 We have a great question here on procrastination if this is an issue you struggle with. I'm going to go through this question that was sent to me about procrastination so I'm hopeful that it will help you if you're struggling with this too. This person wanted me to make a video response to their question. So there's a little bit of a preamble to it. I'm just going to come to the part that is specific to this person's question but it says the name of this email is procrastination is destroying my life. So if that resonates with you, stay with me here. So my issue that I want thoughts on is how do you deal with the regret for getting behind in work? I feel so bad that I got behind and now I feel this sense of impending doom that I'm going to be found out. Interestingly enough, today I got a letter from an agency at work to me and my boss that I am 30 days behind on some reporting that I was supposed to do. I feel horrible and I am going to be so embarrassed that I allowed this to happen. I also have a problem with my self-worth and a lack of self-love. A lot of my worth is wrapped up in what I can do for others. My worth is what value I bring to others like my work. I also have a major problem with people pleasing and feeling like a victim. All of these problems contribute to my procrastination and depression. And finally, even though I know I am behind, I have so much trouble trying to get myself started. Your videos on things like doing, things like 30 minutes of work have been helpful, but I still struggle. Any thoughts you might have would be greatly appreciated. Maybe this will be a video I am interested in your thoughts. Okay, great question. So, procrastination is destroying my life. So, one thing that might be helpful here is, one thing I noticed was this idea that I feel so guilty because I fell behind. And one take on this is that that is cause and effect is actually something we need to look at there. The idea that you feel guilty because you fell behind is actually not what's happening. The guilt was there to begin with and led to this procrastination, which is a coping strategy. And that's what's happening. You don't feel guilty because you didn't do the work, although what absolutely seems like that's what's happening. The guilt was there first. So, you'll notice when we feel guilty, or carry in guilt, and you mentioned that there are very, very great self-awareness that you mentioned about the lack of self-love and the self-worth issues. That's really where we need to be focused here. Because when we feel guilty, there's all sorts of issues come up with that. I feel guilty unconsciously I'm going to need to be punished. Who in society do we view as guilty? Criminals, prisoners, and what we do with them, we punish them. So, if I'm running the narrative of guilt and unworthiness inside myself, unconsciously I'm going to look for proof. I'm going to be the most manifest proof in my lived experience that look how bad I am. Now, the problem too is when I carry that guilt, it's an unbearable feeling, right? And what we do is we start to scramble. We start to rush everything. Rush, rush, make up for it, compensate for it. Now, when do we ever do anything well when we're rushing? Not very often, right? So, I think the main thing in your question is how do you get over this regret of being behind? And the short answer to that question is, once you understand why this is happening, it is going to be such a relief to you. It's going to be such a, oh my God, I don't have to beat myself up anymore. In fact, that's the only thing I have to stop doing. That's such a big deal that it's like, well, I'm on the other side of it now. Okay, I went through all that, but wow, I'm so free now to live the rest of my life. To get to that insight, to that realization that I'm not this bad person and I'm not incapable of just engaging with work, it's like you don't even care. It's so valuable that insight about yourself. You don't really mind what you had to go through to get it. Now, I would prefer anyone watching this that you get there sooner rather than later, right? I don't want you to have to struggle for a long period of time until this sinks in, this message. You're not procrastinating because there's something wrong with you, that you're guilty and lazy and all these different things. This is primarily a self-worth, self-respect, self-trust issue. So, notice that it's made, the guilt narrative is there, right? Oh God, I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm going to be exposed, I'm going to be found out. And the solution is actually not to do it. The solution, because you're under all that pressure, is you feel all this anxiety and you feel rushed and rushed and rushed, you can't actually execute anything. So then it becomes, the solution is, well, do it later or soon. That's the solution to the problem, which doesn't work, okay? So, what the solution really entails is changing that inner narrative around guilt, changing the story about who you believe yourself to be. We start to question this thing about it must be done now, I have to hurry up, it has to be done, it has to be done, and which exchange that for. Now this is, when you hear me say this, anyone who is struggling with procrastination when they hear me say this, the solution for procrastination is to slow down. When you hear me say that, you're going to feel a reaction inside yourself like, I can't, did you not understand me? I have a deadline, I'm in trouble here. But that rushing, rushing, rushing extended back weeks and months prior to this. It's what has led to that situation. So the solution is to, because of the guilt, we feel this incredible anxiety inside us, right? And that anxiety means we rush, we rush, we rush to compensate. So the solution is, slow down, take some time to attune, to reflect, to just figure things out. Some journaling, some attunement to what your needs are. Because that's another thing that goes out to window with this guilt. When we have guilt, notice how you're not having much fun. Notice how you're never actually restful or at peace. And that's because you may be doing things that are restful or fun, but they're always kind of a little bit tainted by that underlying feeling of guilt that's there in the background. So it's the worst case scenario where you're doing fun things, you're not actually enjoying it, and you're not doing the work. So it's like you're in no man's land. So when you're attuning to yourself, what you do is you realize, okay, those needs I have are actually valid. The need for rest, the need for play, the need to take care of my physical needs, the need for meaning. Because quite often it's the busy work in life that we struggle with. It's the responsibility stuff. It's the stuff I'm not really crazy about doing that we procrastinate about. I'm in that cycle of procrastination there, and we never get to our other needs. Like, what's more meaningful work to me? Or those other needs like rest, play, reflection, taking care of yourself physically, those types of things. So the insight here is to first of all accept that I don't feel guilty because I didn't do the work. I felt guilty and then didn't do the work. This is reversing cause and effect. This is really what's driving procrastination. Something's wrong with me. I'm a screw-up, I'm lazy, I'm defective. Right? That's all. And all it is, it's actually absolutely categorically untrue about who you are. I can tell you that. That's a spoiler there. That is not real. It is just a story. Now it's based in other people's stuff probably that you picked up on. Other people's stories about themselves, maybe were projected onto you and you interjected it. The only thing you're guilty of is not questioning that. But that's not even true because how would you question it when you're younger? There's no one around you to explain to you. Hang on a second, you might want to just reanalyze what that person just put into you. Cause that's dangerous and it's not true and it's not going to serve you. So even that you're not guilty of. But your awareness is growing here. You're like, you're saying to yourself, something's up here. I've tried the force. I've tried to push myself. I've tried beating myself up and it's not really working. So the work will come when we slow down, when we attune, when we put, here's a big word, when we put boundaries around this really important work. Right? When we are working with procrastination. One of the things that becomes obvious pretty quickly is, you know, you'll say to somebody, well, okay, this is really important work that you're struggling with here. How much time are you going to dedicate to it? And one of the things people often say is, I just have to do more. It has to be done. It has to be done. What do you mean like a boundary? So notice how that means this work is so important that it has the right to overtake my life completely. That's how deeply we are trying to compensate for this guilt narrative. We're willing to let something like a piece of work completely come in and overtake every aspect of our life. So we have to set boundaries with work. And that comes, so that's basically how much time and energy am I going to permit to take care of this task? And we have an upper limit of exposure. So you have to attune to that for yourself. So we say, okay, no more than two hours on this thing today. That's called a boundary. That's an upper limit of a boundary. And you can have a lower limit of a boundary. I'm going to aim for at least 30 minutes. If you're struggling with 30 minutes, it might even be less than that. But how you figure out what your lower limit of exposure is, is you look back on your behavior the last few weeks and say, what was the least amount I did on any given day? What was the least amount of work on this project I did on any given day? And you might say, well, days went by when I didn't do anything, even though it's important. So we say, okay, anything above zero is now your minimum level of exposure, your minimum boundary. So that could be 30 minutes. It could be 20 minutes. It could be whatever seems easy enough to remain consistent with. And so we would aim to have that as our standard. And then we may continue up to the upper boundary, which might be say two hours, right? But once you hit the two hour mark, under no circumstances are you to go beyond that. That's what an enforcement of a boundary looks like when it comes to this stuff. The anxiety in there does not like the idea of it having a boundary. It wants, it's so big and important and scary. It must be, how long am I going to do this for? How long is a piece of string? Infinite time until this is done. And your nervous system is going to look at that and say, mm-mm, not going to happen. Because your nervous system doesn't want you to do any of this work. That's not a bad thing. Your nervous system's strategy is to do not expand energy. That's not a bad thing. That's just human nature. Stay on the couch. You're saved there. Don't do a lot. It doesn't like the idea of you. Certainly it resents the idea of you allocating infinite resources and time and energy into doing this task. So it'll resist that. So boundaries will help with the anxiety. So then we're working on the boundary. We're working on changing the narrative about ourselves. We're working on slowing down. We're working on validating your other needs that are separate from this maybe responsibility job. You know this thing that's kind of you don't want to do. I just call that responsibility. So it's slow down. Slowing down looks like I once had a person I spoke with and they were kind of in this similar situation. Where I've been by the way. I know exactly how this feels to be in that situation where procrastination has led up to this really, really intense scenario. But I spoke with somebody and we decided that what they need to do is slow down. And we came up with this thing where instead of like jumping into emergency mode to get over the line on this thing that they were going to spend the week just chilling out. Spend the weekend just chilling out and just journaling and just reflecting, reading some materials on this. My book is good. Neil Fiori's book is a good book on this. Really any literature that will advocate, you know, develop self-esteem and feeling good about yourself. And changing. So instead of like going into the emergency panic mode about how to deal with this really serious thing, I was like, no, slow down for the weekend. And that person did that. And they were in such a good place mentally at the end of that weekend that they had that panic situation resolved by Tuesday. So and it was not until Friday that they were going to face this thing. Had they not done that over the weekend, it would have been a week of procrastination leading up to the Friday. One of the remarkable things you'll find when you start to relate to yourself in a different way and you start to question all this stuff about laziness and not good enough and, you know, all that stuff is you'll realize you'll get a big surprise and it'll be that taking care of all this stuff that you've struggled with is actually incredibly easy to do. There was a big surprise to me when I realized this is so easy. How have I struggled with this for so long? It was just so easy. Once I figured out why it's happening and how to proceed in a healthy, supportive way. And I just watched the work get done. No big deal. No resentment towards it at all. Not always enjoyable work maybe, but that's okay. Some of it is fine. Part of life is doing some things that we're not always totally eager to do as long as it doesn't come at the expense of other things that are important. That's the real difference. But there's no resentment. So the final thing I'll say is having gone through this and been in this situation that you're in if you can change this and you can start to understand yourself now, right? You will not care that it led to this situation. You'll see it as thank God I went through that situation to get to this insight. So I want to extend the invitation to anybody here is that this issue is not solved by forcing and pushing yourself and beating yourself up and hurrying and rushing yourself. This issue is resolved. The invitation is to do anything in your life. Watch my videos if they're helpful. Watch anybody else's videos. Read materials. Be around people who are not in this bully yourself mentality. They're in a mentality of slow down, prioritize self-care and rest, have healthy boundaries with the work and keep it in perspective. Be around people like that. Also take on self-empowerment and that I can start to work on my own narrative, my own story. I can start to question a lot of this guilt. I can go into stillness more. I can connect to that inner compassionate voice that is there and it's a much more helpful voice and a much more helpful mindset that you do have access to through being willing to question and sit with some of those emotions that are around that. So that is an invitation and I think it's a very, very useful thing. I want to thank this person. I'm not going to say their name here for that question and I know an awful lot of us are dealing with this but there are very, very easy and useful, helpful, positive ways to go about dealing with this issue to help you do the things in your life that you want to do and to feel good about yourself. Not only will it be more productive the much more important thing is that you'll be developing more self-esteem, self-love, self-compassion, self-understanding and self-respect too which is really, really important and self-trust. Guys, I hope that's a useful video. If you want me to do more videos on this procrastination issue let me know if you find them helpful and in the meantime, take care of yourself and I'll talk with you in the next video. Bye for now.