 if you learn to implement what I'm going to talk about in this video my promise to you is that you will never procrastinate again Hi guys, you're welcome to another video here and I'm talking again about procrastination I put up a video a while ago and it was about how to stop procrastinating and you know, I figured I'd put out a video and that would be that because it was pretty clear I thought but I'm beginning to realise it's not okay just to put out one video and expect that to be that I kind of need to explain this in a few different ways so that if someone's struggling to grasp this idea it'll make more sense to them I might have to explain it a few more times because it is quite different to the advice you will normally hear about procrastination What we're going to talk about is you right now in your life and your future self I want you to start thinking about yourself and your future self you in five minutes, you in an hour, you five years from now as a relationship that's going on between you and your future self just like a relationship with any other person so I'm going to outline how you can stop procrastinating using a fear we have because procrastination putting off of important things things that we think are important at least is all fear based so what if we could start to use the fear to actually work for us so the question I always ask is what is your biggest fear what is the biggest fear of a person who is a procrastinator what is it so let's say it could be I'm not going to be successful it could be I'm afraid that I'm going to fail at this so it could be anything, it could be your fitness goal it could be college, it could be anything professional goal I'm afraid that I'm going to fail now here is the thing that is not the fear the biggest fear we have when it comes to procrastination about some kind of project in our life is that I will fail to follow through okay I will fail to follow through now I'm going to highlight that this is our biggest fear when it comes to anything in terms of our motivation or our goal we have in life I will fail to follow through I won't show up okay what if I asked you the question let's say you have something that's important to you and you're going to you know you've put it as a priority it's something that I have to do you've told yourself it's very important and if I ask you okay you're going to do that what are the chances how sure are you that you will actually do that now that you've set that as a target for yourself or a goal and this is the procrastinator the procrastinator has no confidence in whether or not they will show up to their future self they might say well you know it's 50-50 I'm 50% sure that I will be there that's not good that causes anxiety that makes us very very anxious I used to be a chronic procrastinator now for me it showed up in my life when I was in college but it can be in any aspect of your life is putting off I'm going to do that I need to do that and then fail to follow through I was like this I had no certainty whatsoever that if I said I would do something that I would follow through and do it how did I change this I became aware of what was going on I would say here I was in my present life and I would tell myself I'd speak to myself and I'd say I have to I have to do it it's important in fact it's very important and then I would say to myself at 8pm I'm going to start work that's me in my present decision making where I was right there at 8pm I'm going to start I'd have an intention for myself and here is me in the future and my future self again remember think about this like an actual relationship in your life my future self would hear this and say hope to see you now it's more of a hope than anything because I'm not really sure that I'm going to be there think about what this would be like if it was a relationship between two people if I said I was going to meet a friend at 8pm and I wasn't even sure I was going to show up or if I was imagine going on a date and not even being sure as to whether or not you'd show up or imagine even being in a relationship with someone and continually not showing up how would that person start to feel about the relationship they'd feel affected and undervalued so that's what happens that's why self-esteem goes down through the floor because of this habitual procrastination so now remember here I am and I have an intention to start at 8pm and my secret fear is I'm going to fail to follow through I'm not going to show up it's not about feeling it's not about anything else it's just that I don't know if I'll do it if I ask people what if I could guarantee you that you will actually start to do what's required how would you feel their anxiety level goes down if that's possible I would feel amazing and they all worry about outcomes and pass, fail, win, lose it all goes away it's all about making this 100% I know I'll do what's necessary now so here I am I have an intention for 8pm this is 8pm ok there's my future self it's 8pm now right now it will say 6pm and so I start out and that's the timeline I need to go from there to there now I want you to start thinking about your anxiety level what happens I've set the intention I feel pretty good right now so my anxiety level is low now I'll notice the closer it gets to the start time when I'm supposed to be at 8pm I notice a thing that starts to happen my anxiety starts to go up my anxiety is going up and up and up because I'm telling myself I have to be there it's very important it's very very important to be there we dramatize things in our mind and the closer and closer it gets to 8pm there's more and more anxiety building up slowly you will know what this means you know what this feels like because I'm not sure I'm going to be there for this really really important thing that I have to be there for which I don't maybe like I don't really want to do but I feel it's necessary for me to do it so as the anxiety goes up and up and up you know what I start to tell myself I start to tell myself things like well maybe I don't have to be there maybe maybe I can do it later we start to tell ourselves I can do it later now this was my favorite catchphrase when I was a procrastinator until I realized that I only started to say this to myself because I was getting anxious okay I was getting more and more anxious I wasn't sure whether or not I would be there to meet my future self on time and I had become so low in self-esteem because of past failures to show up I knew it was a painful process I was engaged with right this self-sabotage and I was really really hurting from it so I would always tell myself I can do it later now here is what I want to tell you okay there are two things you can do and one thing you can't do is you can show up meet your future self at 8pm and do what's necessary perfect the other thing you can do is fail to show up at 8pm that's actually okay but if you do fail to show up at 8pm for the important thing you cannot say well I'll start at 8.30 instead now that's another promise to my future self and I'm still not sure as to whether or not I'll be there what needs to happen is you need to respect that you've disrespected your future self that is the one thing you have to eliminate so how do you do that you have to stop doing that you have to cut that out of your life like it's a cancer that's the one thing I stopped doing and the people I work with as clients this is the one thing I'm trying to tell them or an over again only make promises to your future self like you would to a friend or a date or anything else that you know 100% you're going to keep and you intend to keep now if you fail to be there you need to say I am sorry okay you need to just slow down and say how can I make this right and how you make it right is you give the future self some space okay that means you need to start using I'll put this way you need to start using your fear because the anxiety is the problem the anxiety builds and builds and builds right the anxiety builds and builds and builds you need to use this as a consequence for what's taken place here so that you won't continue to do it so your fear is I will fail to follow through if you fail to follow through this has to become a reality right you no longer are allowed to follow through out of respect for your future self your future self needs to take a breather from you because you've done that and they need to be more sure okay their hopes were let down right they need to be more sure about whether or not you will show up now on a practical level this looks like if you fail to show up you lose the right to do that thing that activity for the rest of the day at least the rest of the day okay so if I say 6pm I don't show up for 6pm that means I will lose the right to follow through for the rest of the evening there's no more indecision and making promises like I did here okay so after 8pm I've got 8pm until I go to sleep in which I'm not allowed to follow through now you might be saying to yourself that doesn't help me how is that going to help me that's not going to help me do what's necessary you're dead wrong about that remember I said you can do two things you can either show up or not do this lying thing okay intention failure to follow through we need to get rid of that first and foremost so by implementing this this consequence it's a learning that's taking place there are consequences to this if you fail to implement some kind of consequence this pattern will continue for days, weeks, years okay constant indecision constant uncertainty as to whether or not I'll show up and do what's necessary constantly undermining myself and my relationship with my future self procrastination we need to start practicing I won't tolerate that anymore in my life okay now how it looks is try this and remember the problem isn't failing to follow through the problem is failing to follow through making another plan that's what we can't do so let's say you try this today 6pm I'm going to start 8pm sorry I'm going to start at 8pm and you don't follow through do not do anything else related to that goal for the rest of the day tomorrow you will start again okay with a greater self-awareness and self-examination of what's actually taking place here in this relationship okay can I heal the relationship tomorrow I'll start again tomorrow right that's the real thing that you have to put off for tomorrow you have to respect what has taken place here you know there has been an injury there to your future self and that's the most important thing you have in your life right so we can't have that anymore now let's say you do this one day and you fail to follow through and you do what I tell you to do which is you no longer make any more plans about this goal for the rest of the evening day one if you do that something will register there's a consequence I've implemented the consequence and I've learned that making promises and not flowing through has a consequence the next day you'll try again and you may procrastinate again but if you continue to do it right if you continue to do it usually it doesn't take more than a few days something changes in your mind right you begin to realize the importance of this relationship and you begin to realize that when I'm setting these times for myself I need to be super careful right and I need to mean it because there will be consequences if I don't mean it we're using this fear to our advantage I can tell you 100% sincerely my certainty my percentage rate for if I tell myself I'm going to do something is now 100% right it used to be less than 50% I had no idea if I'd show up or not I was in constant indecision about starting not knowing whether or not I would have self-esteem problems very low self-esteem partially because of this but do it for a few days and you will realize this could be anything if you're talking about going to the gym every day after work and you're failing to follow through get real look at this relationship the most important thing is right here when you're in the present moment you need to take some time to realize this actually isn't the important thing what I'm working on or this goal I have is not the important thing the important thing is this my future self and the respect I will give to my future self so all about self-respect and building that relationship of trust with yourself if you trust yourself there's nothing to be afraid of this goes away it goes away, your big fear goes away if you can trust yourself you're not going to go from trusting yourself in no way shape or form to complete trust but it actually doesn't take that long as long as you follow through what I'm telling you here and implement the consequence do not give yourself the chance to do it again if in that same day you have procrastinated I'm being repetitive now I thought I was actually being repetitive because I've talked about this in a few other videos but people contact me and they say you need to explain this more because I don't get it hopefully this little diagram makes it more obvious it's all about self-respect it's all about self-respect and self-trust so I guarantee you the other good thing, the final thing I'll say on this is let's say you do this and you set a start time for 6pm 8pm comes around and you procrastinate you're not there, you're not at your desk where you should be you're not in the gym or you're not going out the door to go to the gym realise I've procrastinated say okay I can't tolerate procrastination that's the one thing I can't do anymore so I stop and now I'm not doing anything related to that go for the rest of the day think about it now you've got complete the rest of your night completely free to do something else but it's not going to be in decision about whether or not I go to the gym or whether or not I do whether or not I do X, Y or Z so it's really a no-lose solution to this you're just going to teach yourself how to respect yourself like imagine you failed to show up to meet someone for a date at 8pm you wouldn't say oh god I didn't go to that date I should go to the date at 8.30 I should go to the date at 10pm that's not how it works so it's not how it works with you either when you have self-respect you might be lucky with that person and if you apologise and you realise I've hurt that other person they might say I'll meet you tomorrow okay or I'll meet you in a few days time but only as long as you start to take it more seriously now when it comes to this I only want you to be aware of this whole process when it comes to your top priority whatever that might be for you I don't want you to start over analysing every little step in your life or I'm procrastinating about going to make myself a cup of coffee just be aware of that stuff but practice this on a small scale with one aspect of your life particularly one aspect where maybe you're procrastinating a lot and watch yourself heal is the word this is healing we're no longer hurting ourselves through this project or this priority that we have guys I'll leave it there if you have any other questions I can make more videos in this please subscribe to this channel please share this video with as many people as you can you can also contact me online at my website if you want to talk about this okay if you want to start getting serious about okay I have a problem of procrastination or I feel a bit aimless in life I talk about motivation and I talk about how to heal the relationship you have with yourself and to understand yourself better and really what's going on underneath all the noise and everything else in our mind so you can contact me for one to one sessions guys I hope you liked it it's a subject I'm very passionate about so thanks for watching and I'll see you again soon