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Sunday 11 August 2013

More on procrastination!


I told you, this is something i've to work on, so i'll write some more about procrastination!

You have a task to complete but you delay in doing it, even in starting it, preferring to do something less urgent instead or even going to the park instead or even doing nothing instead, maybe only lying on your bed looking at the ceiling.
The task you need to (start and) complete can be your yoga practice or your sport training or that relation for your job or those pictures to work on or that book to study for the exam or even the flight to book for your already decided and planned travel abroad, that interesting ad found on gumtree to answer and so on... and every time for some subtle reason... simply you won't do it... until the moment that you really have to do, maybe because you have a deadline... at that point in some cases you'll rush in doing it -overactivating your nervous system- or in other cases you'll pay the flight 2 or 3 times more or you will regret to have lost a super good offer...
...well, almost 99% of the times, late start doesn't give you benefits, not even that "i work better under pressure" that somebody keeps repeating his your mind... that's only the sensation coming from adrenaline and all the other stuff released by the sympathetic nervous system when you're on (perceived) emergency!

Did you get this concept? Do you find yourself in this situation? How often?

Procrastination is to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delayThere can be different causes as disliking the task or lack of self-confidence (not feeling enough for the task will make you to postpone it, extreme perfectionists can have a similar feeling). It's connected with impulsiveness, the more you act on impulses the more you tend to procrastinate a planned task, that's very logical!
Planning, impulse control, attention are all rooted in the prefrontal cortex of our brain... it's very important because an imbalance in this area can reduce your ability to filter out distracting stimuli, resulting in poorer organization, loss of attention and increased procrastination... can you imagine to sit at your desk to do your task and suddendly all the possible distractions come into your mind? This is the reason... and this is something that through yoga we can work on, to gain enough mental strength to be able to concentrate more.
Concentration is opposite of dispersion, i'd say that procrastination is a good friend of dispersion, so let's work on our ability to concentrate and we'll overcome the procrastinating attitude!

If we look from the point of view of Raja Yoga the situation is easy to understand and handle:
1- Somewhere there is an unbalance
2- The tamasic quality of nature is prevailing
3- Being aware of this you have 2 choices leading to the same result
     a) Decrease the tamasic quality so you will be free to act (this is more hard, need a strong mind control)
     b) Increase the opposite rajasic quality... act! (this is more easy)

If you don't know raja yoga or tamas and rajas... we'll talk on them... for the moment take the most important part with you -being aware of-!!!

There are many tools to improve your life, maybe infinite tools?
Every of them will gravitate under these words -being aware of-!!!

Next time, when you recognize that you are postponing something important... be aware of it! Ask to yourself why you are procrastinating (actually it's not only ask to yourself... pretend the answer from yourself!) and really examine the pro and cons of doing it tomorrow... and then evaluate what to do and take a decision, a decision based on awareness, maybe you'll postpone anyway but at least you'll know that you postponed because of an actual decision rather than some automatic pattern response...
Procrastination can be very deep in your way of acting, everything so deep most of times goes on automatic pilot, be aware of it, try to make it become a conscious decision... that's the way to make a conscious decision to change the pattern, in this occasion or at the next one... first step: BE AWARE OF IT!

Anyway to be sure not to miss another workshop because of late booking... i already booked next week's Vinyasa Immersion with Mimi Kuo-Deemer at Triyoga, see you there!!

Couple of links to deepen the argument

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