Last night I attended a talk in Melbourne by Richard Barrett, author of one the best books I have ever read – “Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organisation.” His new book is “The New Leadership Paradigm”.

He is very much about valued-centred leadership and has developed a process for measuring values across not just organisations, but also across countries and in individual leaders.

While inspired by everything he said, I was particularly interested in the emphasis he placed on personal mastery in leadership. "If you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead your organisation,” he said.

Here at People Empowered our focus is on the development of peoples’ soft skills and self-mastery is absolutely primary to that. If you are not in charge of your own self, you have lost the race before you have even started.

Yet many people still only want strategies and tips for how to control their people and their environment. They believe that if they control the external, they can avoid facing the internal self. Not so!

In this issue of the newsletter, we are going to carry on the emphasis on self-mastery we talked about last time with the lead article on Procrastination.

Enjoy and be inspired and if you need to take this further get yourself an accountability partner, a coach or a mentor.

Procrastination - The Art of Stuffing Around.

If they gave out Gold Medals for procrastination most of us would have a display cabinet full of them.

We procrastinate about the little things and the big things. We delay, avoid and put off taking the action that, in most cases, we know will make a big difference to our personal and professional lives.

What Price Do We Pay For Procrastination?

It is usually a much higher price than the action warrants.

We become very stressed about it.

We worry constantly about it while we carry it around with us.

It keeps us awake at night or wakes us up in the middle of night and stops us going back to sleep.

It lowers our self-esteem and self-confidence.

It can overwhelm us with a feeling of hopelessness.

It can provoke self doubt.

It can fuel fear and guilt.

It absorbs an enormous amount of our time and energy.

In short, it can create a great deal of mental anguish which can become almost pathological, leading to depression if it goes on long enough.

We find we are living a life that is full of unfinished business which gives us a feeling that we are always out of control.

In fact, it can create emotional and psychological paralysis. We end up not being able to take action, even when it is a life/death issue like getting a lump in our breast checked or going for a prostate test.

Why Do We Put Off Doing What Is In Our Own Best Interests To Do?

It may be because it is not really important to us. We see no value in it for our personal or professional success. Someone else says it is important, that we “should” do it. In other words, our motivation is not clear and persuasive.

It looks too big and overwhelming and we can feel we are drowning in it before we even start.

We have limiting beliefs about our own talents and our potential for success so we don’t try because we are sure we will not be able to do it or we’ll fail anyway.

We have performance anxiety. We convince ourselves we can’t do it.

We engage in self talk and scripts that we rehearse over and over. "I will never get this done. I can’t do this. It won’t be any good when I finish anyway. If I start going to the gym I won’t keep it up anyway. This is too difficult and I’m not sure it’s going to work anyway".

We fear failure so we don’t even make an attempt.

We fear success. Believe it or not, this is very real. If there is something we really want to do with our lives and we’ve carried it with us for years but we never do anything about it, it is often because we fear we will be successful. We are frightened of the changes this may make to our lives, what our friends, families and colleagues might think about us and how we might cope.

We are a perfectionist and we put off doing things until we are absolutely sure we will do it perfectly. Of course, we never reach that point of 100% certainty.

We are frightened of making decisions in case we are wrong so we don’t do anything.

When we don’t take action about things we know we need to do, it is often because we fear the outcomes, or the changes we may be required to make. We decide we don’t want to know or we don’t want to change our existing situation.

Procrastinating often becomes a habit that we’ve perfected over years. It becomes almost a life-style for many people.

What Happens When We Take Hold Of Procrastination?

When we realise the impact of procrastination on our lives and make a decision to procrastinate no longer, most people experience a great sense of relief.

They feel empowered by their decision. They actually complete what they have put off for so long in record time. They become energised again, positive and proactive.

Most importantly, they have a great sense of control over their lives. The satisfaction in taking action on something they have wanted to achieve for some time is considerable.

How Do You Make Procrastination A Thing Of The Past?

Discover what motivates your procrastination in various situations. Do any of the situations mentioned above fit your experience? Doing this as a first step will give you a better understanding of yourself, develop your self-awareness. You can then work on that part of yourself that is getting in the way of your success and happiness.

Don’t just go after strategies and tips you can use to stop procrastinating. These are measures that only work in the short term. You want to change what’s operating below the surface for you that sends you into this procrastinating space.

Make an empowered decision to change and commit to it. Remind yourself of the consequences for your life if you don’t do something about this.

Take charge of the distractions you commonly use to put off doing what you need to be doing. Cage your favourites so they don’t interfere with your productivity.

Just DO it. Don’t you hate people who say that! It is, however, absolutely what you have to do. When we allow ourselves to discuss in our heads whether we should do it or not, we are back in that procrastinating place. We have to stop thinking and feeding our thoughts. Just begin and do one thing, then when you have finished that do one more thing. Remember one day at a time. Here it is one thing at a time.

Change your language and self-talk. Get rid of the “I must…”, “I should…” “ I ought to…” “I have to….” Change it to “I want to…” I can”, “I am going to”, “I will”. Remove “I can’t” from your memory. Replace the negative self talk with positive and empowering self talk and scripts – “I can do this.” “I am going to take one step at a time and not try and achieve everything at once. I am not going to let anything stand in my way”. 

Use Noah St. John’s “afformations” and turn the negative disempowering question – ‘why do I procrastinate all the time?”  into a positive and empowering one – “why do I no longer procrastinate about doing what’s important to me?” Write down all your answers to that question and you will have a personal development plan for what you need to do to stop procrastinating.

Work out whether this thing I “have” to do is important or not. Don’t be sweating over something that you think you “should” be doing when deep down inside it’s not even important to you. Give yourself permission to dump it, remove it from your “To Do” list. 

Use a project management approach to manage projects, jobs or situations that appear overwhelming. Break every job/activity down into bite size pieces. Detail each step and better still put a deadline beside each step.

If you have a significant amount of time to do the project, make sure you do one part of it every day. It is much easier to motivate yourself that way and with every piece out of the way, you become progressively more positive and optimistic about it and about yourself and your ability to get things done. You experience momentum.

Do what you don’t really want to do, or the thing you are procrastinating about,  first thing in the day. As Brian Tracy says: Eat the frog. If that’s the worst thing you have to do all day, it is over early. The rest of the day becomes a breeze firstly because you are no longer under pressure with that job and secondly because you are feeling so empowered by having done it.

Get an accountability partner. This is a colleague who knows what you are trying to achieve and holds you accountable. It may be a reciprocal relationship where you hold each other accountable. It is well-known that when we tell someone else our goals, we are more likely to keep them. There is a short article on accountability partners in a past newsletter of mine. You can read it at http://peopleempowered.com.au/newsletter/december4-2008 

Reward yourself when you complete something you have procrastinated about in the past. Push yourself to stay focussed, absolutely stick at it, knowing that when you are finished, you are going to go out for a coffee or a wine with a friend. Or you are going to take the next morning off and relax, sleep in or read a book or walk the beach.

Take Control of Procrastination or Be Controlled By It.

Some people do their best work when they leave things to last minute. They work better when they have a deadline. This doesn’t mean they are procrastinating.

This is why it is important to understand your motivation.

Some people consciously leave things to the last minute because they know that is how they produce their best work in an energised and empowered way. There is a difference between that way of working and procrastinating which is irrational, self-limiting and stressful and emerges as a weakness. The former is conscious, appropriate and part of a plan or strategy that draws on your strengths.

New Website Coming! Sale of Products.

We have just commissioned a new website which will be much more engaging than our existing one.You may remember some time ago I did a survey of what my mailing list wanted from People Empowered. This new website is my response to you.

Not everything that is currently on this old website will be imported to the new one so copy anything you want and save it for future reference.

Sale of products.

The three products on the existing website will not go on to the new website and so we are selling them off at 50-70% discount. While the sale doesn’t officially start until 28^th February, you may find that the prices have been changed sometime over the week-end and you can get in early.

Celebrating Our Readers’ Achievements – Jenny Gretgrix.

Here at People Empowered, we are about empowerment and one way of empowering people is to acknowledge their achievements and celebrate their success.

Jenny Gretgrix, one of People Empowered’s readers and a Geelong business woman, has just been awarded the Australian Business and Professional Women (BPW) Young BPW Award.

BPW are an international organisation that promotes the status of women in both developed and developing countries.  In Australia, BPW offers a national voice on issues that promote social equity and economic security for women, and encouraging women to take on more senior community and corporate positions such as on boards, in politics and in other decision making roles.  The Young BPW Award is designed to promote and recognise the personal, professional and community achievements of an outstanding younger woman.

The Australian Young BPW Award is awarded every three years at the BPW Australia conference.  In presenting the award to Jenny at this year’s conference, BPW Australia President Marilyn Forsythe said that Jenny has shown outstanding achievements in both her career and community involvement.  “The support and encouragement she gives to younger women inspires others to develop the confidence and skills to achieve their potential.”

To learn more about the work of BPW Australia, please go to http://www.bpw.com.au  or contact BPW Geelong on 5278 1842 or bpwgeelong@gmail.com.

Jenny’s Company – Your Strategic Project Office.

To win the award, Jenny not only demonstrated her contribution and commitment to the Geelong community and BPW Geelong, but also success in her chosen career.  She has a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) and Bachelor of Business from Swinburne University.

Jenny is the Founder and Director of Your Strategic Project Office, a specialist project and change management consultancy.  Your Strategic Project Office (YSPO) is a management consulting firm dedicated to solving our clients challenges and helping them to identify and achieve their goals through tailored project and change management solutions. 

YSPO was founded on the principle that each challenge or project is unique and the best results are achieved by applying solutions that have been adapted for your specific circumstances.

Over the past seven years, Jenny has managed projects for a number of major corporations, including BHP Billiton, Australia Post, the Department of Justice, the Department of Planning and Community Development, and the Melbourne Cricket Club.

If you would like to engage Jenny to work with your company, she can be contacted by email – jenny@yourprojectoffice.com.au, or by phone 0421 856 955.

Copyright © People Empowered-Maree Harris 2011
All articles in the People Empowered newsletter by Maree Harris are copyright, but they can be reproduced as long as they include on the bottom the following short biography- "Maree Harris PhD. is the Director of People Empowered. She is a coach, consultant and facilitator of professional development, specialising in the development and enhancement of soft skills- http://www.peopleempowered.com.au "
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