For me, the heart of procrastination is fear of failure. Some of it is good old fashion laziness. A.K.A. Those dishes can be folded later? However the tasks that are important to me and critical to getting what I want in life are put off due to fear of failure or an less than favourable expected outcome. What is happening is that I creating negative outcome in my mind before I have even started the task. I have used the powerful part of my brain called the cerebral cortex or visual brain to mentally create the outcome and in this situation visualizing the worst possible outcome. Why do I do this? There is a great answer to this and when identified can dramatically improve your productivity and success.

We humans have two other parts of the brain that work to keep us safe. The first is the reticular brain, commonly referred to as the reptilian brain, serves us by protecting us physically. This part of the brain was in action when we unknowingly put our hand on something hot and automatically pulled it back. Sometimes this part of the brain will come into action when it mistakenly perceives danger and can work against us getting what we want in our life. The second is the limbic system or emotional brain and this part of the brain gives us an emotional life. This brain will work to keep us in a place of familiarity or an emotionally safe place. When it perceives something that can take us out of familiarity, like meeting new people, it will drum up the emotions to shape our actions. Think of the butterfly's in your stomache when you are about to be introduced to a new group of people. Both the emotional brain and the reptilian brain work closely together to keep us safe. But in order to get what we want in life we often have to push into new and uncharted areas and so we have to work with all these parts of the brain to ensure we get what we want.

So how do we "Just Do It?" The key is catch ourselves and identify what it is that is getting in our way. This can be difficult at times because the reptilian and emotional brain are very good at what they do and may be masking what is going on by rationalizing. That is where coaching can be very powerful. When I am being coached or coaching my clients the coach is listening for what the client wants, how the client might get what they want and what might be stopping the client. The language that a person uses reveals many things that may not be in the clients awareness. Once we have identified what is happening we work with the visual brain to create positive outcomes that inspire the client generating motivation for action. This will bring the both the reptilian and emotional brain into alignment so that powerful action can occur.

An example for you to try out yourself would be to identify a task that is important to you and that you have been procrastinating completing. Ask yourself, why is that task important to you? What is the positive intention of your procrastination? This will give insight to the workings of the reptilian and emotional brains. What would be the best outcome for this task? What would that look like? When would it be best to have this task completed? After you have answered these questions take a moment to relax, close your eyes and visualize yourself from a birds eye view completing this task in the future. What do you see? How do you feel? What colours do you see? What are some of the things that you are doing? What enabled you to have the most positive outcome? What steps did you take? After you have completed the visualization immediately take some form of action. Commit to taking action and make a promise to complete the task by a certain date and time or complete the task immediately even if it is just a start.

Once you get started your reptilian and emotional brain will be at ease and the visual brain will pull you into the future vision that you created.

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

- Abraham Lincoln

Coaching can be a powerful tool to help you to uncover and identify what is holding you back from taking you and you goals to the next level. Coaching assists in creating actions and steps to make the difference, and provides the structure to ensure that results are produced. If you would like to know more about the life coaching experience, or want to give it a try, please visit getting started.

Breakthrough and Fly!

Michael, Toronto Life Coach