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Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. If you're new here, I'm doing a series on my YouTube channel on my podcast where I address some of the common problems that I constantly help my clients with. The same problems seem to come up over and over again and I'm assuming if they have those problems then so do you. And so I figured I would address them on my podcast and I would make episodes specifically about each issue so that you can apply this knowledge to your own problems.
And if you want me to address a specific issue, if there is an issue that you are dealing with that you think a lot of other people deal with, let me know. Hit me up on Instagram at lessons from a quitter or send me an email and let me know what video you'd like me to do. I'd be happy to answer some specific questions. But today's episode I know is one that probably everyone can use and one that comes up over and over and over again. And so I figured why not address it? And so the topic of today's episode is help. I procrastinate all the time. I can't stop procrastinating. Okay? This is something that I think everyone suffers from, everyone has problems with and yet everyone thinks it's just them. Like, I don't know why I can't get my stuff together. I don't know why I can't be more motivated or more disciplined.
Now there's a rare percentage, a rare breed of people whose brains can hyper focus and focus for a really long time. Most humans can't. Okay, so the first thing I want you to understand, I think a lot of times we add a lot of shame to the problem of procrastination. We add a lot of like, I'm just lazy, I have no willpower. What's wrong with me? And I'm here to tell you there's nothing wrong with you. You have a human brain. Congratulations, I'm sorry to say you are like the rest of us. And our brains were not evolved to operate in the way that they operate in our current society. Uh, we were not made to sit in offices and focus for eight hours a day and stare at screens all day. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and really in the last like 200 is when we've sort of created the society that we have.
And you know, when you bring in technology and computers into it, that's like really the last like 50 years. So needless to say, your brain wasn't created to handle modern day. And so of course it is likely going to come up with some issues. There's gonna be some things that that you are naturally fighting against with your natural ability. So I wanna start there because I think that what happens is we procrastinate and then we add on so much shame and guilt, right? We add on so much dirty pain on top of it where we make ourselves feel worse. And I'm gonna tell you why that actually exacerbates the problem that gets you to procrastinate more. We'll talk about what's happening in your brain and like what you kind of have to work against. But just suffice to say like when you are feeling in shame, when you are feeling ashamed where you're, when you're feeling really crappy, that's not the most motivating place to start like doing work, right?
And so if nothing else, if you take nothing else from this, like I just want you to take that, it's a very normal reaction. And so for a lot of us, our brains can only focus for a certain amount of time and then it gets tired, your brain gets tired and it wants to do something else and it wants some dopamine and we're gonna talk about that. And so it kind of goes on and finds something that's more exciting or it wants to do something that is less work. It wants to conserve its energy. And so it's constantly trying to take you to places that maybe you don't consciously wanna be. You wanna be focusing on your work, but your brain has ulterior motives. And so I want you to know that's normal and there's nothing wrong with you, but I can help you figure out how to work with your brain a little bit more so that you can overcome it at times when you need to overcome it, when it's like really important for you to actually get the work done.
So let's talk about what is happening. Your brain's job isn't like to make you happy or to make sure you're successful or to make sure you do, you know the best job, your brain's job is to keep you alive. It has evolved with certain tricks to keep you alive. Some of those are like, it wants to go in automatic mode. It wants to conserve energy, right? It wants to make sure you use the least amount of energy that you have to, and so that you can use that energy. You know, back in the day you needed to fight animals or there was a famine and you didn't have food or whatever. And so a lot of the goal of your brain is to go on automatic mode. That's why you notice like a lot of times you might zone out, like if you're driving somewhere that you drive all the time, you don't even realize how you got there, whatnot.
Your brain is trying to create kind of systems where it doesn't have to think all the time. And so when you are expending a lot of energy, when you are constantly having to think, your brain does want to do things to numb out, it wants to scroll, it wants to do things that like help you sort of start conserving a little bit of energy. And so it's going to naturally kind of push you towards those cravings, towards those things to give you a break. Another thing I'll say is that because we are live in such a hustle culture, your brain is just trying to protect you. Like we don't naturally give ourselves breaks because we have demonized rest and we have made ourselves believe that you have to constantly hustle and you have to earn your worth and you have to, you know, be productive every minute of every day.
And your brain understands that that's not possible. And so it's just trying to kind of sneak in rest where it can because you're not giving it to it, right? And so instead of actually like fully resting and enjoying that rest, you might be scrolling for a long time when you don't want to and you don't realize why you're doing it, but it just might be because you need some more built in rest into your day. You need more breaks in between when you're doing really kind of heavy lifting with your brain. So understanding that and like knowing that like maybe the problem is is I'm trying to focus for too long and that's not gonna work. And so maybe I do like the Pomodoro method and I do things for 25 minutes and I actually give myself a break. You know, could that start breaking things up?
That's one thing you have to understand about your brain. The other thing is that when your brain's job is to only keep you alive, evolutionarily, a good rule of thumb for humans has been to go towards things that feel good and stay away from things that feel bad, right? If there is something that is going to bring up fear or a lot of like negative emotions, it signals to your brain that this is like a bad thing. This is a dangerous thing. This might kill us and we wanna go towards where we're gonna get dopamine. We wanna go towards things where we're gonna, you know, feel good. And so that might mean at the time, like you are gonna spend your time going after, you know, hunting and gathering. You're gonna go gather some more berries so that you can stay alive so you can eat.
It is sort of like the motivation center of your brain is like pushing you to do the things that are going to keep you alive, right? And to stay away from the things that are going to harm you. Now in today's world, you're not at risk of dying every day. Like maybe we, our ancestors were. And luckily like life is a little bit easier in that sense where you don't have to like scavenger for food all the time, but the same hardware is at work. And so for a lot of us, when negative emotions come up, our brain wants to avoid it and it wants to go towards something that feels good. And so what happens is that your doing a task, you are working on something and it is bringing up a lot of negative emotions, right? So maybe you are frustrated or you're stressed out or you're bored or you are feeling inadequate or whatever.
It's, and it's bringing up a lot of stress and anxiety and all of these feelings for you, your brain just naturally knows. Like it's trying to again keep you alive and protect you. It's like, hey, I'm gonna avoid pain and I'm gonna seek pleasure, right? So like, this doesn't feel good, this feels terrible and it also feels like something is wrong and we might die and it feels like too much. So I'm just gonna get us to something that's gonna feel a little bit better. Now, again, your brain wants dopamine. What it has evolved like into what we used to have as dopamine wasn't such huge spikes of dopamine, right? Like when you had kind of naturally occurring dopamine in nature, maybe when you found like a berry bush or you, you know, ate some fruit or whatnot, it would release dopamine. Now we have like a false, I don't know, access to dopamine, to very increased amounts of dopamine.
So you've likely heard that social media is like cocaine for your brain. It creates a lot of addiction, it creates really huge spikes in dopamine. So of course those things are a jackpot for your brain. It's like, hey, you know, like pulling the slot machine and you get this jackpot and it's kind of this overwhelming, um, amount of dopamine your brain wants more and more and more, right? It's like, hey, this is an easy way to feel really good. So in a nutshell, what's happening when you're procrastinating is simply that you are doing something that is making you feel bad, that is bringing up negative emotions, whatever those emotions are. And so you're going towards something that feels good in that moment that relieves some of that pressure, that relieves some of that negative emotion. That might mean like you're doing work and that feels bad for whatever reason we're gonna talk about.
And then so you decide you're gonna scroll on Instagram instead, or you pick up your phone to kind of get on TikTok for a little while, or maybe that means you're gonna grab a snack. 'cause you know, eating those chips and the sugar and whatever is gonna give you that dopamine kick that you want. Or it maybe it means that you, you know, organize your room. Maybe your organization is something that gets you super excited and makes you feel calm and so you get your dopamine that way. Or maybe you over exercise or you read a book or you watch Netflix or whatever it is for each person, it's gonna be slightly different. But we all have things that we numb ourselves out with, right? That we soothe ourselves, we get so mad at ourselves. But it's actually a really beautiful defense mechanism like our brain has built in self-soothing structures, activities so that when tragedy hits so that when life is hard so that when bad things happen we have a way to be able to soothe ourselves, right?
Just like a kid might soothe themselves by sucking outta the thumb or sucking out a pacifier and it kind of helps regulate their nervous system. All humans do this and it is actually a really beautiful thing because we all go through a lot of crap in this life. And like you want a way for your brain to be able to help you not sit in this like fight or flight or in a really like negative cycle. Like you wanna be able to get to a place where you can sort of self-soothe and that's all your brain is doing. The thing is is that when you look at like what we're actually dealing with, you are not dying when you're working on that Excel spreadsheet or you're not in danger of dying when you have to give that presentation, even though it feels like you are, you really aren't, right?
And so part of this is learning like when are times where I really do need to like soothe myself a little bit and give myself some time to kind of come down from whatever fight or flight sensation I'm having and when are times where like I need to really just do the thing even if it doesn't feel good. And so that's really what I want you to work on is figuring out between those two and then this is how you overcome it. So step one in all of this is identifying that negative emotion is noticing it. I think for a lot of us, we don't notice until we're in the middle of procrastination and that's okay in the beginning it's gonna be like that. You're just gonna like, how did I just waste four hours on my phone? I didn't even realize how I got here.
It's almost like again, you're like on this autopilot you didn't even realize you picked up your phone. We all kind of have these addictions now. And so you're like find yourself mid scroll, that's fine. I want you to even go back and think like what was I feeling that led me to pick up my phone, right? What was the thing right before, like the trigger right before that I was doing that made me feel bad? And you likely will have an answer very quickly, right? It's like, oh, I was working on that presentation or that email, or I got that feedback from my boss that wasn't great or you know, I had this interaction with my coworker that made me feel super uneasy and so I went to this, right? And so you wanna start like becoming aware of it 'cause you'll start seeing it more and more and then you'll start catching it before you even go to numb out, you'll start seeing like, huh, I'm doing my taxes.
And that is bringing up a lot of emotion for me and it's bringing up a lot of negative feelings. So of course I want to procrastinate by getting a snack or watching Netflix or you know, putting it off for another day. So you just wanna start like by just noticing what is that feeling, right? What is the feeling that's coming up for me? Why do I not wanna do this thing? Maybe because it causes boredom and I just don't feel like doing taxes. It sounds really annoying, it's gonna take a long time. I don't wanna do that. Or maybe it's frustration, right? I don't know how to do my taxes and I know I'm gonna get like stuck and I'm not gonna know the answer and it's gonna be annoying and I have to go kind of searching for it and I don't wanna do it.
Might be stressed like I'm gonna mess this up. What if I don't know what I'm doing and I make a huge mistake and it costs me a lot of money and the IRS is mad at me or whatnot. You get it. Like there is these feelings that are gonna come up based on what you're thinking about that task that you're doing. And so you wanna just first identify that because then you're gonna figure out what you wanna do from there. One of the things you can do. So step two is like, let's say I've identified it, I'm gonna do my taxes and I feel really frustrated because I don't know how to do 'em. Okay? I think that's my thought is like, I don't know how to do this properly, so I don't wanna do it. You have two options. Then once you catch it, you have two options.
One is just knowing that you're gonna feel that negative emotion and doing it anyway. Okay? So stopping basically this like automatic system where your brain is going for dopamine, you steal your prefrontal cortex, luckily is still like can be stronger than this part of your brain. That amygdala that like wants to constantly go after dopamine. So you can think like, I have this craving, I have this desire, and all that is is like this emotion that I have within me and nothing is gonna happen unless I act on it. So like I can know I wanna grab my phone and I'm still not going to, right? Like I can know it's gonna feel like crap to do my taxes and that's okay, I can feel like crap and do it anyway, right? I can feel frustrated and still figure it out. I can feel stressed and still like push through.
And I think when you're aware of it and when you're conscious, it makes it easier to kind of make this choice of like, I don't have to feel great all the time while I do the things that I wanna do. I can just decide that like I'm gonna feel this and I'm gonna do it anyway. So that's one way of doing it and that's likely oftentimes like if you don't have the time to change your thoughts and do a lot of this thought work, that might be the best option is like, you know what? What I have to get this presentation done. We're gonna just like push through, which is sort of what we all do when it gets close to a deadline. Like we'll, procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate, and then lo and behold we can get ourselves to do it, right? Why? Because your thoughts change.
You start becoming like, okay, well this is due tomorrow. And so even though it feels like crap, even though I don't wanna do it, I'm gonna sit my butt down and I'm gonna do this presentation, right? I'm just saying like when you become aware of it, you don't have to wait for that last minute. You can start noticing like, okay, it's not gonna feel good and I'm still gonna do it anyway. So that's option one. Option two is to try to change that feeling, right? So when you're feeling frustrated, whatever you're feeling is because of the thoughts you are thinking. So let's say it might be a subconscious thought, but let's say like I said, like the reason you feel frustrated is I don't know how to do this, right? I don't know how to do my taxes. So part of what you're gonna wanna do is like change how your thinking and feeling.
So maybe if instead of thinking, I don't know how to do this, if my thought becomes, but I can figure this out, I figured out a lot of things, I can figure this out too, right? There's tons of tutorials or people that can help and I just need to like start, you know, watching it. Like notice how different that feels if I'm like thinking about my taxes and my thought is I don't know how to do this versus I can probably figure this out, right? I figured it out before I've done my taxes before. We're just gonna have to do it again. So you might go from feeling frustrated to feeling calm. Let's say like you think I hate doing my taxes. A lot of us have these kind of thoughts, like I just don't wanna do it, I hate this. Okay? All that's gonna do is make you feel really like stressed and bored and frustrated and stuff.
So you may start thinking like, the sooner I do this, the sooner it's done and I can move on, right? Maybe that makes me feel more committed to it. Like I just wanna kind of knock this out. Maybe I have a thought that you know, even if I mess this up I can fix it. Like if you have more of a thought of like, I don't know how to do this, I'm gonna mess this up, it's like no matter what happens, I will fix that too, right? People have messed it up before and then they just get a notice to change it. It's not the end of the world like everybody wants to believe. And so you're gonna wanna start like figuring out, especially if you procrastinate around something, like for some of us in our jobs, we procrastinate around the same sort of tasks over and over again.
Once you become aware of why you are doing it, you become conscious instead of just like, you know, like, oh, I'm always putting off doing my reports or I'm always putting off doing the trainings I'm supposed to do. You can get to like, why am I putting those off? Like what feelings come up for me when I'm trying to do those things? And if you start noticing like, yeah, I feel really inadequate, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, I feel like they're all gonna find out I'm a fraud. I feel like stressed that I'm not gonna do it right and my manager's gonna get mad at me once I know that I can start working on like how do I wanna change how I think about this and how I feel about this? Like what would I have to think in order to feel committed to it, in order to feel motivated, in order to feel calm about it, in order to feel, you know, neutral.
Just like it is what it is, I have to get it done right? When you start asking those questions, you can start changing how you feel about it. Now one last thing I will say before I sort of wrap this up is what I mentioned kind of earlier is that if you are not giving yourself actual breaks, like actual rest, your brain will take it. It just will. Part of this is not to say like you can learn these tricks to be able to change your thoughts or feelings so that you're gonna go, go, go all the time so that you're gonna like just push through and have eight hour, you know, all of a sudden you're gonna have a different brain. That's not how it works. Your brain really can only focus as much as it can focus. And so you have to learn how to partner with your brain and everyone's brain is gonna be different.
Some people are neurodivergent, some people are gonna have, you know, different processing issues. And so you're gonna have to figure out like how does my brain work? Going back to like the shame and the guilt, like the more you take that off and you just get curious about how does my brain work, right? Maybe I can only focus for 20 minutes at a time. Okay? And I would, I like to be able to focus into like deep work for two hours. Sure, but my brain maybe doesn't do that. So I can let go of that pipe dream and I can just figure out like how can I break up my day into these 20 minute blocks and how can I actually give myself some actual rest without guilt? So I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes from 11 to 1130 to scroll because I need that time to kind of numb out or I'm gonna, whatever my rest might be, I might wanna read, I might wanna do something else.
Like the more you do that, the more you actually like build in like real rest for yourself without guilt, the less you'll have this need and the urgency to procrastinate. I liken this to an analogy, an example I like to give my clients is like, imagine if you were going to a trainer, you were gonna work out with a trainer and when you were working out, let's say like you think you're working out for an hour and you're gonna work out and towards the end of the hour the trainer's like, okay, let's just do one more exercise. And you're like, okay, so then you do one more and it's like, okay, one more, let's do one more set of this. Okay, now let's just, let's just do a couple more legs. We didn't do legs today. You're like, okay, like 10 more minutes legs, and like you're kind of tapping out and then your trainer's like, okay, but let's just get some abs in, right?
You're gonna stop trusting that person. You're gonna be like, I'm not gonna go back to this trainer because like it's, it's never ending. That's how we are with our own brains. Like I feel like we have decided that we have to do all the things all the time. And so even when we are exhausted, even when we have put in a lot of work, like we are constantly like, well I should also get up and organize and I should clean my house and I should, you know, volunteer for the PTA and I should be reading more and I should start that side hustle. And I, you know, constant. So it's like anytime you have any break, we're like feeling it with things or we're creating more on our to-do list or we're creating more expectations for ourselves. And so your brain doesn't trust you anymore, right?
Your brain's like, I'm gonna take my breaks whether you want me to or not, I'm gonna like veer us towards dopamine because you are not gonna give it to me. You think you're the energizer bunny and you're gonna keep going and I need us to stop. And I feel like when you create a little bit more trust with yourself where you're like, no, this is all we're doing for today. Like this is how much I'm gonna work. This is what I need to get done. I don't need to be productive all hours of the day. That's not possible. My brain's never gonna do that. So what can I get done and when can I rest? When you implement those things, it becomes easier not to procrastinate and then you're still gonna, you're still going to because dopamine just feels better. And so you're still gonna want that hit, but then you can like use these techniques to kind of slow yourself down, right?
To bring yourself back. Then you can be like, you know what? I do have a lot of rest today. So like pushing myself when I feel frustrated or stressed or bored is not gonna be as hard. Like I know I can feel those emotions and do it because I'm gonna get this actual lunch break where I'm not gonna do work and I'm gonna like go for a walk or I'm gonna read my book. It becomes easier to push through. The reason it's hard for us to push through is because it's never ending. It's like I push through this and then I have to push through something else and then I have to push through something else. And so your brain's like, nah, we're good. We're just gonna scroll for four hours. And so if you don't want that to happen, like build in actual rest and then give these strategies a try.
All right. I hope that was helpful. I hope you all start implementing it. It's not gonna be all or nothing. You don't have to all of a sudden never procrastinate anymore. Just start implementing one of these strategies. Just start noticing like where does the negative emotion come from? What am I thinking to feel a negative emotion towards this task? Do I wanna just feel that and do it anyway? Is there any way I can change it? Just start little bits here and there and you'll start noticing a big change. So I hope that was helpful and if it was, let me know what other topic you want me to put on this help series that I have so I can create more videos for you. And I will be back next week with another episode.

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