How To Conquer Fear & Eliminate Procrastinating
So many of us are busy watching inspirational videos to motivate us to do the work, waiting for more money afford the work or waiting for another person to help us with the work.
So many of us are afraid that if we begin too early that we won’t succeed. We are afraid to fail, fearful of being laughed at, or simply terrified to do something hard.
But if you want to be successful the fear of failure and the waiting has to stop. It has to end.
Pursuing your dreams doesn’t begin with a motivational tidbit from a guru or when you have a million dollars, it begins when you have the audacity to do the work.
The Waiting Game
“Do not wait; the time will never be ’just right’. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along” — George Herbert
I see so many people rushing. Rushing to get to class, rushing to get to work, and rushing to go home.
But if I were to ask these people have they finished what they had started last week I can almost guarantee more than half would say no.
Why? Because they are waiting. Waiting until they have the money, waiting til they can meet up with their partner or waiting until they’re ready to work.
If you are waiting to do the work you may be waiting for a while. You may even find yourself waiting forever.
The worse thing to wait for is readiness; to procrastinate until you feel like doing something. The scary thing is you may never feel like doing it. Too many things haven’t been completed because you didn’t feel like doing them.
You probably have dishes in the sink from this morning because you didn’t feel like washing them. You probably haven’t cleaned your house because you don’t feel like pulling out all those supplies. There’s a big chance the work from last week is still sitting on your desk because you didn’t feel like handling it at the time you got it.
The more we procrastinate and the more we wait the less work gets done. Truth be told you might be sitting on the next big thing but you’re so busy waiting until your ready that you can’t pull the trigger. If you wait too long what you find is that the work never gets done.
If you are waiting until you get the experience someone is almost sure to beat you to the punch.
If you’re waiting for the right amount of money to begin, that business will never get off the ground. If you’re waiting on someone else to help you, six months later you’ll be fusing because you never got started.
If you’re waiting do the work, you may be waiting for a while. Stop the waiting and get to work with what you have right now.
Putting The Fear In Its Place
“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have” — Louis E. Boone
You’ve probably heard from writers, mentors, coaches and motivational speakers that most people aren’t successful because they are afraid to fail. However, I don’t believe the fear is necessarily in failing but trying.
We fail every day. We fail to get up early or on time, fail to finish our to-do-lists, fail to pick up what we actually came to the grocery store to get.
If you had to write down all your failures in the past month you’d probably have an anxiety attack just looking at all of them.
What we really are afraid of is trying. We are frightened to do the work.
We are afraid to get up early because early means we have more time to do the work. We are afraid to finish our to-do-lists because finishing is the beginning of a new project instead of the procrastination on the last.
We are afraid to write down our grocery list because remembering all the ingredients means doing the work of creating a home cooked meal instead of ordering out because we forgot the paprika.
In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield calls this fear resistance. This resistance can take form in many ways but its ultimate goal is to keep us from doing the work.
For some this resistance is negative self-talk, doubt, or procrastination but all of it does the same thing.
It’s all designed to keep us from doing the work. The resistance makes us fearful of failure and even more afraid to try. It makes us put things off. Resistance says I’ll do it tomorrow. Resistance says what if I fail.
What if you fail?! So what! You fail everyday so what is one more failure going to do that the last one didn’t?
No matter how many times you fail you can still try again. The reason failure is so beautiful is because it allows us to learn from our mistakes.
Failure is the greatest teacher because it gives us wisdom, provides knowledge, and builds strength to persevere.
But only if you try. If you never try anything you allow fear to control you. And if you allow fear to keep you from trying then by default you have failed.
Just Do The Work
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consist hard work leads to success. Greatness will come” Dwayne ‘The Roc’ Johnson
We have a tendency to procrastinate. No matter who we are we always find ourselves putting things off.
Even as I’m writing this article I’m procrastinating trying to find something to do that’s more important than writing this piece.
Eventually we have to just do the work. The work is unavoidable, it must get done. It can be put off but it won’t go away. You can’t sleep it to completion or walk away in hopes that the work will just do itself.
Watching one more video, reading one more book or taking in one more piece of content won’t move the work along any faster. Taking in content may be valuable but it is no substitute for doing the work necessary to achieve the desired results.
When I stopped reading articles on Medium that’s when I began to do the work. When I stopped taking in content and started to produce it that’s when I became a better writer.
Whatever the destination you have to take the necessary steps to get there. The most successful people don’t get to where they are because watched someone else do it, they had to do the work.
Takeaway
Many of us like to believe that we are inept. We like to believe that success takes luck. We like to think that being one of the few that “make it” means being chosen. We use these as excuses for not doing the work. We justify our lack of effort by thinking that success just wasn’t meant to be.
If you want to be successful at anything you must do the work.
Waiting to do the work isn’t going to get the work done. Being afraid to try because you just might fail won't get the work done.
The only way to get the work done is to simply do the work. Letting it sit and hoping it gets done all by itself isn’t going to work. Putting it off until a later date because you’re afraid isn’t going to work.
Watching one more motivational speaker, reading one more book, or attending one more seminar is not going to help you do the work.
The only way the work will get done is if you just do it. Whatever your work is do it. Stop putting it off. Waiting isn’t going to get it done any faster or better. Don’t be afraid to try because then failure will inevitable.
Just do the work and the rest will follow.
Thanks for reading.
