3 Key Steps to Stop Procrastinating and Change Your Mindset
We usually think that procrastination is a sign of laziness. In reality, procrastination is rarely about a lack of motivation or laziness. In my experience as a personal development coach, I have seen many of my clients being stuck, seemingly procrastinating and unable to pursue what they truly wanted to do. However, none of those people were remotely lazy and it was clear that their being stuck was actually because of… fear.
Fear of failure. Fear of not being enough. Fear of looking stupid. Fear of being judged. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of losing the sense of balance they had created. At the root of these clients’ procrastination, there was always an unpleasant emotion whispering to them: ‘if you do it, something negative will happen and you’re not going to be able to handle it’.
Let’s take Harriet for example (real story, anonymised name), someone who had recently left both their job and a difficult relationship and was struggling to get back to herself. To overcome procrastination, the starting point for Harriet was to rethink what both success and failure meant for her, according to her own rules and standards. She needed to challenge her own limiting beliefs, develop a growth mindset, and reshape her mindset for success to finally overcome that procrastination and take action with confidence. It’s a strange and amazing thing how making some real shifts in mindset and confidence can actually impact a person’s ability to find a new job, or generally feel better about approaching each day. Inevitably, that leads to better results.
Below, I’ll share some key strategies to help you do the same.
1. Stop measuring yourself against others
Most of the time, what you call success and failure is simply the result of measuring yourself against someone else’s expectations. If you keep using external expectations as a benchmark, you will almost always feel behind, because those standards were never aligned with who you truly are.
To overcome procrastination and build a healthier success mindset, try to bring your focus back to the present and look at what you actually want now and what you need to achieve it. Measure progress based on your own values, goals and personality, not on what someone else expects of you today or expected from you in the past.
2. Move forward: redefine success as ‘Successful enough’
In my experience as a personal development coach, I’ve often seen how my clients’ can become stuck because of their expectations. Expectations can be at the root of procrastination when they create pressure to achieve a certain outcome, avoid mistakes, or meet standards that do not truly align with who we are.
A more effective successful mindset approach is to redefine success by identifying what a ‘successful enough’ outcome can look like for you. Be clear and specific: write down all the criteria and parameters that will allow you to identify that outcome as successful. Be courageous and ambitious. The goal is not to settle for less, nor to set yourself up for failure.
The aim is to set achievable goals that challenge you while still being within your reach. These goals will help you build confidence, maintain momentum, and continue progressing toward your bigger objectives.
By shifting your focus from avoiding negative outcomes to positive ones, you can develop a stronger growth mindset, give yourself a clear direction, and overcome procrastination by taking action without getting stuck in perfectionism.
3. There’s no perfect choice: stop overthinking decisions
Some of my clients find themselves overthinking decisions. They either try to avoid mistakes or attempt to make the best possible decision. The focus is on avoiding something negative rather than moving toward a positive outcome (just look at what happened to England in the World Cup...). The result is that people keep procrastinating on decisions and delay taking action. When fear of negative results takes over, even small actions feel risky.
The truth is that, often, there is no ‘right’ or ‘perfect’ choice. You are always making decisions based on partial information and cannot predict the outcome with complete certainty.
Here’s one technique to adopt a more practical decision-making approach to overcome fear and procrastination.
Once you have identified your goals and listed the actions needed to achieve them, start by writing down the pros and cons of each action. Then guide your decision with the following questions:
- What excites me the most about these potential benefits?
- What scares me the most about these possible challenges?
- What can I do to minimize or manage these risks?
- What will my next steps be if I achieve these positive outcomes?
The goal of this approach is to create clarity around your choices and help you take confident action instead of staying stuck in procrastination.
Think you could benefit from some personal development coaching, either as a one-off booster session or over a sustained period? Feel free to email me: silviadaviescoach@gmail.com.
Silvia Davies provides life transformation and personal development coaching, covering mindset coaching, confidence coaching, fear of rejection coaching, relationship coaching, performance coaching and lifestyle coaching. When working with clients, different matters can be addressed: overcoming fear of change, finding clarity and direction, creating positive habits, unlocking potential and creating actionable plans to change your life. Contact me here or reach out to silviadaviescoach@gmail.com to find out more.