Reader headline…if your thinking, “This looks like some great information, I think I’ll book mark it and check it out tomorrow”. Read it now! You’ll see why soon…
I thought this post would be perfect for the day after Valentine’s day. You see, my perfect sabotage is procrastination. I get excited about all the stuff I am going to do and I list it all out, I write all the ideas I have on paper, and all the ways I am going to make it happen, and then with all of the all…. I do nothing. I mean nothing. The e-mails don’t go out, the workout doesn’t happen, the laundry sits in the basket, the dishes hang out in the sink, the new program doesn’t get written, the phone calls don’t get returned, the playlist doesn’t get made, and the blog post doesn’t get written. At the end of the day I have created another reason to put myself down and to add to the more-than-circumstantial evidence locker in my mind how much of a failure I am. I am unable to make anything happen and will never accomplish anything. So there.
WHEW! That is heavy. But it happens. And I don’t want to hang out here so I really need to add cleaning out that dirty evidence locker to my list of things to do, OR do I?
****BIG REVEAL HERE****
It has taken me awhile but I finally figured it out, (and did all the hard work for you) procrastination itself is not my sabotage. It is the extensive to-do lists I create for myself. I take myself down by building up the expectation that I will complete all 300 hundred things I have written down today, and if I don’t get to it all I am somehow a failure.
Does this sound familiar?
Yeah, I thought I might not be the only one in the world that did this. And really I would have gotten all of this written up and shared the big, beautiful tactic (BBT) I have designed to block off ultimate destruction yesterday, but I was busy practicing my BBT.
Enter some self- love baby, we all need it!
Here’s how it works for me. I pick 1 thing on my list, and I do it.
Yep that is it. The BBT that saves me from sabotage.
See once I pick one thing on my list and do it, this crazy phenomena happens. I succeed. When I do the one thing I set out to do for the day, I win. I did not procrastinate, I made it happen and inevitably I feel like doing another thing or two on my list and then I am EVEN MORE SUCCESSFUL than I could have imagined, and I love myself even more than before, and it snowballs the right way; in favor of loving myself.
Look I know what you might be thinking, “Lisa, you may have 300 things, butI have 30,000 things I really need to do, and if I only do one thing a day then I am never going to get to the bottom of my list”.
****HANG ON TO YOUR SEAT, ANOTHER BIG REVEAL****
You will NEVER get to the bottom of your list. There is always going to be more to do, and as things get accomplished, more will be added. We are an evolving species. As we learn, things change, more stuff needs to be done, we keep creating, it isn’t going to end, EVER! And if you want to get going on that list but you inadvertently, or overtly sabotage yourself by putting too many things on your daily to-do, you are going to be like Hans Solo in Return of the Jedi….FROZEN!
Then you get absolutely nowhere, and you are living in sabotage land.
****GREAT HINT****
Make your one thing really easy in the beginning so that you easily access feelings of success. The more you get to feel it, the more you will fall in love with the success feeling and get comfortable there, and before you know it, you are rocking out 2-10 things in a day because you feel so good.
****REMEMBER****
Start with one thing. Always, every day, start with one thing that you’ll feel good about yourself completing for the day. Yesterday it was yoga for me, and today, well, I am a success.
Personally I think we both rocked this out, I wrote my piece, and you read it. WIN-WIN! Now that you have the ball rolling (you already did one great thing, though I am guessing reading my blog was not on your to-do list), share below the one thing you are going to cross off your list today. The first step in moving from sabotage to self-love is this easy. Declare it and do one thing a day. It is the secret to doing it all.
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