Monday, February 27, 2023
Fear paralyzes, but trust mobilizes. We must know that our future selves can handle whatever comes our way. But when the future is scary, it causes you to freeze, and that immobilizing terror turns into what we call procrastination. Trusting in your success takes deep, inner work. Many fears come from childhood, when you may have been told you were immature, irresponsible, or incapable. Children believe anything, and those insecurities accompany us into adulthood. People are afraid to “mess up” or to be humiliated. No-one is perfect, and that so-called failure, which scares you, is the only way to learn. So why is it so “scary?”
If you’re afraid that you’ll drop the ball, then you will. You have to envision holding it and shooting it into the basket, each time. The future has to be fun, bright, and invigorating or it won’t be motivating. Nightmares are preventative. Dreams and aspirations are motivational. Whenever I get a little panicky about the future, thinking I’ll miss a detail or a deadline, I do a little planning, but only when I’m calm and quiet. I’ll text myself, or email myself information I need to remember, but include a note to my future self – “You’ve got this, and you are amazing!”
The key is to encourage yourself towards success. Don’t scare yourself into the paralyzing effects of procrastination. To be truly productive, you have to feel at ease. To feel at ease, you have to stop dramatizing a catastrophic future. Trusting in yourself; having confidence in a bright future; and reassuring your capabilities is the only way to be successful. When you scare yourself, you freeze your creativity, and that panic only raises your blood pressure. How could you expect to be truly successful in those kinds of conditions?