Episode 116: The Truth Behind Procrastination

Total Read Time: 13 Minutes

The therapy is a Christian podcast is all things mental health and Christ was pacifically talk about how mental health and God are merged together to foster growth, healing and making mental health a normal conversation. I'm your host Roslyn Rene, and welcome to the show.

Welcome, you are listening to the therapy as a Christian podcast. I'm your host, Roslyn, Rene, welcome to another episode of the show. Hey, sis, how you doing? So hello to all of my new listeners. I have gotten a ton of new listeners over the last couple of weeks. And I've never really done a full blown introduction into my podcast. So hey, sis. So let me just give a quick introduction. So hi, girl. My name is Robin Renee. I am the founder of that therapy is a Christian podcast where I talk about all things mental health and Christ, I share my mental health journey as a client, but as well as a professional on this podcast. And I really, really have a passion with teaching women, black women in particular, but I know that I serve beyond race, and gender and all of those things. So, but my focus is to really talk about how believers can really, really understand their mental health more and prioritize it. And another one of my titles that I love, love, love for a recent project that I launched is show up sis, where I teach ambitious women of faith, how they can overcome procrastination and self sabotage. So they create routines that work become more productive and disciplined, and overall fulfilled. And so with that being my title, as well as having the opportunity to serve you all in this capacity, I have to break down some things which y'all real quick. So with the title of this episode, the truth about procrastination, I have served an array of different women. My goal this year, and I'm shooting for it, because it's July, so I have six months to fulfill it, is to help over 100 Women in some level in some shape or form with their time management. And I have been pretty much really, really trying to understand God, like how did you get me into this space? You know, yeah, I know, you hear me talk about mental health and what led me to go into go get, you know, therapy and all of that, and healing from trauma, healing from parental trauma, which I'm still working on girl healing from rejection and insecurity and lack of worthiness and this mindset, where I just don't feel worthy of myself and learning how to self care and learning how to show up and learning how to be the best version of myself and learning how to operate in my creativity and knowing how to trust God in the process, how to build a relationship with God, what does that even look like? How do you step out of religion and into relationship? How do you then begin to deal with shame and not feeling like you're shameful when you come to God, and really knowing how to be vulnerable with the Father, and how to pray and all these types of things that I talked about for years on this podcast. But one of the core things I really have learned about myself over the last couple of months is the ability to identify when I am doubting myself, and also when I am really really self sabotaging. And really like when God play something on my heart, not stepping into it, not stepping into stepping into it out of fear. And so I try to be extremely transparent on this podcast because I know that transparency is a value point. And as part of the culture of my community, I think that you all have become so transparent with me about your stories about the things that you experience, about all the stuff that you're going through staying committed to God in that way. But I think that there's a lot of us who are walking through you know, just life in general feeling like we're not good enough feeling like we're disappointing God or feeling as if we're lazy or feeling as if we are not fulfilling our gifts. But even if we are doing these things, and we're walking towards that we have this mindset that I'm not doing enough. And I really wanted to talk about that in some layer in some capacity in this episode when we're talking a little bit about procrastination, because and I want to give glory to God in this way and say, Yo, whatever is on your mind whatever is on your heart, wherever you literally don't have any context that God has called you to do, and you have no idea how to do it,

go after it. And I even mean that in the sense of your mental health. But even if you've gotten signs to leave a relationship, if you have gotten the thought process to put boundaries up for your parents, if you are working through rejection, if you are really working on your body image, and really looking at yourself in love, and working on weight loss, or whatever that looks like whatever this looks like, for you don't procrastinate on it. And this is why. So as I was kind of scrolling through Instagram, the other day, I came across this post, which is the title of this episode that talks about the truth of procrastination. And I clicked on the post, read, read the post. And I'm actually going to link the actual post in the show notes. So if you want to just click in and you have Instagram, it will take you straight to the post. But this is what the post is about the truth of procrastination. And it was by a lady that says the Her name is Hey, Bobby banks, so I'm giving credit to her for this post. But it says procrastination and this is why I want to bring this up. As I've worked with multiple clients related to time management. One of the layers that I saw was that people procrastinate on their gifts, the things I desire to do anything in general, even if it's just doing things for work, doing things that they just want to do, or doing things that they feel like in their heart, God is pushing them to do that procrastinate on it. And I always was asking God like, Where does this come from? Like, what is the layer on this? And this is why I said go after whatever it is God is placing on your heart, even if you don't have any context, if you don't have any other direction, but put out or do what it is that you have been placed on your heart to do. So here's the truth behind procrastination procrastination has this is what the post is, it has nothing to do with laziness. We do it because of an inability to manage negative feelings around a task. It's an emotional regulation problem, not a time management problem. It can be fueled by low self esteem, self doubt and anxiety. It is a form of self sabotage. And this is what the Post said. Do you know that your brain is biologically hardwired to procrastinate? We naturally retreat from activities that we consider psychologically or physically uncomfortable. I e, getting out of a relationship I IE, stopping some form of something we're addicted to. I II putting boundaries up with family I IE, doing something that God has placed on our heart to do business wise or, or ambitious, wise or desired wise, I II girl getting up at five in the morning, I II working on something we know we need to get done, but we pushed it off. This is what the this is what the post is. If you want to stop procrastinating procrastinating, downloading time management apps or learning new strategies for self control will not help you in the long run. Instead, the main steps to tackling procrastination are self forgiveness, self compassion, and reframing the task. Repeat that again. Self forgiveness, self compassion, reframing the task. Self forgiveness, research has shown that people who forgive themselves for procrastinating end up doing it less later. Self forgiveness supports productivity because it allows a person to stop beating themselves up for not getting things done in the past. So this can look like when you are

setting out to do something, let's just say you want to make a to do list for the day I'm gonna go real simple and real broad in a second. So let's say you're setting out to do a to do list for the day. And you don't accomplish anything on the list. What happens is you beat yourself up, and then you completely completely shut down. And don't do anything for the rest of the week. Why? Because you beat yourself up. You don't sell forget, you don't start new or fresh the next day. This looks like and I don't know why I'm on the aspect of relationships. This is where you beat yourself up for going back to talk to a guy and you stay down on yourself when you feel like God is angry with you or you feel like you just don't have what it takes to stay in a self control state. And so because of that you just beat yourself up. Why? Because it's easier to beat yourself up sis. It's easier to turn in on yourself and talk slow down to yourself because that's the resolve that we normally choose. When we feel like We've done something wrong, we just punish ourselves. Instead of walking in the self forgiveness of, it's okay that I messed up. And starting fresh, there's nothing wrong with starting fresh, even if it's the middle of the year, you do not have to start at the top of the year to do something, you can start on August 15, it is August 15. For you, you can start on August 2, if it's August 2 for you like you don't have to wait to start whenever you can do it whenever you decide to. The next one is self compassion, showing compassion, acceptance and kindness to yourself is shown to boost motivation, enhanced self worth, thus making you more productive. So compassion is where you hear people say being kind to yourself, finding the ability to accept and show kindness to yourself, most of us are not kind to ourselves, because we have never seen an example of what kindness looks like. And so because we're not kind to ourselves, we feel unmotivated, we feel like we lack worthiness, we feel like we can't be productive. And it goes back to what I said, where you turn in on yourself. Or sometimes for some people, it can turn the other way where we then blame everybody else for the reason why things aren't being done, or the things aren't showing up the way they should. We blame God, we don't like any personal accountability, why? Because we just blame God everything. Instead of really, really looking at the truth of what's happening, because a lot of times too, it's not even the enemy. A lot of times too, it's the self imposed his self imposed decisions we make. And we don't allow Holy Spirit to really, really change us from the inside. So we just blame other people as well showing compassion to ourselves. And then third, and finally, is reframing. Reframing the task by considering a positive aspect of it can alleviate the negative feelings associated with it. And I'm going to tell y'all, when I saw this post, I said to myself, the Holy Spirit is real. I had no idea that teaching clients and I'm going to give my example and then I'm gonna go to the what I'm trying to talk about.

I had no idea that starting doing time management coaching last year would lead to where I'm at now. But I also had no idea what God was doing. When I was with clients on a daily basis, not trying to really do nothing special just really, really teach clients. Teach them what I knew, teach them what I thought I knew, teach them what I felt like God was showing me, that guy would then take the things that I was understanding and put it to his feet and make his spirit be the leading force behind it. Moving with limited knowledge I talked about that last week about there's no perfect timing, for anything moving in limited knowledge and space. Because there's a lot of times where we think that because guy may give us one thing, he may have given you an idea and didn't really say anything else. But here's the thing, you got the resources to go research to Google all of this stuff, that when He puts His Spirit on something, you may have no idea what he's doing. You may not have the recollection to understand it. But when you start, when you take the step, he will open the resources up. This is a year and a half later, I'm being exposed to something he was already showing in the spirit. To prove to me not only that, but that you're in the right path. And so I say this to say that there is nothing that the enemy can put his hands on when it's God. There's nothing a person in this lifetime to put their hands on when it's God. And so when you say to yourself, I'm a procrastinator, when you say to yourself, I can't do it. When you say I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I've messed up so many times I, I I don't start in them. I stop and then I keep starting and I stopped. Have you asked why you keep starting and stopping? Have you said to him show me the stronghold that's putting that's that's impacting me being able to show up for you.

Have you asked him that question? And so I say this to say going back to the point of procrastination, most of the time we stopped because we don't understand that our thought process towards something is so negative and unhealthy that we don't know how to reframe it and talk through it. And so I teach this in show UPSes I teach women how they can change their self sabotaging thoughts and reframe them into more compassion. it so forgiving, and really reframing things for them so that they can be productive, they can walk and be fulfilled, they can create routines at work that push them towards and catapult them towards the the things that they desire. And so since this is really, really, more than anything, this is really, really your time to step into that. Because it's not on any form of what this, what this talks about, again, you can have the best planner in the world, you can have the best system in the world. But if you don't mentally feel like you can do it, if you don't mentally know that it's possible, when it's not simple to you, when it seems complicated, and most of them came to me or like, I feel like I gotta have a type A personality, you don't really have to have a type A personality to be productive, you just don't. Efficiency has nothing to do with what type of personality you have, is not. And let me just reiterate this, it has nothing to do with laziness. It has nothing to do with laziness. Why? Because laziness is like intentional, intentional, doing not doing something. And also to laziness allows you to just pass by, y'all are thinking about this, these are thoughts that come to your mind constantly. Like, gosh, I wish I could do this, gosh, I wish I could do this, gosh, I wish I could do this. Sometimes you just need community. Sometimes you need to really deal with your mindset. Sometimes you need to be able to know people got you can hold you up. But most of the time, what happens is we don't even trust people to help us. Because we've been walking so far deep into what we have been through and hurt wise, and we don't even open ourselves or people that work for us to receive help. But the other thing is, we push off time even more of what is it that I need to go to God about. And God has already shown you, you don't need further confirmation.

You don't need for the confirmation on the areas of the things. And if it's healing it is I need to go to counseling. It's your counselors hitting you every day with or every week with the same issue and you're ignoring it, you're procrastinating on something, again, that ain't got nothing to do with laziness. That doesn't have anything to do with how you manage time. It's an emotional regulation issue. A you got to deal with that. You got to start facing it. And so when I talk about the truth of procrastination, procrastination is more much more than just task driven things. It's handling things in general, emotional things, adult things that we just try to bypass. And so again, in talking about this to say I say this, I say this to say, How would your life evidence of the power of God? How are you exuding the power of God in the things that you're doing? And most of the time, we've been so hurt by so many people, you're not negating hurt, because I promise you, I have been there, I have walked that path. And I still walked that path at times. It is so hard when you have been hurt. It is so hard. It is so challenging. It is so overwhelming. It is so tiresome. You feel like what is the world coming to but I promise you there is a work happening. I talked about last week how we don't know the things that God is doing in the background, we don't know. But we cannot also blame and feel like we don't have some level of accountability and responsibility to the things that we're doing. The things that we're going after the things that we're trying to do. If you want this, you can't ignore it, you can't ignore something you want to heal, you can't hide something you want to see. You can't hide something that you really, really, really know if you addressed it would work. But sometimes you don't even know it or worry because you've never taken the opportunity to really, really look at it. And so don't procrastinate on that. Don't self sabotage your future or the things that you desire because you don't want to deal with it. I have complacency. And so I'm talking about this as the truth of procrastination because it is more than just tasks. It is our destinies. It is what we're going after it's our children. It's believing and trusting God and when we're in the waiting season because sometimes we procrastinate in the feeling of Will God show up for me. And so we don't act in faith because we think he just won't that's self sabotage. So I want to just like give this to your as a moment to say like it this is more for you than ces I promise you show up. CES is the is the program and I mean that not in the sense of just like trying to give you another thing but If you've heard this message, and you've heard it this week, and it really touched you, I promise you, please, please please sign up for the waitlist, sign up for the waitlist. The link is in the show notes. I know it'll bless you. I know it'll help you and go after the things that you need. I am so so excited that I get to serve the women that I get to serve and that they get to show up by themselves. They get to show up in every area of their lives authentically because they worked through and are working through self sabotaging thoughts and can't recognize them. So if this was helpful to you, I pray that it was definitely definitely share this episode with someone and if you need anything if you want to talk in DM says let's talk in DMS girl like I'm always down for the conversation. Hit me up in the DMS on Instagram. I can't wait to help you and if this episode was helpful to