I remember reading the breakup email from my girlfriend many years ago. In the email, she told me that I was like a blade of grass floating in a river just moving along with no purpose.
I was shocked because I felt I had goals and that I was trying to build something in my life. It took many years, but I finally understood what she had seen in being with me for two years.
The truth I had been avoiding was that I was letting my feelings and fears guide my daily actions. I would start to find success and then when things changed or became tough, I would hesitate and put off doing things that would require new risks and effort ultimately leading to failure.
I saw what was happening, but I just couldn’t understand why it was difficult for me to change and to move forward.
There are two things that really helped me break out of my lifelong patterns of ups and downs.
The first, and most important, was learning to really understand myself. Understanding what was driving my behaviors and self-sabotage helped me break out of the cycles of procrastination in which I had been caught.
The second thing that helped was learning to create a simple plan using tips gathered from many places finally helped me move forward. I had a lot of bad habits, routines, and programmed thinking that I had to overcome.
The unfortunate truth is that there are many out there just like me, and I hope that what I learned can help others.
Why does procrastination occur?
It’s complicated but, simply put, there is a battle going on between the logical brain and the primitive brain.
Our logical brain says we want to do A, B and C. Our primitive brain says, I don’t feel like it now, so let’s watch some Netflix. Our logical brain says I want to be a writer. Our primitive brain says, you aren’t good enough and you will fail, so don’t waste time on it.
I call these internal emotional conflicts.
I use the word emotional because as the primitive brain developed first, it evolved to react to our feelings and thoughts, even tiny fleeting ones. When it detects feelings like anxiety, stress, and fear, it pushes us to do other things. It reacts more quickly than the logical brain.
The other day, I woke up early and had planned to really work hard that morning, but I found myself putting things off. I took an extra long shower. I kept reading different articles on Medium. I did some cleaning around the house. I suddenly caught myself and noticed that I was feeling anxious and asked myself why. Upon introspection, it was because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to proceed with an article I was writing.
My primitive brain had detected my anxiety and was pushing me to do other things to get away from the thing causing me anxiety.
By looking inside and understanding what was causing my anxiety, I was able to see what I had to do to get started. I needed to create some clarity about what to do by finalizing an outline. As soon as I understood what I needed to do, I immediately started working to create an outline that I would follow, and this allowed me to get my work done.
If I had not done this, I would have ended up wasting the whole day. Learning to understand how my internal emotional conflicts were affecting me had helped me get past what was causing me to delay.
I lump these internal emotional conflicts into 4 different groups.
The Four Different Groups of Internal Emotional Conflicts
In the first group, I place simple emotional conflicts which are tied to our thoughts and mood.
I don’t want to do this now. I am too tired and will work on it later. I hate this.
In the second group, I place emotional conflicts that cause anxiety and stress from things like feeling overwhelmed, not knowing where to start, or not having enough knowledge.
I have too much to do. I have never done this before. I have so many choices, which do I choose?
In the third group, I place emotional conflicts that are tied to our sense of self based on things like our values, obligations, identity, limiting beliefs, and fears.
I can’t do this. I want to be rich, but I believe that money is the root of all evil. What if I fail or am criticized? I must do this because it’s what my parents want, but I want to do something else. I am a slow learner so there is no point in trying to learn a new skill.
Finally, in the fourth group, are the emotional conflicts that are tied to past, strong emotional events. Many of these occurred in our childhood. Things like bullying, separation, a lack of basic needs, abuse, and teasing that caused protective programming that still negatively impacts us even today.
My parents separated, so it is my fault. I was bullied so I am reluctant to stand out. I was teased so I am afraid of being criticized.
How do we overcome these internal emotional conflicts?
Tips to Overcome Group 1 Conflicts
Overcoming simple emotional conflicts requires self-discipline and willpower. You can train yourself to overcome them.
I learned that when we use willpower to overcome things we don’t want to do, it causes the aMCC or Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex to grow. Dr. Huberman says that this is the part of the brain linked to willpower and that it is larger in people who push themselves to do things they don’t want to do.
Life is full of things we don’t want to do.
I don’t want to clean, I don’t want to exercise, I don’t want to call the client, I don’t want to write that report now. The sooner you learn to override these feelings and act, the better your life will become. The confidence that comes from being able to overcome minor emotions and to change your mindset from waiting for motivation to acting is powerful.
One way I do this is to remind myself that it is a chance for me to create a stronger mindset. This little change in the way I look at the task that needs to be done is often enough to get me started.
Furthermore, I train myself to do things that make me uncomfortable. I take a cold bath every day. I push myself to go and do a little more when I feel like taking a break. When I think of something I need to do like some cleaning, I push myself to start on it quickly even though I want to push it off to a later time.
When you practice pushing yourself, it does become easier, and as it becomes easier, your strength and self-confidence increase leading to improvement in many other areas. If you continually attack your complacency and lack of willpower, your quality of life will greatly improve.
Tips to Overcome Group 2 Conflicts
In this group are the things that cause anxiety because there is no clarity about how to proceed, or there is a feeling of too much to do.
For me, these are often caused by overthinking and perfectionism. Often, I have too many ideas, or something will catch my attention and make me veer from the path I had planned out. I rethink, reanalyze, restart and redo everything. I am working hard, but I am going nowhere.
For these types of conflicts, I learned that I needed to create clarity around what it was I needed to do, and I had to learn to prioritize my tasks and work on them one at a time. Furthermore, I realized that I had to make outlines for what I was writing and just stick to them. In the past, I often kept adding, rewriting, and deleting information when writing. I had to create the discipline to stick to my outline.
Another tip I learned was to only focus on the day and on short term goals. I found that when I had long-term goals and things didn’t go as planned, it caused me anxiety which led to reanalyzing what I needed to do. In addition to short-term goals, I also concentrated on building consistent routines that would ultimately help lead me to my goals.
Tips to Overcome Group 3 and 4 Conflicts
The 3rd and 4th groups are the hardest to overcome as they are connected to things in our past and often work at the subconscious level.
As I wrote, one of the keys to creating the life I wanted was that I had to learn to understand myself, which involved learning to understand my past and how it affected me.
One important thing that helped me was to be mindful of my emotions and understand what they were telling me. I learned to look inside and label the emotion. After that, I would examine its message. By labeling it and understanding its message, it helped to move me from being caught in my feelings to being able to take action.
Looking at my emotions was also very useful in helping me learn about my past programming. I wrote about it in more detail here.
Another step was for me to do a deep character assessment.
To do a character assessment, you must look deep within yourself to try to understand how your past is affecting you. You do this by examining things like your triggers, insecurities, fears, and limiting beliefs. All of these have a place where they were created.
After you find where these were created, it then becomes much easier to question their validity and see if they are still valid for you in your present life. Many times, they are still important, but you need to come to terms with them by acknowledging that they are a part of you, accepting that they happened (and maybe not as you remembered), and letting them go by forgiving yourself for holding on to them for so long.
One important way I found to do this was to pretend that I was talking to my best friend who had come to me with the same problem. What advice would I give to them? For example, if they said that they didn’t deserve to be forgiven, what would I sincerely tell them to help them?
I would talk out loud as if I were really talking to them. This helped to create separation from the emotions I attached to the event. When I first started this, it wasn’t easy, and I felt uncomfortable doing it. But as I did it more often, it became easier and more significant, and over time, I started coming up with very good advice that helped me move forward.
What are the next steps after understanding your internal emotional conflicts?
After understanding my internal emotional conflicts and how they were affecting me, I knew I had to come up with a plan to help me move forward.
I had old routines and bad habits that I had to overcome, so I needed to create new routines and habits.
Here is an outline of the plan I created incorporating the tips that I shared above.
First, I started small. I created a one-month plan.
The main purpose of the plan was to create routines around health, writing, and strengthening my mindset. I knew that following routines would make it easier to establish and follow a schedule that would lead me to being more productive without using so much willpower. I also worked on using these routines to develop new habits while getting rid of old habits.
I wanted to work hard on building consistency with my routines. Over time, as I got used to the routines, I started to increase the volume and intensity of the targets I had originally set.
For my health, I wanted to work on becoming more flexible through daily stretching and on strengthening my muscles through daily calisthenics. I also implemented a healthier diet during this time.
For my writing, the goal was to practice writing consistently each day. I let myself off on the weekends if I was away, but I still tried to keep up a writing schedule if I could.
For my mindset, I wanted to work on my daily thoughts, and I also wanted to build a new identity that was more in alignment with who I wanted to be. For my daily thoughts, I listened to motivational videos and podcasts, and for my identity, I created a statement that I read each morning and throughout the day. I used the statement to affirm the identity and values I wanted to create. I also challenged myself to go further, to put down my phone and work, and to go further when I was doing a task and felt like giving up or taking a break.
For each task, I created clarity. If I knew exactly what I needed to do, the easier it became for me to start and follow through. It helped to reduce pushback from feeling overwhelmed and overthinking.
For the routines I wanted to build, I started using the task bracketing Dr. Huberman suggested.
In the first phase, or the first 8 hours of the day, he says to work on those things that require a lot of willpower and focus. I wrote in the morning because I had less pushback from my primitive brain. I also felt less tired, so it was much easier to concentrate for longer periods.
In the second 8 hours of the day, he says to do those tasks that do not require as much willpower. I exercised, made plans for what I needed to do, posted my articles and used this time for learning.
In the final 8 hours of the day, he says to focus on getting good rest, so you are ready to go the next day. I would stretch, take a shower, and quit looking at electronics. I tried to get 8 hours of sleep each night if I could.
Results After the First Month
For my health, I had become a little stronger and flexible. I was able to do a lot more than when I had first started. I had also lost some weight, but more importantly, reducing the amount of bad food I sometimes ate had allowed me to lose a few inches around my waist.
I had also started to establish some good routines and habits. I was getting up without spending long amounts of time on my phone. I was consistently writing. I was more consistent with my bedtime and getting better rest.
My mindset had become stronger as I could see myself getting things done. I improved in many areas.
Was it all perfect? No, there were times when I had ideas and started writing just before bed because they were fresh in my mind ruining my no electronics rule. There were times when I went through the motions and got in my exercise, but I didn’t push myself further. I found that when I drank with friends, my next mornings were less productive, or they led to a very unproductive day, even when I had not drunk that much. Even though I wrote every day, I still did not publish a lot because I was caught up in too much overthinking.
On the good side, these setbacks taught me a lot more about myself and what I needed to do in the next plan I created. Most importantly, when I did have problems, I would examine the emotions around them, and I did learn to become better at understanding myself and what was driving my behaviors.
Closing
If you are floating along without aim, first dig deep and understand yourself. By understanding how your thoughts, emotions, and past experiences influence your behavior, you will be more able to change how you react.
Create a simple plan like I outlined and follow it. Create new routines and habits that will help you have a more productive life. Your self-confidence will go up and your life will become easier.
Your life is yours and you can manage it. You have to make a decision to commit to improving it.
If you have questions about any of the above, let me know. I will help you.
