1. Perfectionism
2. ProcrastinationThese are the two most common excuses I hear: I haven’t done this yet as it’s not ready, it’s not right (aka PERFECT). This is the excuse that clients give for not achieving something they want.
Now, this might be one of my business clients, one of my Rapid Transformational Therapy clients or even one of my Pilates clients – it really does not matter, the effect is the same. We stay exactly where we are because we are waiting for everything to be perfect…….and let’s face it, it never is! It’s never the perfect time to start your new Pilates class, it’s never the perfect time to launch a new product, it’s never the perfect time to complete that course you’ve been longing to take, it’s never the perfect time…
So, if you wait for Perfect, you will be greatly disappointed because you’ll stay stuck exactly where you are. It’s such a common excuse that we all use (yep, me too). But why do we use this excuse? Quite simply it’s the stories that we tell ourselves; the stories that we tell ourselves that we are not good enough, that if we put something out there, people might criticise us, judge us etc etc. It comes from our limiting beliefs around self-worth issues about ourselves that we are not good enough.
Many years ago, my business mentor said to me, “whatever you put out there, remember 7/10 is GOOD enough”. It is far better to start, to put something out rather than ending up putting nothing out or doing nothing because you are waiting for it to be perfect. Great advice that I have stuck with and has helped me grow in all areas of my life.
Remember each time you use that excuse you are allowing that limiting belief to become even stronger, so let’s start getting rid of these limiting beliefs by no more excuses and doing whatever it is you haven’t been doing because you were waiting for things to be PERFECT 🙂
Now, good old Procrastination – this gets us all at some stage, but some of us let it become a way of life.
Like Perfection, it comes from our limiting beliefs, but this time our beliefs are more about FEAR, fear of actually being successful, or even fear of failure if things don’t work out quite how we hoped. Fear that we might not be able to cope if we are successful etc….FEAR of change, that doing the things we say we are going to do (but then don’t do them) will lead to change and that creates FEAR in us.
So what do we do? We self-sabotage by procrastinating – by not getting things done. We make excuses that we can’t do such and such because we are too busy, we don’t have the time, we don’t have the money, we don’t have the tools, we don’t have the support – lots and lots of excuses we tell ourselves, and guess what? These excuses keep us stuck exactly where we are.
Now I’m not just talking about business here, let’s relate it to weight loss – typical excuses I hear… I don’t have the time to plan healthy meals, I’ll have to cook a different meal for the rest of the family, healthy foods cost too much, I have to eat on the go such a lot etc etc. We are always making excuses to ourselves about why we cannot get something done!
Next time you hear that little voice in your head making excuses, you have two choices:
1. Accept it as a truth and carry on as you have in the past = stay stuck.
2. Ask yourself “How has that worked for me before?” or “Is that really true?”
If the answer is no, then forget procrastinating and perfectionism, do something different and actually make a step towards whatever it is you want to achieve.
A couple of tips to help you:
1. No matter what anyone says or what you tell yourself, 7/10 is good enough 🙂
2. Use a diary and schedule in blocks of times to do the things that need doing and stick with it – even sticking with this 80% of the time will transform the amount of stuff you get done.
3. Your brain can only ever focus on one thing at once (apologies to all my lovely female clients, but this is true) – multitasking means we split our brain power and our focus is nowhere! Focus on one task at once.
4. Keep things simple – nothing ever has to be that complicated.
5. My all-time favourite – my mantra is CONSISTENCY. Consistency is sooooooo powerful, you know how much I go on about the compound effect: doing one small thing every single day will totally transform everything, but you have to be CONSISTENT.
I’m sure you will have noticed that my newsletters contain mistakes, spelling and grammatical errors etc. – does it bother me? Nope! I commit to doing a weekly newsletter and I allocate 30 minutes per week which means that I do not spend hours trying to make it perfect, nor waste time trying to be anything other than me 🙂
7/10 has worked perfectly well for me for several years, so go on: try it and get stuff done!