My Utile Center

Why am I constantly putting things off? Why don’t I do the things I’m “supposed” to do, but don’t really want to? Why do I always seem to be forcing myself to do things? Whether it’s chores at home, work for school, or projects at work, how do I get beyond procrastination? Most often, something is operating “underneath” the procrastination. Asking yourself these nine questions and spending some conscious time reflecting on your responses can help you uncover why you are resisting doing what needs to be done and support you to move beyond procrastination.

1. What are the benefits of completing a task and what are the consequences of procrastinating? Another way to ask this question is by exploring these four additional questions: (1) what will happen if I do this? (2) what won’t happen if I do this? (3) what will happen if I don’t do this? and (4) what won’t happen if I don’t do this? Reflect on your responses and align with the energy and positivity of right action, doing the right thing, while visualizing successful completion.

2. What is my self-talk like? What are the thoughts that support my resistance? Are my thoughts positive and supporting, or limiting and self-sabotaging? Moving to thoughts of joy, appreciation and gratitude can support you to experience an energy shift allowing you to take action.

3. What is my diet like? Do you experience lows, lethargy, laziness and staleness after eating certain foods or drinking certain liquids? Begin to explore your relationship to food and drink and your energy and moods.

4. What is my Life Force (Chi) energy like? Blocked, lacking, low? When one’s life force energy is blocked, there is usually some disequilibrium among mind, body and spirit. Movement which supports the flow of Chi energy (such as Yoga and Tai Chi) can restore balance and energy among mind, body and spirit, allowing your Chi energy to flow which supports action and activity.

5. Am I depressed? You might want to have a physical exam and ask for a professional opinion to explore the possibility of a deeper malaise that may be affecting you.

6. What might be a competing committing that keeps me from acting? In other words, there is something I value more than the task I am resisting. This competing commitment is usually fear-based. As an example, a self-employed entrepreneur is resisting organizing her physical space, her office and work environment. When she inquired into her resistance, by journaling deeply into it, she discovered that when she completed the organization of her space then her next goal would be to focus on her business and she was fearful about taking next steps to grow her business. So her competing commitment was to maintain the status quo and do nothing, to resist and procrastinate. So, what might be something you are valuing more, than the task at hand?

7. Am I “acting out” some childhood resistance, as an adult? For example, if you were brought up to believe that “neatness counts” or “you must be organized”, you might be rebelling against this belief by not keeping an organized living or work space. It’s important to look “underneath” the resistance to inquire about existing beliefs that are driving you to procrastinate.

8. Am I attempting to maintain some self-image? Many folks procrastinate in order to maintain a positive self-image and be “good.” In other words, by procrastinating they exonerate themselves from potential blame if something goes wrong or does not work out as they hope, or plan. In such circumstances, these folks delay taking action in the face of deadlines.

These folks are poor self-managers and have difficulty self-regulating. The may spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing dysfunctional behaviors as they are resisting “failure” in some way, shape or form. So, the resistance shows up as the following behaviors and attitudes: (1) Ignorance — I didn’t know I was supposed to do that; (2) Skill deficiency — “I don’t know how”; (3) Apathy — “I really don’t want to do” or, “It really doesn’t make any difference if I put this off.” and “No one really cares of I do this or not.” or “I’m not in the mood.”; (5) Fixed habits and patterns — “I’ve always done it this way and it’s hard to change.”; and “I know I can do it at the last minute.” or, “I work better under pressure.”; (6) Inertia — “I just can’t seem to get started.”; (7) Frail memory - “I just forgot.”; (8) Physical problems - “I was sick.; and (9) Perfectionism - “I can’t get started as it won’t be perfect.”

Asking yourself these eight questions can support you to get underneath procrastination and uncover what’s really, really at the root of your inaction. By staying with your responses, and inquiring deeply into them, you can begin to raise your level of awareness about the nature of your resistance and then create and take action steps to move forward to both reduce and eliminate the root causes of your resistance and become a “doer” on a consistent basis.

Peter G. Vajda, Ph.D, is co-founder of SpiritHeart, an Atlanta, GA firm specializing in coaching, counseling and facilitating. Peter focuses on personal, business and relationship coaching. He can be reached at 770-804-9125 and pvajda@spiritheart.net

If you are a college student and planning to have a great
career, you will need to develop tangible career goals, which
will enable you to reach your coveted career position. But if
someone asks you about your career goals, do you have a concrete
answer for that tricky question? Most of us have a tough time
answering this dicey question. When you have a right career goal
and a clear cut action plan to achieve those goals, you’re
probably on your way to a career success.

How easy is to develop a career goal? With right attitude and
mind, anyone can create a career goal for future success in
life. Choosing your preferred career is a dynamic decision,
which is a continuously ongoing process, demanding your
dedication and attention. You may also need to apply your
knowledge of self, academic interest, professional acumen,
financial obligations and physical requirements. It also demands
your power to apply some tricky logistical techniques and work
ethics to reach some sort of career goals.

The three steps in creating a career goal are:

1. Test, examine and identify all those personal values before
arriving at a career goal. Check out for any loopholes and
deficiencies in your understanding of the real situation. Be
specific to define any problems or potential obstacles to reach
the goal. Never deceive yourself by deducing wrong or improper
conclusions.

2. Assign, identify, pool and use correct information; wrong
information may create havoc at a later date. Thus you may need
to accumulate only relevant and rational data and information
while choosing your career goals.

3. Develop, understand and use an effective action strategy for
transforming all those information in to action. This step is
almost like the heart of your career goal setting, as you will
consider all practical aspects of career goal setting.

Once you have prepared these guidelines, you will plunge into
creating a concrete action plan to achieve your goals. The
following guidelines will help you to create a foolproof action
plan:

1. State the problem and its objectives in clear terms

2. Define your goal in your own words.

3. Prepare a temporary action plan containing every essential
step

4. Get ready with several alternatives and choices

5. Now develop a solid final action plan to achieve your career
goals. Be prepared to change the plan midway to suit to any
changing conditions.

6. Set up mid term appraisal studies to check any deviations

7. Replace old decisions with new, more practical decisions.

When you’re through the college, create excellent resume and
credential reports to provide them to your future employers. If
you’re not interested in a job and if you want to set up your
own business, get ready for the action as a final plunge to
chase that elusive career goal.

Anybody can achieve anything - do you believe that? I do.
But there is a caveat that must be made. Those who succeed are those who walk through the door of opportunity when it swings open. That we know. But what is the secret to getting through the door of opportunity?

Being outside the door when it swings open.

As the story goes, Frank Sinatra got his big break while working as a waiter. One day, as he was waiting tables, who does he see sitting in the restaurant, but one of the biggest names in the music industry. Old Blue Eyes did the unbelievable: He cleared off a table next to the gentleman and got up on it and sang! He knew he was done at the restaurant for doing so, but how many times would this door of opportunity open up? Needless to say, the rest is history.

You may remember my article about the stagehand for Kenny G who one day was in the auditorium with Kenny, just the two of them, when he started to play every song for him on the piano that was set up. Kenny didn’t even know the guy could play the piano. Guess who is now the lead keyboardist for Kenny G? You got it!

You see, you never know when the door of opportunity is going to open wide. For some, the big break comes early in life and for others later on. But for all of those who become successful, there is one key similarity: They were ready. And for every one of those who were ready, there were thousands more who weren’t.

So, the principle for us is: Be ready!

Are you ready? Here are some thoughts for you to consider.
Are your skills as sharp as they could be? Are they enough so when your shot comes you can perform?

Is your character deep enough to handle success? Let’s face it; you don’t want big success if your character won’t be able to handle it.

Are you working hard to position yourself now? The job to do while waiting for the door to open is to develop your skills and your character, so as to position yourself to get through that door before it closes.

Your door will open someday. It opens for everyone. It may only open once or it may open many times. It is different for everyone and life just isn’t fair that way. But everybody gets a shot. Will you be ready?

When that huge door of opportunity opens up, will you be able to walk boldly through it?

Do everything you can to be ready. Don’t just sit and wish and dream. Be proactive and make sure that you are the most qualified when the door opens. Make sure that you are the hardest worker. Make sure you are the closest to the door.

When it opens - Be Ready!

Shhh. Do you hear that? Hinges creaking! It is the sound of the door opening. Your door of opportunity! Are you ready?

About The Author:

Chris Widener is a popular speaker and writer as well as the President of
Made for Success, a company helping individuals and organizations turn
their potential into performance, succeed in every area of their lives and
achieve their dreams.

To see Chris “live” at the upcoming Jim Rohn Weekend Event as he speaks on
the subject of Secrets of Influence go to
http://Chris-Widener.InspiresYOU.com/ or call 800-929-0434.

Whenever you listen to children you often get a wonderful sense of how open and free they are to what they are feeling and experiencing all around them. As they grow up however we also sadly witness how these childlike qualities slowly begin to disappear. Developmental experts often describe this evolution as the formation of the adult personality and therefore justify it as a normal and necessary human phenomenon.

Many of us however, if we are honest with ourselves, recognize that something of beauty and of value is being lost through this “normal human process” of maturation. What is being lost, in fact is the inner wisdom that we as adults infrequently experience; what we call our Intuition.

Intuition is by its very nature an inner knowing that many yearn for, seek out, revere, and trust almost without question whenever it manages to crack through the mantle of our life long conditioned belief systems.

When we allow ourselves to relax this heavy mantle, we not only allow this inner knowledge to shine forth but we also experience a long lost sense of inner peace and serenity that tells us that we have somehow found our way home to a more genuine experience of our true selves.

This experience however is often so fleeting that we can live large parts of our lives disconnected from it. So much so that we sometimes even forget that it exists at all. When we do we are often left feeling confused, insecure, anxious, alone and in need of some serious guidance to help us find our way in our lives.

So what do many do? We turn to what has become so familiar, to the external world to find our answers. We gather information; we do research all in the hope of finding a way to live happily and peacefully. All the while ignoring the fact that all that knowledge is buried deep within us crying out to be heard.

Why have we forgotten how to listen to it? Why, in fact have we forgotten to listen to “Ourselves”? To be intuitive is really that, the ability to hear one’s own inner voice of knowledge.

The main reason that we find this voice weakened is, as I alluded to earlier, that we have somehow “learned” to mistrust our own inner voice and have allowed ourselves to be “forced” or “seduced” into accepting external beliefs/teachings about what is in fact right or good for us.

One consequence of this, and not the only one, is that we have lost touch with the voice of our bodies. This is the inner voice that tells us, at any moment, what is good for the health of the physical body. The burgeoning medical system is a sign of how disconnected we are from an awareness of the status and functioning of our own bodies. No wonder many of us are ill!

How has this mistrust of our inner knowing come to pass? Well as I’m sure you’ve guessed that it starts when we are children. At this stage of our lives here, we find ourselves small, unable to fully sustain ourselves and therefore are feeling quite vulnerable. We “learn” to depend on others, usually our parents, who by the way have themselves lost touch with their inner voice because they went through the same indoctrination process, out of fear.

At the deepest level the most influential forces orchestrating this mistrust towards one’s inner voice are the fear of not being loved and the fear of not surviving. Of course there are others but if you analyze their foundations I think you will find that they often lead back to these two factors.

So as we “learn” to mistrust ourselves, or are shall I say “coerced” into mistrusting ourselves, we are doing this in the interests of being loved, and of surviving. Sounds kind of odd doesn’t it: “mistrust yourself so you can survive”?

So in this process we lose our inner voice and hence what we call our “intuition”.

Can we find our way back to an unfettered experience of ourselves, to our true inner self, to our genuine inner voice, to a complete experience of our intuition? Indeed we can! It is now possible to reawaken your intuition through a new tool called the Mind Resonance Process (MRP). MRP helps one to uncover all of the hidden negative beliefs and emotions that have been working to bury you and your inner voice.

If you desire an introductory experience of MRP you are welcome to visit the web link below.

Dr. Nick Arrizza is trained in Chemical Engineering, Business Management & Leadership, Medicine and Psychiatry. He is an Energy Psychiatrist, Healer, Key Note Speaker,Editor of a New Ezine Called “Spirituality And Science” (which is requesting high quality article submissions) Author of “Esteem for the Self: A Manual for Personal Transformation” (available in ebook format on his web site), Stress Management Coach, Peak Performance Coach & Energy Medicine Researcher, Specializes in Life and Executive Performance Coaching, is the Developer of a powerful new tool called the Mind Resonance Process(TM) that helps build physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being by helping to permanently release negative beliefs, emotions, perceptions and memories. He holds live workshops, international telephone coaching sessions and international teleconference workshops on Physical. Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Well Being.

Business URL #1: http://www.telecoaching4u.com

Personal URL: http://www.telecoaching4u.com/Spirituality_And_Science.htm