This post was written out of frustration with myself. Full disclosure….one of my greatest weaknesses is my ability to make procrastination seem like a skill. I was the girl in college who wrote her ten page papers the night before…Yeah her. I mastered that. I told myself that I was just that good. How does procrastinating affect my life you might ask? So I was having a conversation with a friend recently about the progress we have made in certain areas of our lives, and how we plan to move to the next phase. During the conversation I laid out my plans for the future and she did the same. In that moment I realized that I am not investing enough effort into what my plans are for the future. I realized that I had planned out my life on paper, but is putting in minimal work at best to make sure that my pipe dreams become realities. So many of us are guilty of this. We verbalize our dreams to succeed but postpone the work needed to achieve them. This is a constant struggle for me. There are so many reasons for this, and in my case my reasons for not doing the things needed are sometimes made up. Other times the people around me have helped to dampen my drive. I talked about the importance of a support system here. I have developed a crippling fear of failing. We all experience this fear at different points in our lives. We get into a comfortable space that works for us and refuse to venture outside that safe zone. Anything outside that space is seen as a challenge or threat. I believe I have allowed this fear to control the way I embrace changes in my life. Have you ever heard the saying “If your dreams do not scare you then they are not big enough”? My dreams scare the hell out of me to the point that I do not want to tackle them at all. So my fear of failure scares me more than my eagerness to go from thoughts on paper to actualized dreams.
The reality is that we are our own worst enemy sometimes. Fear comes naturally so we find different ways to psych ourselves out of maximizing our potential. We convince ourselves that we are not deserving of the possible successes. We allow small setbacks to discourage and sully our drive to succeed. I am here to tell you that you are exactly where you want to be in life, and your current position is a result of the work you put in. So, you are not doing well by accident. You have worked for it. You are not failing by accident either. If like me you are a procrastinator, then your lack of action may be holding you back. It is completely ok to take moments to re-focus, but you should not get so comfortable that where you belong is overshadowed by where you are right now.
As always, thank you for reading guys. Your feedback is welcomed.
XOXO