#FindYourPurpose #StopProcrastinating #JustDoIt
How do I stop procrastinating?
How do I gain more confidence in myself?
How can I reduce my fears and anxiety?
These are questions Gregg Steinberg gets from people struggling with their careers.
Steinberg, a professor of human performance at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, says there are no easy answers to those questions. The best answer, though, is to fill your life with purpose.
Steinberg discussed his strategy for doing that in a column Aug. 16, 2015, in The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville.
His three-step strategy includes thinking of a time in your life in which you had a meaningful impact upon another person’s life. Then, think of words that represent that situation for you. For example, if you successfully mentored a younger colleague, your words might be, “be the teacher,” Steinberg writes.
When you are feeling de-motivated and burned out, you need to say the words and visualize the situation in which you created success, Steinberg says.
It’s easy to put things off. It’s easy to think that you CAN’T do something. It’s easy to be AFRAID to do something.
Most motivational experts advise people to create urgency in their lives. In other words, do what you need to do TODAY to make your lives better tomorrow. Once you begin the path to success, it will be easier to keep going. Sprinters and other racers have to wait for the gun to go off to start running. Pretend the starting gun has just gone off in your head. That will help you conquer procrastination.
The motivational experts often tell you to “do it afraid.” It’s OK to be afraid to do what you need to do, but do it anyway. Putting it off won’t make the fear go away, so do it now, and do it afraid.
You also can reduce your fears by acknowledging any successes. You complete a project, make a sale etc., so celebrate. Take yourself out to dinner – and take your favorite person(s) with you. Celebrating alone is no fun.
As you feel successes, your fears decline. Once you “did it afraid” a few times, you become less and less fearful or anxious.
Once you discover what you want, and learn what to do to get it, don’t wait. As the Nike slogan says, Just Do It! Chances are, whatever you want to accomplish will be done over time. You don’t necessarily get one shot. Even the sprinter who loses a race gets to race again. So, if you do what you need to do immediately, and not find success, chances are you’ll have other opportunities to find success. You just have to know what you are seeking is good for you, and for others, and stay committed to it. It will become, as Steinberg says, your purpose.
If you have the need to change your life, and have the ambition to do it, but are unsure which path to take, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. That path has proved successful for many who were once in your shoes.
So the best advice is to find your purpose, create some urgency to moving toward it, do what you need to do, even if you are afraid, then celebrate your successes along the way.
To wallow is hollow. To pursue is cool. Pursue your purpose.
Peter
Tag Archives: “Just Do It
NO WIZARDRY: JUST DO IT!
Nike owns the trademark on “Just Do It,” but it is also part of “The Oz Principle,” as explained in the book by the same name.
Not only should you “Do It,” but beforehand you should “See It, Own It and Solve It,” as authors Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman explain.
They base their findings on the characters in “The Wizard of Oz,” by L. Frank Baum, made into a 1939 movie that is still shown to audiences decades hence. Basically, the characters journeyed to see the wizard in the great land of Oz to get the things they needed for a fuller, happier life. It turns out, they could have gotten what they wanted all along, through their own efforts.
“The Oz Principle” preaches that you have what you need to get what you want in most cases. But YOU are accountable for getting it. You are not a victim. It’s not someone else’s fault. You just must always ask, “what can I do to get the results I want.”
Empowerment is a great thing. We’d all like to work with entities in which the person you are talking to can get you what you need, and has the authority to make things better for you. Too often, though, we run up against entities in which the voice on the phone, or the person behind the desk, can’t fix things himself, whether he might like to. If the person doesn’t care, kicking the problem to someone else is a perfect out. He can claim that it isn’t his job. If he’d like to help you, one would want him to take the risk of helping you, even if it isn’t his job.
We must also look at our own lives. Some of us have been dealt serious blows, particularly in the last few years. Some of what’s been done to us is not our fault. Still, we must own our own destinies. No one is going to give us a life. What we thought was “safe,” has proved otherwise. We must take control of us and, in turn, hold ourselves accountable for our outcomes.
Gotten laid off, downsized or reorganized out of a good situation? Not only does it happen, but it will probably happen a lot more often in the future. When it happens to us, we cannot be the victim of our employer’s (pick one: greed, bankruptcy, declining market share, merger). WE have the ability to turn our lives around. But, here’s the key: we have to be willing to look outside our comfort zones for something that will give us the opportunity to control our destinies.
That isn’t to say things are not going to happen. We can’t control natural or even corporate disasters. We can’t control the marketplace. We can’t control what someone else does that could hurt us. But we can control how we deal with the situation.
So when your comfort zone is upended, it can’t be that comfortable anymore. Wishing for it to be the way it was won’t make that happen. Only we can make the change that we need, to get the results we want.
When your comfortable chair wears out, you may never find one exactly like it again. But, you have to sit. So, you have to shop around to find a chair that may be different from the one that wore out, but that you can, at least eventually, find comfortable.
Sometimes, chair shopping is easy. Sometimes, it may not be. But comfort zones wear out and new comfort zones are required. If your comfort zone has worn out, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find something totally different, but you won’t know how comfortable the chair is unless you sit in it.
We all must see our problems, own them, solve them and do what it takes to get the results we want. No wizard is out there to hand us what we need. We have to create it or find it. Circumstances will hit us, but we have to decide how we are going to deal with them.
We have to be OUR wizards. We may have to travel down different yellow brick roads to create a life, but it has to be our doing. We have to account for it. We have to do it, even if it scares us.
Peter