I remember when I was living in Thailand, I was a master procrastinator.
You know the feeling, right?
I’d sit down at 8am to write something or work on a project and by 11am, all I’d accomplished was a metric shit ton of scrolling through Facebook.
Or if it wasn’t Facebook, it’d be Instagram. Or YouTube. Or some other social media website that’s literally designed to be as addictive as crack cocaine.
If it wasn’t social media, it’d be some random thing I’d think of when I sat down. The history of dragonflies. How a car engine works. Why cars can’t fly yet.
You ever get that?
The brain has a magical ability to come up with things to do instead of the thing I actually want to do.
I remember it was so damn frustrating while at the same time being so damn irresistible.
I’d literally watch myself opening up a new tab to go to Facebook or NASA or wherever, knowing full well that I was distracting myself and doing it anyway.
Maybe that’s what drug addicts feel like.
They compulsively inhale drugs even though it’s not what they want to do with their lives.
Procrastination is like that, isn’t it?
Just another drug addiction.
I used to think the solution was discipline.
I thought I just needed to wake up earlier. Or try harder. Or set bigger goals. Or get those apps that block specific websites. Or give money to a friend and tell them to keep it unless I get whatever done.
But while all of that stuff helped, it wasn’t until I discovered how to work with my nervous system that everything changed.
Specifically…
Getting safety on board in my nervous system at all levels.
Because think about it:
One of the main reasons we procrastinate is because we’re afraid of what might happen if we succeed or fail.
In other words, we don’t feel safe.
Therefore:
The issue is safety…
…not discipline.
So focus on safety instead.
How?
Start by orienting to the safety in your environment right now.
Seriously. Literally look around the space you’re in and see if it’s safe. Is it safe? How do you know? What would you see, hear or smell if it wasn’t safe?
The idea is to build and expand your map of safety because when we’ve been through some serious shit in our lives, sometimes our danger maps are more developed than our safety maps.
This means we feel a sense of danger more often than we feel safe.
This keeps us in a state of survival – in “fight or flight”.
And this makes it hard to get shit done because we’re too busy scanning our environment for threats to focus on our work.
See?
The issue is safety…
…not discipline.
If you want to restore a deep sense of safety throughout your entire body and mind (and in doing so, kick procrastination to the gutter), sign up to Rageheart when it opens tomorrow:
​https://www.rageheart.co/app/​
10 spots and 4 days only.
If you’re already a member and feeling that beastly impulse (Rage 9), hit the Sign In link on that page above and get raging.
Cheers,
John Wood