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Sunday, January 04, 2009
How to use your senses to overcomeprocrastination in 5 minutes:
Many times in life, you will find that you are just not motivated enough to take on atask that you need to take even though you don’t have a strong enough reason whyyou shouldn’t. I’d like to share with you a few tips that I use now and again to getme off the couch and take action swiftly. These are techniques that I have borrowedfrom the NLP and hypnosis world.
USE YOUR SENSES – They are readily available to you!
 This is by far the method that produces far reaching results in an instant. It basicallyinvolves the inclusion of your common physiological senses to bring you to themanifestation of the task you want to accomplish immediately. The underlyingprinciple here is really the fact that
your senses exists mostly in the present,in the now!
 Therefore if 
cheated 
a little, you can capture their full potential
tobring you to the future now!
 This is sometimes called
Future Pacing
.
How does one achieve this?
Simply begin with the end in your mind and use your senses to verballydescribe that end, that future YOU that is an achiever!
Let’s take an example of a task and see how to use the senses to get it done. Let’ssay that it is Sunday and you have a Monday morning deadline with a project e.g.updating your teaching blog and you have been putting off this task for a while. Finda quite and comfortable place and dedicate the next 5 minutes to yourself, bringingyour focus on your senses. Here are the senses that we will bring into play:
•
Sense of Sight/Vision
•
Sense of Smell
•
Sense of Touch
•
Sense of Sound
•
sense of Taste/feeling/perceptionBelow is a summary of sample questions you can ask yourself and associatedfeelings. I do this most of the time. I simply get up to my feet with a start and thenusing a calm but firm voice I ask:
Stephen, when this task is done, what will you hear? What will you see? Who will bementioning your name, what music will be playing? Stephen, are those cheers of colleagueshappy that you have accomplished your task? Stephen, who is standing next to you nowthat you have completed this task? How do you feel Stephen now that you are an achiever,having completed this task? Do you feel the sense of accomplishment washing your wholebody and projecting you to your higher self? Do you feel that sense of wonder; is this all
 
there was to it? See yourself beyond this task, after this task. Step into that future self andfeel the difference. See and feel easy now that you have created history by doing what youneeded to do. It is done!
 You can model even better questions to ask yourself using your senses to defineobjects while you visualize
your future self.
Simply replace my name STEPHEN,with yours. And you can do this in front of your computer, inside your car, in thebathroom, or wherever you are that allows you to speak to yourself without seekingsocial proof!
Thoughts to add on these…
Sometimes to get the burst of energy to put your limbs in motion doing what youneed to do, you need to realize the interconnectedness of the universe. Forexample, it may not be clear how a task such as updating your blog is connected tothe happiness of your family. I call this the
pain and pleasure connector.
Simplyimagine the pain or grief of not taking action when you need to and tie it to how itwill affect your loved ones. Ask yourself, how will your little gal feel when you don’ttake the action you should take now? Will you look at her eyes and say ‘sorrydarling, we don’t have milk today because dad is still procrastinating?’ Does thatbother you? Do you feel the discomfort of this association? You can use thistechnique any time and in a matter of minutes you will be in motion, taking action.Simply focus for 5 minutes on the grief that your not taking action will bring to thepeople or person that you love dearly. The same technique can be used in thereverse i.e. imagine the joy that will come to the person or people that you love somuch when you stop procrastinating and take action. Imagine the glow in the eyesof your sweetheart when you stand before her/him and say, ‘baby, it’s all done!’Realize that
in life you don’t have to do anything
! No one forces you to wake upand go to the job you don’t love! No one forces you to sit on your backside andwatch TV all day even though you are behind your dreams and your bills! And theseare just a few examples. From now on,
chose an empowering point of view andsay to yourself, “I chose to” instead of “I have to”
. See, the minute it’s clearto your subconscious mind that you are in the driving seat, that you are the finalauthority over all the choices in your life, you mind goes to work automatically tobring you closer and closer to realizing your goals; it brings your physiology in astate of easy flow of action. Nothing in the universe can take the place of action.
Action is the garage of results!
Nothing can take the place of action. No amountof words can replace taking action. Procrastination is the secret fertilizer of failure.And the secret is kept away from the man who calls himself a failure! DON’TFORGET THAT!Have you bothered to ask yourself why other people seem to enjoy their life andachieve so much effortlessly? 28 years ago I was born and raised in a culture that
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