Perfectionism Leads to Procrastination

“I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”  — Michael J. Fox

Are you dealing with the fear of not being perfect?  Is failure unacceptable?  If you equate your self-worth with doing everything in your life perfectly, one of the things you will end up doing is procrastinating.  Procrastination protects you from rejection when you aren’t perfect. And nobody is perfect.  As human beings we all have our flaws and foibles.

Where did you pick up the belief that you had to be perfect?  Perhaps your mother often called you her “perfect little girl” or “the perfect little gentleman.”  At some point in your childhood, you learned that it was more about what you DID than WHO YOU WERE.

When you were given respect and appreciation, it was because of the things that you did rather than because of who you were as a person. This feeling was reinforced over time so that you developed the core belief that to gain love and respect you had to DO something. The more perfectly you did it, the greater the amount of appreciation and love you received.  The other side of that coin was the belief that you weren’t worthy of love and respect if you made any mistakes at all. If you wanted to be loved, your best wasn’t good enough if it wasn’t perfect.

Beliefs such as …

• I must be perfect and do things perfectly
• Everything I do should be right the first time – I should make no errors
• If it is not done right, it is not worth doing
• I should have no limitations

… lead to “if I can’t do it perfectly, I won’t even try.

Questions to Ask Yourself

• Do I need to be perfect or is excelling good enough?
• How is the need to be perfect hindering me?
• Am I clear about what excellence looks like?
• Am I willing to let go of the need to be perfect?
• Who am I trying to please with the need to be perfect?

Procrastination – What Do I Tap On?

Following on from my last two posts about Procrastination…

Now that you know EFT can help you eliminate procrastination, how do you come up with the phrases to use while tapping?

Here’s what you do:

• Ask yourself – What is the potentially difficult situation?  What am I procrastinating about?
• Establish the root fear or limiting belief that’s holding you back from __________(the situation)? What am I afraid will happen if I do  _________?   (It may be fear of success, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of doing it wrong, fear of asking for what you want, fear of saying no to someone, etc.)

Let’s pick fear of failure, just for argument’s sake.

• Think back to your childhood. What is the earliest memory you have of failing at something? Write it down.
• Write down ALL the events in life in which you can remember that feeling of having failed (your parents, kids in grade school, high school, the dating years, sports tryouts, career, etc.)
• Now, think about what MEANING you created about yourself as a result of each of those incidents. (I’m not good enough … I’m dumb … I’ll never be good at writing … When I start something new, I fail … i’m not cut out to make a lot of money, etc. Really spend some time on this, because that’s where the core issue lies.
• Then, make a separate list of how these MEANINGS you created have stopped you in life. What behavior did you take on? Did you stop reaching out? Did you stop taking chances? Did you retreat into a hole? Did you hold back from taking advantage of opportunities that could have advanced you? Write them all down.
• You took on this behavior to avoid feeling __________? (like an idiot, sick with anxiety, not good enough)

Now that you have a list of beliefs and emotions, use EFT to eliminate them. Take action now and free yourself from what is holding you back!

To Learn More About EFT and Download a Free Manual, go to http://budurl.com/WorldCenterforEFT

Eliminate Procrastination with EFT

Is something holding you back from realizing your full potential or making the changes you say you want to make?  Has your creativity come to a standstill?  Do you feel blocked in your motivation to achieve your goals?

Lasting Emotional Freedom Is Now At Your Fingertips!

In my last post I talked about procrastination and mentioned a tool for helping you eliminate it.  That tool is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).

EFT is the doorway to freeing yourself from the emotional blocks that are keeping you from living a more fulfilling life.  In essence, it is a psychological version of acupuncture without the needles.  Instead, you “tune in” to your emotional issue while stimulating stress relief points by tapping on them with your fingertips.  This provides a meridian “balancing effect” that replaces emotional distress with a form of peace.  While the process is not perfect, it often works where everything else fails.

EFT can help you break out of the procrastination mode and become more motivated to achieve your goals.  Begin by using it on such limiting beliefs as I mentioned in my last post.  Then tap on all those other beliefs you might have around the issue. 

If you are new to EFT, you can find a summary page of the tapping points and the appropriate phrases on the Resources page of my website – http://www.blueprints4change.com/pdf/EFTprocedure.pdf

… and procrastinate no more!

Midlife – Eliminate Procrastination and Start Living the Life You Want

Have you ever put off your most important tasks until later and then later and later while you are busy with less important issues?  Do you find it difficult to make decisions? Maybe you’ve been called lazy because you hope that you may have more time and be in a better mood in the future to start a project and do it properly? Perhaps you have a belief that you don’t deserve success!

If you’ve spent the first half of your life being plagued by procrastination, perhaps now is the time to change your thinking and deal with this compulsion so that you can live a more productive second half of life.  A hidden self-sabotaging program lies at the root of procrastination.  This program is fueled by self-fulfilling prophecies and beliefs such as

I don’t deserve it
I’m not acceptable
I’m not good enough
I don’t belong
I’m not wanted
It’s always my fault
Life is a struggle

Many of these self-fulfilling prophecies were created before birth, at birth or during our earliest days.  Becoming aware of these negative beliefs that create our indecision and anxiety about completing our goals is the first step in ridding ourselves of this troublesome behavior.

If you find yourself using any of the typical “procrastinator phrases” such as

I wish I could
I should
I shouldn’t
I have to
I had better
If I don’t
I probably will
I hope to
Maybe I will
I think I could
I’ll try
I need to
If only I could

Replace them with the following instead

I will ______ because I want to
I will definitely _____
I am confident that I can _____
It’s in my power to _____
I choose to _____ now
I know I can _____

Consider how your life might change if you were to stop procrastinating.  The things that are holding you back most are the ones which will free you the most – once you take action.  Take that action now! 

In the next post I will talk about a tool that you can use to help get rid of your “procrastinator beliefs”.