel's views in this series of 4 wonderful articles, and grateful to him for sharing his thoughts well before the book's publication!
How We Keep Our Foot Stuck in Our Own Traps...
Clip and Hang.
Last week, we talked about the two types of motivation—desire and fear.
Each of these motivators has their unique ways of working.
Our DESIRES, with their action-oriented focus, get us to create reasons, justifications and motivations to make things happen and to get things done.
Our FEARS, with the focus on avoidance, get us to generate reasons, justifications and excuses why we don't get things done... causing us to run in circles—or worse—keep us in the perpetual state of "getting ready to get ready!" Read Last Week's Article...
That is the big picture. Since it is the fears that really stop us, the question is, what do we DO to stop ourselves at that everyday level of letting our fears kick in, and keep us from getting things done?
How do we kick in our avoidance strategies getting us to focus on what we don't want?
We do it in two main ways which then creates the lifestyle we live, which, in turn keeps our foot stuck in our own traps day in and day out. (Sounds delightful, doesn't?)
Here are the two traps:
We do it to ourselves—The Trap of Procrastination...
We do it with others—The Trap of Drama...
By allowing ourselves to get caught up in these two traps we reap the harvest of a lifestyle driven by our fears where we seek relief through escape.
For the sake of this article, let's remain focused on The Trap of Procrastination.
We Are Designed for Action...
Understanding the design of the human being, one of the most fundamental things we should understand is that we are engineered to take action. Unlike a rock, which has things happen to it, human beings are made to make things happen.
Incidents, events, actions, communications, anything that happens in our lives that has the potential of affecting us demands, by our design, we take action. When something takes place that can affect us for good or ill, whether we choose to agree, disagree, stop it, change it, redirect it, let it go or postpone it to a later, specific time, there is a implicit demand made upon us to do something.
Now, to be clear, the meaning of postpone is different from procrastinate. It may be subtle, but the distinctions are tremendous.
Postponing is a deliberate choice to deal with something at another specific time and date. For example, a phone call comes in and you postpone taking the call, telling the caller you will call back tomorrow at 3.
If you look at this closely there are a series of actions:
First, an action took place (a phone call was made.)
Second, an action was taken—a response—(the phone call was acknowledged.)
Third, another action was taken (a time set to call back.)
Fourth, an action will be taken when the call is returned at the set time.
Each of the Above Are Action Steps...
Now let's say, the time and day arrives for the return call to be made and it is not made. What now? If a genuine emergency has arisen, or a logical situation has happened that would postpone the call, then rescheduling the call is required. But if none of that has happened, then procrastination, an avoidance strategy, is now operating.
Procrastination is an avoidance strategy used to side step the responsibility of taking action. To the procrastinator, who justifies the procrastination, it may feel as if, at that moment, he or she has side stepped the demand for action.
But that is not true.
The demand continues not only from the person who originated the action (the first phone call) and is now expecting a return call, but also within the procrastinator, who still feels the demand to take action, that is, respond. Even though that impulse to respond might be buried, pushed aside, "forgotten", or just passed over by the procrastinator, it is still there.
We all know that feeling. We have felt it ourselves. What we feel is this gnawing, nagging feeling within to return the call.
Why?
Because we are designed to take action, and by procrastinating, that is, not taking action, we attempt to deny who we are—"action takers!"
An Amazing Truth Revealed...
In the attempt to deny that we are designed to take action, our own nature fights us back. It fights for us to take action so it haunts us, it gnaws at us, it aggravates us and festers within. Again, we have all been there.
Please understand: The internal gnawing to take action we feel all too often is misinterpreted. We think this nervousness is an indication of our helplessness and powerlessness.
It isn't!
It is our very "action design" fighting back at our passivity to not take action. It is this action design that demands we DO something, get off our dime and respond! It is our very action nature telling us and teaching us we not helpless, but rather we are powerful and meant to be in control of our lives and is DEMANDING we take action and assume our rightful role as an action taker!
Question: When you procrastinate, do you feel smarter and more powerful, or do you feel dumb and helpless?
The answer is obvious.
When we deny our ability to solve problems and take action, we have to relinquish our position of being smart, capable and powerful. We give up the role nature has designed us to be in—the action taker!
Here are the facts that we all know to be true.
When we procrastinate we feel dumber and helpless. The more we procrastinate the dumber and the more helpless we feel. And it can seem like there is no bottom to how dumb and helpless we can feel at times!
We can actually get to a point where we believe we are dumb and helpless.
I am here to tell you that is a lie!
The only way we can reclaim our power is to stop the procrastination, think it through, get organized, and take action. The more we do that, the better we feel about ourselves, the more we believe we are smart, courageous, capable and more powerful than we realized.
And that's the truth.
Maikel Bailey
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." ~ Elbert Hubbard
Insight Questions:
How much time can you save by DOING instead of PONDERING?
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What fear is associated with doing the task you always want to avoid?
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What steps can you take today to lower the emotional impact of those fears and help you to take action now?
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Perspective Questions:
According to your action plan, are you on the right road, right now?
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Are you aware that after this day is gone, it's gone forever?
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Life is a chain of moments linked together. Are you using each one to its fullest?
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About Maikel Bailey
While Maikel may not have done it all, at times it feels like it. From digging ditches, framing houses, teaching personal development before it was called personal development, selling business to business, seminar speaker and leader, selling personal development for Denis Waitley and Zig Ziglar, coaching others how to achieve their dreams personally and professional he has covered a lot of ground over the years. He now owns and runs a coaching business that trains individuals how to transition from "employee thinking" to the "entrepreneurial mindset" and establish a successful online marketing business. With an elite stable of 10 coaches and outstanding support staff, Maikel is responsible for the "coaching of the coaches", and curriculum development.
