Have you ever done this to yourself? You notice you’re not doing something …and instead of saying “hey! I haven’t done that, and I want to. I’m gonna do it right now!”, you use it as an excuse to beat yourself up. “Oh my God, I STILL haven’t done that thing. I suck. I have been not doing it for MONTHS now. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m lazy/bad/a useless person/never going to amount to anything”.
There’s usually a wild exageration of the amount of time it hasn’t been done for, plus some sweeping statements about what this means about you as a person…almost never complimentary!
Ever done that?
Yeah. Me too. I did it over Christmas, when I hadn’t done any 2017 planning by 29th December. It was because I was too busy chillin’, and sleepin’, and eatin’, and watchin’ Christmas TV…in other words, I was BUSY! And I’ve been doing it again to myself this week…because I had started my year planning…got halfway through, and stopped. (Because I haven’t been sleeping well lately and when I’m tired, I’m not at my best…to put it mildly.)
I’m not making excuses, I’m reminding myself why I didn’t do it. Over Christmas, I chose to chill rather than plan. When I started my planning on 29th, I realised it was fine to chill rather than plan…and it really didn’t matter (in fact, it was kind of cool to say goodbye to 2016 in the last days of 2016, then start thinking about 2017 in 2017). I would love to be ‘further along’ with my planning now…but I also know that planning tired is a total waste of time (time better spent sleeping, frankly!)
There’s usually a reason we haven’t done what we wanted to do. Sometimes it’s a good one (like “psychosis from exhaustion” not being the best frame of mind for yearly planning). Sometimes it’s a bit lame (like “I was too busy watching Christmas TV”). Sometimes it’s even because doing that thing was totally impossible (like the client who didn’t do her homework because her mom was in hospital…er, priorities, right?!) Sometimes it’s just because you forgot.
No matter what the reason, beating yourself up over it won’t help you get it done. In fact, it’s more likely to create an association of fear, stress, tension and negativity around that task…which will be actively UNhelpful in the getting it done stakes. It also undermines your confidence in you. And if you’re good at self-criticism (and most of us ROCK self-criticism), it’ll probably also dent your self-worth AND it’ll make you feel bad about yourself too.
It’s like the gift that keeps on giving isn’t it?
So, in short, don’t do that to yourself.
Instead, use that energy you were going to put into telling yourself all the ways you suck to decide when you will do the thing you hadn’t been doing…even if you still have ‘no time’ to do it.
When I started beating myself up on 29th about not doing my planning, I thought “WAIT! Don’t do that…when CAN I do it?” And that evening, I had 5 minutes to spare. So I used those 5 minutes to START…that’s enough. The task of planning for the year ahead will take a few hours…but it’s enough to make a start. And, of course, once I started, I wanted to continue. I couldn’t that day, because I genuinely only had 5 minutes, but the next day I had 20 minutes. The day after, 25 minutes. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
And I also couldn’t beat myself up any more for not doing it, because I had done something on it. Plus the lovely fact that once you’re started, it’s easier to keep going (an object in motion tends to stay in motion…a law of physics, dontcha know!) A lovely virtuous circle.
Ok, I stopped again thanks to insomnia related zombification. So today, when I found myself starting the “I suck” routine, I stopped and said “Ok, I haven’t worked on it for 3 days (shock, horror!)…suck it up, Princess…when can I do it?” The answer is tonight…after tea, before dog walking, I’ll be working on my 2017 planning. It’s that easy to turn it around from a diatribe of self-criticism to an action plan.
OK, you can make it difficult for yourself by insisting you need 100 hours in a row to start that thing you’re beating yourself up for not having done…but what if you could just do 5 minutes? Or 10? Or any nice, easy amount of time that gets you started. It might not be ‘enough’ (it never is), but it’s a start.
(By the way, I just googled “proverbs about starting” and “Proverbs about parsnips” came up. RANDOM. How many people are googling proverbs about parsnips??? I’ll save you the bother “fine words butter no parsnips”. Okaaaay)
Ahem, back to the point…I found this excellent quote about starting…
“If I must start somewhere, right here and now is the best place imaginable.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich
Couldn’t have said it better myself. So instead of wasting (a lot of) time and energy giving yourself a hard time for not doing X…go do X!
And if you too are way behind on your yearly planning (although you know there’s no such thing as ‘behind’, right? It’s more…I’m ready to start now!), check out the Create (and Live) Your Vision 2017 Package here.
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