Ready, set, procrastinate!

Ostrich burying its head in the sand
There’s a mouldy nectarine in the bottom of my fridge. It’s been about a week since I first noticed it, and I have continued to notice it, several times a day, without doing anything about it. The nectarine continues to rot, and I continue to ignore it. It’s a bit of a shit Mexican standoff really; of course the nectarine will ultimately win, and all of my fresh vegies will lose, which means I lose. And yet despite knowing that the mess in the vegie drawer is getting worse the longer I delay throwing out that nectarine, I continue to ignore the problem. Gross.


I’m not telling you about my nectarine sitch to explain how desperately my vegie drawer needs a solid clean – and I want to assure you that the rest of my house is very tidy and hygienic – but because it illustrates in a really disgusting way just how procrastination has taken hold of my life lately.

Here is a list of things I need to do that I have been putting off for a month or so, some trivial, others fairly pressing:
·                     ·      Locking in dates for my trip to New York this winter. (Note to self: it is officially Autumn now. Autumn is followed by winter. That means winter is happening very soon. Pull your finger out!)
·                     ·      Getting a new gym program. I am so booored by my workouts that I’m putting very little effort in (counter-productive, no?). Some days I don’t even sweat. If I’m going to drag my ass out of bed at 5.30am you’d think I’d be committed to making the most of this time. But somehow the effort of booking a personal trainer to create a new program for me keeps falling into the ‘I’ll do it next week’ category.
·                     ·      Following through on all the angel card readings I have promised people. It’s not that I don’t want to do the readings, I just never quite get around to locking them in.
·                     ·      Sorting out my accounting records. Yuck.
·                     ·      Getting some new meditation podcasts. I feel like I’m not going deep enough with my meditations at the moment, and not getting the clarity I used to. This something I really I need to address, or else I’m going to find my ability to manage stress and the general challenges of everyday life will be seriously hampered, and I’ll start getting stuck.
·                     ·      Finishing the two new short stories I’ve started and polishing two older ones to be entered in competitions (one of my goals this year).
·                     ·      Enrolling in more volunteering projects (another key 2015 goal).


When I look at this list, there’s a common denominator. It’s so obvious that Fear is at play behind my decision to delay/avoid all of these tasks. I don’t want to tackle my accounting records because they never add up properly at first and it takes hours longer than it should and it’s frustrating and I’m scared I will realise I’m too stupid to manage being self-employed. I don’t want to plan my New York trip because I’m scared I will find that I can’t afford it, and have to ditch the whole idea. I don’t want to find new meditation podcasts because I’m scared they might be too hard, and will prove that, actually, I really suck at meditation and will never improve. I don’t want to do more angel card readings for my friends because I’m scared the messages I give people might not be meaningful to them or will reveal stuff they don’t want to hear and they’ll hold that against me and tell other people I’m crap and WHAT IF THAT’S TRUE?!

Wow.

In short, I’m scared I’m not good enough. I’m scared I will fail. So basically I’m scared of the same stuff you, and every other person on this planet, is scared of – and that’s why I’m procrastinating.

But here’s the thing about Fear: it only holds its power over you for as long as there is an absence of proof that the things you are scared of could happen. And the only way to know if that proof exists is to do what you’re scared of. Yuck. The good news: through that process one of two things will happen: you will find that the thing you were scared of was never really there, or you will find that you can handle it. That’s a win-win situation.



I know all of this, and yet I continue to procrastinate. I’m putting a stop to that right now. You all are my witnesses. I’ve set myself a challenge to tick as many of these things off my list as I can by April 16 (four weeks away).


I’ll start with that nectarine. 


UPDATE: Since writing this post, my housemate has thrown out the rotten fruit and cleaned out the vegie drawer. Subsequent laboratory testing has revealed it was a peach, not a nectarine. All is well.

The year that was. Or wasn’t. (And why that made me feel shitty.)

As the year 2014 drew to a close, I noticed an annoying trend emerging on social media. People were avidly posting glossy pictures in symmetrical grids to summarise their ‘amazing’ (side note: is this the most overused adjective ever?!) year. Now, I want to say first up that I don’t begrudge anyone happiness – I believe everyone is entitled to win at life – and of course most of these people are very dear to me, so my heart soars when theirs do. I don’t even mind that they’re posting highly edited, carefully selected versions of their 2014 experiences and ignoring the low-lights. After all, no one really needs to see a picture of your baby screaming its head off or the rejection letter for that job you didn’t get.

My problem with these ‘look at my amazing life’ posts is that they made me feel crap. Like, crying-into-my-pillow crap. Is that the fault of the person who had that wonderful trip to Spain/dream promotion/romantic engagement? No, of course it isn’t. Like I said, I genuinely want my friends – and everyone, for that matter – to live a life rich with joyous moments. Happiness isn’t in short supply – we can all have a slice of it. It’s my response that was the problem.

Comparison. It’s the bane of my existence. As the saying goes, there will always be someone smarter/richer/prettier than you, so comparison is futile. Life is not a competition. I know all of this, and I do truly believe it. And yet...

What my response showed me was that I have some work to do in deeply accepting myself. There’s a part of me that feels that I’ve failed because I haven’t had some of these experiences that other people in my age group have had. Even though I know that that doesn’t matter, that this is how my life is supposed to be, and that’s more than OK. And even though I know I’m not lacking anything whatsoever. In spite of all of this knowledge, I still feel the misery of disappointment and inferiority.

Eckhart Tolle (wise man, that Eckie) says that ‘life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.’ I’m still not 100 per cent sure what my life purpose is, but I know that this lesson – of accepting myself, of being content with my life, of letting go my need to compete with peers – is at the heart of my journey towards evolution. I’ll let you know how that works out for me.

In the meantime, any advice you have on self-acceptance, overcoming envy and feelings of failure would be gratefully accepted. Thank you.