Do you consider yourself a procrastinator?

How do you feel when you think about yourself that way? 

Probably not great. 

We get so much socialization around productivity. In our society, productivity is good. Being busy is good. Being efficient is good. Doing the most things is good. 

And if those things are inherently good and moral, then procrastination must be inherently bad and immoral.

I don’t buy any of it. 

All human beings procrastinate. 

Procrastinate simply means to delay action or to put off doing something. There’s nothing inherently wrong or bad about that. In fact, sometimes it’s really helpful. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it just is. 

And if you want to stop or you want to do less of it, then by all means, work on that. I help women with this all the time. 

But think about why you want to make the change.

Is it, at least in part, because you think procrastinating is bad and therefore you are bad when you do it? 

If so, consider addressing that as part of your process. 

Shame and judgment are crappy motivators. And they don’t tend to fuel sustainable change. Instead, they keep us stuck repeating the same patterns over and over again AND feeling bad about it. 

If you label yourself a procrastinator, and you're much more likely to continue procrastinating. Then you add the shame. And hide from the actual issues underlying the procrastinating. Then you procrastinate. And on and on.

Shame and judgment also create so much murkiness for us around what we want. If we believe something we do is inherently bad, then our goal is always to get rid of it entirely. 

Without any discernment over whether that’s actually what we want. 

Whether that’s actually what would serve us. 

Whether that truly matters to us. 

Whether there’s even really a problem. 

A ❤️ note to you: It is my life’s work to help women learn how to create more love, compassion, and trust for themselves AND still get what they want out of their career and their life. We’ve been taught that we need shame and judgment to motivate ourselves. But there is a better way. I can help you stop procrastinating, if you want, and change the way you talk to and think about yourself. Send me an email (jenn@jenndealcoaching.com) or sign up for a free call with me at jenndealcoaching.as.me/consult to learn more.