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We’ve all been there: you start a new routine or habit, you’ve stuck to your plan for a few days and have some momentum going, and then – you slip up and miss a day.

How do you make sure that the inevitable slip up doesn’t become a complete derailment landing you right back into the way of life that wasn’t serving you very well in the first place?

I’ll teach you 3 proven approaches to getting back on track after slipping up and back to the new behavior you want more of in your life.

First, it’s important to realize that everyone gets off track at some point. It’s not your personal failing as much as it’s human nature and to be expected. Thinking you’ll adhere perfectly to a new – or even established – routine is unrealistic and unsupported by life experience and lots of behavioral psych research.

So, it’s not if but when you’ll have a stumble.

But what keeps a stumble from becoming a wipeout fall? Why do some people get derailed by a slip-up and others continue on their positive new path?

It turns out, you can learn how to ensure a temporary slip doesn’t result in a permanent fall.

Let’s use exercise as an example. (But, these tips apply to any new behavior, routine or habit that you might want more of in your life.)

1. Plan for your inevitable slip-ups

Waiting until you slip to figure out what you’ll about it will send you right down the slippery slope to permanent derailment.

I have two rules of thumb when it comes to creating a plan for when I slip:

Reduce the scope, stick to the schedule: If you can’t do everything you want to do when you want to do it, do a smaller version within whatever time constraints you have.

Never miss twice: When you miss one day, resolve that no matter what, you’ll do some version of the habit the next day so that you keep the habit alive. It’s critical to get right back on the horse as soon as you can.

So let’s take our exercise routine as an example. My plan could be: If I’m supposed to exercise for an hour today and something comes up making it so that I can’t do it, I’ll do 20 push-ups and sit-ups before I go to bed tonight.

2. Be aware of your mindset

Guest of the show and renowned behavior change expert BJ Fogg says:

“People change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad. So feeling bad about ourselves when we slip does not help.”

I work with my private coaching clients all the time on their mindset when the inevitable miss happens. It’s important not to attach a ton of meaning to falling off track – just get back to it. The more we beat ourselves up for falling off track the harder it makes it to get back on track.

When we slip, it’s very common for our minds to create a whole narrative about how we’re the type of person who never keeps up with an exercise routine. Remember, everyone misses. It is not just you and some personal failing you have. It is human nature and it is inevitable.

As John Norcross (upcoming guest on the show) in his book, Changeology, puts it:

“Condemn the behavior, not the person. A slip is not a fall.

If you believe a slip will lead to a relapse, it probably will. If you believe a slip is a natural reminder to recommit, that’s what you’ll do.

You control your mind, and your mind controls the outcome of a slip…Think of a slip literally: you did not fall, you caught yourself first.

Avoid feeling guilty or depressed because of a single exception.

Go positive. Focus on what you have already accomplished, not the exception of a slip. You’ve succeeded 99 percent of the time since you committed to your goal. Are you really going to allow the 1 percent to determine how you proceed? Think big picture. The path to relapse is filled with potholes of pessimism and despair.”

3. Reflect on your slip-ups and learn from them

You will set yourself up to succeed if you structure your environment and lifestyle to support your desired habit or routine. And this is not a “set it and forget it” type of plan. It is fluid. It will change and improve based on what you learn as you go.

When you have a slip-up, take a moment to reflect on what happened. Here’s how John Norcross puts it:

“Identify what you were thinking, what you were doing, what you were feeling, and whom you were with when you slipped…Your answers will overlap with your high-risk triggers [and underlying urges].

Unwrap the urge…Your strong urges…express needs and feelings. Take a few moments and reflect on your urges: What do they want? What feelings or images come to mind? Does a craving have a story or history to tell?”

Let’s say that upon reflection, you discover that if you plan to workout at 3 pm, that coincides with a mid-afternoon energy and will-power slump and too frequently you forgo a workout for a snack or a nap. It turns out what your body really seems to need at that time is a rest not a push so you move your workout to the morning and you just get up a bit earlier to make it happen.

Do you have a new habit, routine, lifestyle or behavior that you want help implementing – this time, ensuring that you sustain it over the long run?

If you can envision your life with this new structure in place and all the benefits it will give you – such as being present for your life in a meaningful way, embodying mindfulness to the benefit of not only you but those around you, or releasing your inner critic that holds you back from living your fullest, best life – but you just need some support and guidance to get there, I can help.

Click here to learn more about working 1-on-1 with me in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program.

If you already know about the program and would like to book a free 30-minute coaching call with me to see if we might be a fit to work together to bring about the change in your life that you are looking for, click here.

There’s no pressure to sign up to work with me – if we’re not a fit to work together, I’ll wish you well, we’ll part as friends and at the very least I’ll offer you my perspective and ideas on your particular situation so you’ll have that to consider.

You can make the changes in your life that you want to make and your life can be exponentially better because of it. Let’s book some time to talk about how.

Before I begin, let me say that my girlfriend, Ginny, has given me full permission to share all of this.

Ginny struggled with emotional eating for about 30 years. But she only truly realized it in the last 5 years. And then she truly overcame it in the last 2 years.

When we met and starting dating, she was about 40 pounds heavier than she is today. Her emotions were driving a lot of her problematic behaviors when it came to eating but they were lurking below the surface disguising themselves as intense food cravings.

Sometimes she knew she was turning to food for comfort but sometimes she fixated so much on a specific food craving that she thought the only solution was to have that particular food and she attributed the craving and the behavior to that food alone – not her emotions.

About 6 months ago, I was teaching a workshop in Cleveland, OH and during a group discussion, Ginny said something that struck a chord – I’ve quoted her several times since:

“When I thought all I wanted was a cupcake – there was only one solution: A cupcake. But when I realized what I deeply wanted was not to be bored, for example – well, there are a lot of solutions for that.”

See, once she identified the underlying emotion or feeling driving her intense food cravings, she could begin to learn to work with it more skillfully.

And she would tell you that “giving in to feel good” was a behavior pattern that sabotaged her in many ways when it came to her emotions.

She had to learn how to experience her emotions in a way that was helpful and healing and strengthening. Not sabotaging.

The point here is that there are specific ways to do this – they have been taught through the ages by spiritual teachers and more recently by professionals in the mental health arena.

Ginny would say that’s good news because it means you aren’t doomed to always be in an unhealthy relationship with food – you just need to learn a specific skill set that you don’t currently have.

I would agree with her.

Learning the techniques associated with emotional regulation can be life-changing.

Whatever the difficult emotion – sadness, loneliness, fear, anger, boredom – they aren’t emergencies. They are feelings and they can be destructive or instructive depending on how you interact with them.

Emotional regulation and techniques to help you experience your emotions in healthy ways are skills that I teach to nearly all of my private clients through The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program.

When we work together 1-on-1, I not only teach you the skills but I walk with you every step of the way as you learn to implement them.

Through daily check-ins and weekly calls, I am there to help you understand what happened when things don’t go so well and I am there to celebrate with you when things go really well.

Emotional eating and other behaviors that stem from unskillful reactions to difficult emotions can’t be overcome alone.

Whether it’s me, another professional or a supportive group of some kind – you need others in your corner helping you along the way.

I offer a free 30-minute coaching call to see if we’re a fit to work together. If you’re interested, click here to book a call with me. There’s no risk – if we’re not a fit, we part as friends and at the very least I’ll offer my thoughts on your current situation so you’ll have some ideas to consider as you move forward.

Don’t stay stuck in an unhealthy relationship with food and your emotions. There’s a better way.

Here’s a riddle for you: 

Four birds are sitting on a telephone wire and one decides to fly away. How many birds are left?

If you answered three, you’re wrong. 

Because here’s the key distinction: One bird decided to fly away, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily did anything about it.

See, decision isn’t the same thing as action and it can be really helpful sometimes to differentiate between the two if you want to move forward rather than remain stuck.

There are two scenarios when you might want to employ this approach in your life.

The first scenario has to do with actually getting things done: If you want to be productive, stop procrastinating or make progress on your to do list then you’ll want to give this a try.

There is a robust body of research that says if you decide exactly and specifically what you’ll do along with where and when you’ll do it, you are 5x more likely to actually do that thing. 

That’s a 500% increase and I see it play out time and time again in the lives of the private clients I work with in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program.

For example, want to start a meditation practice? 

Rather than saying, “I’m going to start meditating this week” you’ll be far more likely to actually follow through if you say “I’m going to meditate on my breath for 10 minutes on a cushion on my back porch, right after I make coffee on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings this week”.

The second scenario where this approach can be really useful is when it comes to making a big change in your life. If you want to get out of a state of limbo, get clarity on a potentially big change that might need to happen or make a decision when it feels overwhelming to do so, then try this approach.

Let’s say you’ve found yourself in a relationship that feels toxic and unhealthy and you’re really wrestling with how to move forward because of it. 

The situation is complicated because your life is intertwined with your partner’s life in every way and there is just so much history and complicated emotions between the two of you. You just don’t know what to do. 

Try separating decision from action here. If you just look at the decision of staying in this relationship or leaving this relationship – don’t think about how you would go about ending things at this point – can you get some clarity about the decision?

Perhaps the “how” feels overwhelming or even impossible and those feelings are clouding your mind, preventing you from getting clear on the decision you need to make. 

It can be helpful to decide what you want even if you don’t have the courage or the plan to follow through on that decision yet.

The how or the plan or your exit strategy – whatever you want to call it – can be figured out. But only once you get clear on your decision. 

This is a big one that I work with people on in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program.

I help people to get clear on a decision and then create a plan to execute that decision. When you feel overwhelmed or stuck it can be really helpful to have someone with a different perspective to work with. 

As the old saying goes, you can’t see the picture from inside the frame. 

If a situation feels too big for you to navigate alone, then don’t. Bring someone else in to help you figure things out and then help you act on what you decide. You don’t have to do it alone and many would argue that you shouldn’t.

If you’re interested in learning more about working with me in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program, click here.

I offer a free 30 minute coaching session to see if we might be a fit to work together. If you’re interested, you can book a call here.

Wishing you well.

There can be two wolves at battle within you when it comes to actually making changes and moving forward in your life – and one of them can be hidden deep within you, out of plain sight where you could otherwise recognize and work with it more skillfully.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you decide to move forward in your life – to make a change, initiate something new or make your life better in some important way. 

Then you are hit by resistance. 

Doubts flood your mind, your inner critic starts yapping away, you feel blocked, conflicted and struggle ensues. Perhaps you self sabotage or maybe you just don’t take any action at all despite the fact that you really want the change. 

Nope – I haven’t gotten to the hidden wolf that’s working against you yet. Stay with me.

Perhaps the problem genuinely seems to be in the circumstances surrounding you: you lack the resources you need, the risks are too high, other people start interfering and make it hard for you to move forward and get even some small semblance of momentum. 

Maybe you want a great relationship, but you just can’t find the right partner. Or, you want a better job, but there aren’t any good ones. You want to be at a healthy weight but you just can’t shake the extra pounds around your midsection. 

Circumstances appear to be out of your control. Opportunities seem to be limited, or non-existent. 

You really want your life to be different and better in some specific way – you can envision a better life with more of what you want and less of what you don’t want.

It just doesn’t seem to be accessible to you because making real, substantial change and sustainable progress doesn’t happen even when you try your best.

Let me introduce you to your hidden “bad” wolf:

“Resistance to change does not reflect opposition, nor is it merely a result of inertia. Instead, even as [you] hold a sincere commitment to change, [you] are unwittingly applying productive energy toward a hidden competing commitment. The resulting dynamic equilibrium stalls the effort in what looks like resistance but is, in fact, a kind of personal immunity to change.”

Competing commitments.

That’s what this article from The Harvard Business Review calls your two battling wolves. 

Consciously, there’s something you want and have committed yourself to. Subconsciously there’s something else you want and have also committed yourself to.

The hidden wolf is lurking there, just under the surface of your consciousness, keeping you locked in inertia. 

The key to unlocking this inertia starts in bringing this subconscious commitment up into your consciousness so you can examine it and decide where (or if) it belongs in your life.

Here are a couple of examples from the HBR article.

Jane’s stated, conscious commitment has to do with turning around her department at work. She wants to do that. She’s committed to doing that. However, Jane lets things slide too often and is not proactive enough in getting people to follow through with their tasks. As it turns out, Jane is also subconsciously committed to not setting full sail until she has a clear map of how she gets the department from here to there. She assumes that if she takes her group out into deep waters and discovers she is unable to get them to the other side she will be seen as an incompetent leader who is undeserving of trust or responsibility.

Next, take Mary, for example. Mary’s conscious commitment is to distribute leadership by enabling people to make decisions. Despite that, she doesn’t delegate enough and she doesn’t pass the information she has on to people she distributes leadership to. Her subconscious, competing commitment is to having things go her way and being in control and ensuing the work is done to her standard. She assumes that other people will waste her time and theirs if she doesn’t step in. She thinks deep down that others aren’t as smart as she is.

Now, back to you. 

Maybe you want to make more money but you were taught early on that money is the root of all evil. Your subconscious commitment to being a good person (as it has been defined for you)  is keeping you locked in your current financial situation. 

Maybe you’d like to assert yourself in some way and draw clear, firm and healthy boundaries. But you also have a subconscious commitment to not creating separation with those around you and being nice and accommodating and helpful has been your modus operandi pretty much your whole life. 

How do you know if competing commitments are at work in your life?

Pay close attention. Would you like more in some area of your life but it feels out of reach? Do you self sabotage? Are you engaged in some form of perpetual procrastination? 

Mary O’Malley says that any thought that tightens you is not the truth. It’s from the conditioned self. When you consider your life through this lens, does tightness show up inside you? Do you feel like there’s an invisible block that exists between where you are and where you want to be?

These competing commitments can be barriers to realizing our fullness. 

They aren’t the only barrier, but they certainly can be one of them. 

How do you go about relaxing your barriers and questioning/dissolving your limiting competing commitments and beliefs?

I’ll teach you. 

The key to unlocking this inertia is to start bringing this subconscious commitment up into your consciousness so you can examine it and decide where (or if) it belongs in your life.

So, how do you do that?

By picking an area of your life and engaging in the following exercise of inquiry and exploration.

For some people and for some areas of life, doing this as a solo exercise works great. For others, working through these questions with a coach – someone who exists outside your own head and who has the skills to help guide you through mental blocks or biases – can be the key to unlocking your subconscious, accessing and identifying your competing commitments.

Ok, here are some areas of life you might consider:

My body • My health • My work • My financial situation • My sexuality • My circumstances • Handicaps, injuries, illnesses • My family • My relationships • Life • Death • The past • The future

To start, pick one and ask yourself these questions (which are based on the ones found in this HBR article), filling in the blank with the area of your life.

You might allocate some time to do this – to sit with these questions and see what comes up for you. Journaling can be really helpful here, too.

Let’s use work as the area of life and someone named Elisabeth (not a real person) as an example.

1. What would I like to be different about the work I’m engaged in? (so that I could be more effective or so that it would be more satisfying?)

In other words:

What precisely do I want in this area of my life? What do I want more of? Less of?

For example:

Elisabeth would like to devote more time to the work she does. Right now, she only devotes 5 hours a day to work. She knows if she worked 8 hours a day, she could be more successful.

2. This dissatisfaction with the way things are or wanting things to be different in this way implies something about you. What commitment does it imply?

In other words:

Why do I want that? What is the purpose behind my vision for this area of my life?

For example:

Elisabeth is committed to making her business a success. She is a high achiever.

3. What am I doing that goes against that commitment? What am I doing, or not doing, that is keeping my commitment from being more fully realized? (The answer to this question reveals your undermining behavior)

In other words:

What exactly do I need to do to achieve my answer to question #1? Am I actively and consistently doing those things now? If not, what am I doing instead that is preventing me from my desired outcome?

For example:

Elisabeth tends to take long breaks during her work day. She ends up meeting or talking with friends for longer than she planned.

4. If I imagine doing the opposite of the undermining behavior, do I detect in myself any discomfort, worry, or vague fear?

In other words:

What do you think would happen if you did not do the behavior(s) you identified in question 3? If you did the opposite of the undermining behavior, what would worry you about this?

For example:

Elisabeth worries that if she doesn’t actively work at staying connected with the people in her life, they will lose touch and she will become isolated.

5. What does this worry imply that you’re also committed to?

In other words:

By engaging in this undermining behavior, what worrisome outcome are you committed to preventing? The resulting answer is the competing commitment, which lies at the very heart of a person’s immunity to change.

For example:

Elisabeth is committed to connecting with others and being a good, dependable friend.

Bingo. There’s your competing commitment.

So, now what? Where do you go with it from here? How does this help you move forward?

Well, we’re not quite done yet.

Here’s how the HBR article puts it:

“Competing commitments should not be seen as weaknesses. They represent some version of self-protection, a perfectly natural and reasonable human impulse. The question is, if competing commitments are a form of self-protection, what are people protecting themselves from? The answers usually lie in what we call their big assumptions—deeply rooted beliefs about themselves and the world around them. These assumptions put an order to the world and at the same time suggest ways in which the world can go out of order. Competing commitments arise from these assumptions, driving behaviors unwittingly designed to keep the picture intact.

People rarely realize they hold big assumptions because, quite simply, they accept them as reality. Often formed long ago and seldom, if ever, critically examined, big assumptions are woven into the very fabric of people’s existence.

Only by bringing big assumptions to light can people finally challenge their assumptions and recognize why they are engaging in seemingly contradictory behavior.”

So, the next step is to identify your big assumption(s) and it’s a critical next step.

If you think metaphorically, up until this point, we’ve cut the weed off at the ground level. But if you stop there, the weed just grows back. You’ve got to pull it up by the roots and it’s the same way with beliefs. They’ll keep reappearing if you don’t go down underground into your subconscious mind and pull them up for examination.

And I will teach you how to do that.

It’s important to know that these blocks, barriers and sources of resistance are natural and automatic. Everyone faces them. They’re part of how the mind works to try and keep us safe and not something to get down on yourself about.

If, deep down, we are holding on to some sort of unresolved fear or pain – if we think there’s some sort of danger, it’s only natural that our minds would conspire to protect us, to keep us safe.

The key to moving forward rather than staying stuck is to identify, investigate and re-define competing commitments and underlying assumptions or beliefs.

So, let’s find out about Elisabeth’s underlying assumption.

To do this, we invert her answer to question five and make it into the beginning of a sentence that is an assumption. So it would read:

I assume that if I was not dependable and useful, available when my friends need me or want to connect with me, they will find other friends and I will be left alone.

As it turns out, most of the time, her friends call needing to vent or process or seek advice from her because of something going on in their lives. This, combined with her desire to be a dependable shoulder to lean on, leaves her feeling like she has to hustle for her worthiness in these friendships.

Ah ha. The weed has now been dug up by the roots.

But it would be a mistake to stop here. Continuing with the metaphor, what will we plant in its place?

A process of questioning your underlying assumption and then trying some different, more skillful approaches will help you form new more accurate and helpful beliefs.

That’s work that we can do together as part of The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program. 

Click here to learn more.

If you’re interested in going deeper into this work together, you can book a free 30 minute coaching call to see if the program might be a fit for you.

Whether or not you’re interested in taking that step, I’ll close this post by offering some questions you can continue to ponder, to sit with, and explore within yourself surrounding whatever underlying assumption(s) or belief(s) you have uncovered through this process of self inquiry.

The following questions come from the work of Lion Goodman:

• What has been the advantage of having this belief? How has it served me in my life? What did I get or gain by having this belief? What did I avoid by having this belief?
• What would be different in my life if I held a different belief?
• Would I be willing to try on a different belief? Who would I be without this belief?
• What belief could I replace it with that would be more positive, beneficial, and empowering in my life?

In one of her dharma talks, Tara Brach introduced the inquiry, “Who would you be if you weren’t blaming anybody anymore? Am I willing to see myself and/or others differently?”

I have heard Glennon Doyle pose the question, “How would our lives transform if we stopped being so afraid of pain? What if we decided we were strong enough for it and stopped hiding from it?”

I hope this post has been helpful for you in some way.

Wishing you well.

Do you have a “someday but not today” version of yourself that you imagine?

The “today” version of yourself is doing all you can just to meet the demands of your daily life. And there are a lot of them. It takes all you’ve got to be all of the places you have to be and do all of the things you have to do and you don’t have much to spare after it’s all said and done. 

The “someday” version of yourself, however, is living more fully into daily life. 

“Someday” you is not completely and utterly taxed by the demands of daily life. In fact, you are able to do what needs to be done AND THEN SOME. Your life has things that enrich you in it. Things that fill you up, that you enjoy and that allow you to put your unique gifts more fully out into to the world. You’re not merely surviving, you’re truly thriving and you, along with everything around you, are better because of it.

Here’s the problem with having these two versions of yourself: Someday may never come. 

First of all, it certainly won’t come on it’s own. It doesn’t arrive at your doorstep ready for you to step into and live at ease in. You actively and intentionally create this version of your life – amidst the craziness of today.

Secondly, this moment – this day – really is all that we have. We don’t know if we will have another moment or another day or another year. We all know of people that this has been true for. 

And a life only partially lived to its potential is a tragic thing to witness. An even more tragic thing to live out in your own life.

The key to living the “someday” life today lies in having a healthy lifestyle with healthy habits that support your mental, spiritual and physical well being. 

Some call it self care and it looks different for everyone based on their unique selves and their unique life.

My girlfriend (she and I care for her mother who has Alzheimer’s) sent this in her email to a friend whose spouse was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s:

“Self-care is often hard for me to practice because when someone else’s well being is your responsibility, it feels like you’re doing wrong by them to prioritize yourself – at least that’s what I’ve found. However, that’s not the case -if I’m not taking care of myself (in the way I eat, exercising, meditating, having time off from caring for Mom, connecting with others etc) then the care I give her plummets. So, I remind myself that my well being AND her well being depend on my ability to set boundaries for myself which enable me to practice good self-care.”

Can you relate to this? 

Perhaps you’re not caring for someone else.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much better your OWN life could be if you had a healthy lifestyle with the right self care practices in place for the unique you? How would it boost your presence, engagement, and performance in life? 

I’ve seen it time and time again in my private coaching clients – when, despite all of the demands that are in place, a person is able to build in the practices that support and nourish their well being, the way they show up for their own life is elevated, taken to the next level and then the one after that.

Not only have I seen it in my coaching clients, this has been my own experience and part of my own story. 

A few months ago we shared an article that explored the idea of Self Care vs Soft Care and it said:

“We often think of self care as something we do only when we’re stressed, in grief, or otherwise hurting, but it’s really something we have to be doing every single day in order to honor the one relationship we’ll have until the day we die: our relationship with ourselves. Self care is the foundation of self love.”

“The danger with self care is that it’s easy to conflate with self-indulgence, selfishness, or what’s sometimes called “soft care.” Soft care is those actions we take that make us feel better in the moment but don’t actually serve our best good.”

“True self-care doesn’t cost much aside from the basic necessities of having a warm, safe place to be in and healthy food to nourish our bodies with. Prioritizing time to rest, nourish ourselves, and process our emotions helps us stay honest with ourselves so we know whether or not we’re in self care or soft care (and there’s nothing wrong with a little soft care when you need it!). Truly nonviolent self-care is a radical commitment to our own self love and thus the possibility for growth.”

Your “someday” life doesn’t just happen to you. You have to create it.

How do you go about creating it amidst all of the many very real demands of life that exist right now?

I’ll teach you.

There’s something that, if you get clear on, can go a long way in bringing someday into today. 

That something is the way you organize your time and tasks – aligning them with your values and goals. 

Very often, people think that they don’t have time for the things they need or want to do when in reality, it’s not a time problem it’s a prioritization problem. 

Having a strategy and a system to help you prioritize and plan can truly transform your day to day life. Our lives are nothing more than a series of days – so how you structure and prioritize your time during these days will determine the quality of your life. 

One strategy that I have found to be particularly powerful is The Eisenhower Decision Matrix – sometimes called the Urgent Important Matrix.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix helps you decide on and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, sorting out less urgent and important tasks which you should either delegate, limit or not do at all.

The matrix consists of a square divided into four boxes, or quadrants, labeled:

1. Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately).
2. Important, but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later).
3. Urgent, but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else).
4. Neither urgent nor important (tasks you will eliminate).

Urgent tasks are things that require immediate attention. Time is the factor that pushes things into and out of the urgent category. If a task must be done soon, that makes it an urgent task. Urgent tasks put us in a reactive mode and stress often accompanies living in a state of reactivity.

Important tasks are things that contribute to our long-term mission, values, and goals.  As former guest of the show, James Clear , says:

“…It can be hard to [determine whether or not a task is important] if you aren’t sure what you are working toward. In my experience, there are two questions that can help clarify the entire process behind the Eisenhower Box.

Those two questions are:

1. What am I working toward?
2. What are the core values that drive my life?”

What quadrant are you currently spending most of your time in?

Ideally, it’s box or quadrant 2.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix isn’t a perfect tool and it’s not the only tool but it is one that can really help you think about your time and tasks differently. 

Many people need help in jumpstarting a reorganization or re-creation of their day to day lives. 

That’s where I come in. 

Through The One You Feed Transformation Program, I help people get clear on their core values, goals and things that they want and need more or less of in their life. Very often, they need help learning how to say no to some things so they can say yes to others. 

We work together to build in sustainable self-care practices, for example, to support a healthy lifestyle so that they have the resources to show up fully in their life, not depleted but instead from a place of abundance.

Then, we work together to put those things into action and as a result, real and lasting transformation happens. 

See, we can’t get to where we want to go in life alone. That truth doesn’t make you deficient in some way – it makes you human and fighting it only sets you back in life. 

You can live your someday life today. 

I work with people 1-on-1 in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program  to make the changes they want to make in order to live their lives in line with their highest self and fullest potential. 

You can live your someday life today. And I can help you make that happen. 

Wishing you all the best,

At first glance, procrastination seems like something that’s simply a nuisance in our lives. 

Maybe we’d put procrastination in the bucket of our less-than-desirable-but-no-big-deal personality traits.

But what if it actually IS a big deal? 

What if the impact that procrastination has on our lives is more widespread and more profound than we’ve ever really stopped to consider?

I think after reading this post, you’ll see procrastination in a whole new light and you may feel a stronger conviction to address it as it shows up in your own life. 

Let me explain.

Back in December, we released an episode of the show in which I talked to Professor Tim Pychyl all about procrastination.

Professor Pychyl says that when we procrastinate, we are putting off our lives. He says:

“It is in the getting on with life that makes procrastination in a very real sense is an existential issue of not getting on with life itself….It’s not about becoming an uber productive money making machine – it’s about living the life [you] want to, achieving the goals [you] want to achieve rather than stewing in [your] own juices of guilt and shame which so commonly accompany procrastination.”

When you put off a task, you are delaying forward motion in your life. You are delaying progress towards moving to and through your goals, however big or small they might be. 

And, though momentarily it may feel like a relief to procrastinate something, inevitably it ends up feeling like a weight on our shoulders. 

Perhaps we end up in dread about that thing we know we need to do but aren’t doing. Feelings like guilt or feeling down on oneself for continuing to procrastinate something that’s important inevitably follow. 

When we make a promise to ourselves to do something and we break that promise, it corrodes our sense of self-respect. Think of when you keep a promise you make to yourself – doesn’t it feel good deep down? 

When there’s something we need to do and we don’t do it, it just feels awful.

Like another “Tim”, Tim Urban of the blog Wait But Why, says that when we procrastinate something we know needs to get done in order to do some things that seem more enjoyable, we actually don’t fully enjoy doing those pleasurable things. He calls this place “the dark playground”. We are on a “playground” engaging in enjoyable activities but we aren’t there with the feeling of total freedom because we know we’ve got this other thing looming over our heads.

So, not only are we not “getting on with our life” when we procrastinate, we are also polluting the potential for pleasure in the other moments of our life. 

But that’s not all – the impact of procrastination goes even further.

The fact is, procrastination causes stress. You probably know this to be true in your own life and there’s plenty of scientific research that affirms your experience. We all know by know that chronic stress is linked to all kinds of health problems. You don’t want cortisol pumping through your body for extended periods of time. 

In addition, procrastination is linked to fewer wellness behaviors and treatment delay. Think about it: you don’t want to go to the doctor so you put it off. Diagnosis and treatment are then delayed and that can seriously compromise the effectiveness of the treatment.

Here’s the good news:

The antidotes to procrastination are amazingly simple, doable and effective. 

I work with my private clients on implementing these very practical techniques all the time. 

And I’m going to share them with you. 

Let me teach you 4 simple techniques.

The first technique can be summed up as: Don’t give in to feel good now because giving in now has a future cost.

As Professor Tim Pychyl says, procrastination is actually a form of self-regulation failure. 

When you are tempted to procrastinate it’s because you’re having an emotional reaction to a task; Specifically, the “I don’t want to, I don’t feel like it” reaction. Perhaps the task makes you feel anxious, stressed, bored or full of dread and it’s human nature to want to avoid things that feel bad. 

Avoidance is what Professor Pychyl calls an “emotion focused coping strategy”. But it’s a misregulation of emotion because we’re not really going to feel better in the long run. It’s just that the moment we get rid of the task we feel better, creating a habit.

And it’s the feeling better the moment we put something off that contributes to our bias when it comes to thinking about the future. 

There’s this thing called Affective Forecasting. Essentially, we rely on the present to predict the future. The moment you decide “no I’m not going to do this today” you feel good. So then when you use that momentary feeling to predict how you’re going to feel tomorrow, you think you’ll feel like it tomorrow. 

But you won’t. You won’t feel any more like doing it tomorrow than you do today. And that’s the truth.

“If you have to swallow a frog, don’t stare at it too long.” 

– Mark Twain

In fact, you’ll feel the weight of this task until you do it. Remember the “dark playground”?  That’s where you’ll be until you do the thing that you need to do. 

The second technique has to do with ambiguity. It’s a common cause of procrastination. 

If you don’t know what the specific next action to take is, you’ll procrastinate. 

Often what we have on our to do lists are projects, like “host dinner party” or “get ready for upcoming trip”. The thing is, we don’t DO projects. We DO tasks. We take actions. What’s the next action?

For “host dinner party” the next action might be, “look at calendar to find a date to host dinner party”. Another action might be “make a list of people to invite” or “decide what to cook”. Those are specific tasks within the project of hosting a dinner party. 

There’s another piece to this technique. 

Once you’ve identified the specific action you need to take, you need to plan when (and possibly where, if that applies) you’ll do it. 

Consider attaching the action to something else in your schedule. 

For example: tomorrow morning after you walk the dog, you’re going to sit at the kitchen table and spend 5 minutes making a list of people you want to invite to your dinner party. 

When it comes to taking the next right action, research shows if you know the specific what, when and where you’re 5x more likely to do it. That’s 500%. That warrants giving this technique a try, doesn’t it?

If you have an action or a task on your to do list and you approach it using these first 2 techniques, you’re less likely to keep procrastinating.

But not always.

That’s where the third and fourth techniques come in.

The third technique, simply put is: Just get started. Even if you don’t feel like it.

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

See, momentum is a powerful thing. Once you start something, momentum will propel you forward. 

The resistance you feel in getting started will not be there every step of the way. It gets easier to keep moving once you just take the first step and actually get moving. 

Sometimes you have to trick yourself into getting started by making the first step really, really small and allowing yourself to only do that one small thing. If you do that small thing and want to stop afterwards, you can stop. 

I use this strategy all the time when it comes to working out. I tell myself that all I have to do is put my workout clothes on. Then, after I’ve done that, I tell myself that all I have to do is drive to the gym, etc until inevitably, I’ve made it through the workout. It gets easier once I just get started. 

Here’s a critical piece to this technique: Somehow, we get the idea that we have to be motivated or have the energy in the moment in order to do something. We assume that feeling like it precedes taking action. 

But in reality, that doesn’t always happen. Especially with tasks that we tend to want to procrastinate. 

Getting started or taking an action leads to the motivation or momentum to continue doing it. 

“If you want to do something, begin it, because action has magic, grace, and power in it.”

Goethe

Thinking we have to be in the “mood” to do something is fundamental contributor to procrastination.

Ok, the fourth and final technique is: Remember your motivation. 

And it helps if your motivation is an intrinsic one rather than an extrinsic one. 

An intrinsic motivation is one that comes from within you. It’s yours. You authored it. You want it. It’s personally satisfying to you.   

An extrinsic motivation is one that comes from outside of you. Someone else authored it and now you think you should want it. There’s usually a form of getting a reward or avoiding a punishment associated with extrinsic motivations. 

Here’s an example: 

Let’s say you are the one who is responsible for making sure your spouse and/or kids have something to eat at meal time. 

An example of extrinsic motivation when it comes to a healthy dinner would be because you heard a segment on the news about the importance of healthy eating at home. 

There’s an expert telling you it’s important. You get that it’s “the right thing to do”. 

But, at the end of a busy day when you have to muster up the energy to make that happen and it takes some effort, you cave in and drive through McDonalds on the way home. 

An example of intrinsic motivation in that scenario would be that it’s connected to the value you hold deep within you of making sure your family has nutritious, healthy food to eat each day. 

Perhaps you didn’t have that as a child and as a result, you struggled with your weight, were made fun of and you don’t want that for your kids. 

Or, perhaps your father died from heart disease which was connected to his poor diet and you want to do all you can to avoid that same destiny. 

So, at the end of a busy day, you remember that and push through, making the effort to ensure what’s on the dinner plate is healthy and nutritious.

Remembering your why when things get tough is often just what you need to act according to your values rather than according to how you feel in the moment.  

If you would like help applying and implementing these concepts in your life to help you make progress towards your goals, I can help you.

I work with people 1-on-1 in The One You Feed Personal Transformation Program to make the changes they want to make in order to get on with the living of their lives – the living of their lives that’s in line with their highest self and fullest potential. 

To learn more and book a free 30 minute coaching call with me, click here.

“Don’t let perfectionism become an excuse for never getting started.”

Marilu Henner

Here’s to getting on with life.