Content

• Steps
• Method 1 of 3: Change Your Thinking
• Method 2 of 3: Unleash Your Inner Potential
• Method 3 of 3: Give Yourself Incentives
• Similar articles

Sometimes it’s hard to get started — to finish your homework, call an old friend, go to university, or make an old dream come true. Procrastination can be associated with fear, low self-esteem, lack of encouragement, and even growing doubts about one's abilities and worth. To convince yourself to act and overcome procrastination, you need certain tactics. It's time to develop faith in yourself, use your inner potential, and persuade yourself to act.

Steps

Method 1 of 3: Change Your Thinking

1. 1 Limit negative thoughts. Negative thoughts tend to program you for negative outcomes. Perhaps you underestimate yourself by underestimating your skills or innate talents to the point where all your efforts are doomed to failure even before you try to do something, which creates a vicious circle of failure. Focus on reassuring thoughts. Part of the process is learning to recognize what is behind your negativity in order to "let go" and replace the negative thought with a positive one. Instead of worrying about completing a task, ask yourself what makes you anxious. Fear of defeat? Loss of control? Once you identify your source of fear, you can better control your reactions.
2. 2 Don't be afraid of defeat. We are all wrong. Moreover, we constantly make mistakes. In fact, the most successful people fail the most because they take serious risks and learn from previous failures. Think of Abraham Lincoln, who failed as an entrepreneur, went bankrupt twice and lost 26 campaigns before he came to his calling in politics. Think of Thomas Edison, whose teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything” and who was fired from his first two jobs because of “unproductiveness.” Achieving major goals in life is impossible without “weaning” from the fear of failure. One way to do this is through new activities - try yoga, painting, music - and retrain your brain by playing with failure to overcome it.
3. 3 Remove the word “give up” from your vocabulary. Along with the ability to accept mistakes, affirm for yourself an unbending attitude towards your goals. Theodore Roosevelt once said: "Only that which is given by efforts, pain and overcoming difficulties is worthy of possession in the world." Remember that accomplishments must come with difficulty, and that you don't have the right to easy success, so don't be discouraged if you're struggling or failing.
4. 4 Don't compare yourself to others. There will always be someone in the world smarter, more educated, more successful and more popular than you. Judging yourself by the standards of others is hopeless; it will only diminish your motivation and make you feel inferior. Realize that these feelings come from within you - you yourself create comparisons and feelings of inferiority; they don't "make" you feel that way. Try to think like this. Likewise, you can plan strategically to keep yourself from comparing. For example, if you are sitting in the front in a yoga class, you may feel insecure about your body. Just don't look at the other students.
5. 5 Don't worry about what others think of you. Successful people are not afraid to take risks, no matter what others think. Maybe you're holding yourself back out of fear that you don't fit, or that your peers doubt you, that they'll look askance at you, or tell you that you won't succeed. Maybe they are right. What if not? One way to deal with these thoughts is to create a hierarchy. Make a list of the people whose opinions are really important to you: your family, your parents, your significant other. Then work your way down the list in descending order of importance. Your boss and friends should mean a little less to you than your family, and your colleagues even less. Until the time you get to casual acquaintances and strangers, you will see that their opinion should mean nothing at all to you.

Method 2 of 3: Unleash Your Inner Potential

1. 1 Examine your motives. What do you want to do? Are you aspiring to go to university? Do you have ambitions to move to a big city or to patent an invention? Examine your goals. Know what you want and how to achieve it. Try to put your thoughts on paper. What are your specific goals? When do you want to reach them? How do you intend to achieve them? Also develop a reasonable timeline and sequence for implementation. This will give specificity to your plans and give you the stamina you need.
2. 2 Think big but realistic at the same time. If you set low expectations, you usually expect to get less bang for your buck. Bigger results come with higher expectations and higher risk. You might be satisfied with going to an intermediate university, but why not aim higher? Could you find yourself in a prestigious educational institution or even get a scholarship to study there? Try it. The risks are small compared to the potential outcome. At the same time, keep your expectations reasonable. A childhood dream of becoming a president, a professional athlete, or a famous actress will likely not come true because very few people achieve it.
3. 3 Get out of your comfort zone. Inertia can keep you from doing great things. It's easy to get stuck in a routine, a psychological space where you feel comfortable, safe, and calm. But it can also hinder your development. Risk and stress are two things that help us grow. Although staying in a comfortable zone promises you a stable and sustainable activity, if you leave it, you will get the opportunity to make new creative decisions and reach new heights. Try to change your relationship with an “inconvenience”. Instead of looking at it as something to avoid, tell yourself that discomfort is a necessary condition for growth. Your comfort, then, may be a sign of a well-trodden routine.
4. 4 Take time to develop yourself every day. How much time do you spend studying or improving your mental abilities? Do you realize that this is a habit of successful people? Do you think knowledge is power? Try to develop new ideas or skills to avoid becoming relaxed and satisfied with your life.Take time every day to enrich yourself as a person, even if it is only an hour - consider it spiritual and intellectual food. Read good books, read newspapers, listen to motivational tapes, be interested in different ideas, and be inquisitive about the world.
5. 5 Remember past successes. Remind yourself of past successes, not failures that have befallen you. In the diary, you can mark and honor the events that went according to your plan to create a tangible record of what happened. Even though you need to live in the present and not the past, from time to time, remember your moments of triumph as additional motivation.

Method 3 of 3: Give Yourself Incentives

1. 1 Write down your goals. Put your goals and reasons for moving towards them on paper. A biology student can easily get tired and lose interest in their studies. But the memory of why he learns - because he wants to develop life-saving drugs, or to become a teacher like the one that inspired him - is a powerful motivator. Print your goals and hang them on your office wall, on your computer, or in your bedroom or bathroom mirror. Keep them where you will encounter them often. This will help you stay focused and stay on course.
2. 2 Move targets. One big and specific goal usually motivates more than a series of smaller ones. At the same time, however, your main aspiration often seems too distant or impossibly overwhelming. Don't let yourself get discouraged. This kind of thinking usually kills motivation, and people tend to abandon their projects. If that's how you feel, "move your goals." If you're writing a novel, for example, put the big picture aside for a while and work on the current chapter or on checking twenty pages a day. Focus on small, specific tasks and you will gradually move forward, this will help you finish what you started.
3. 3 Agree with yourself. Chronic pipers often need more specific stimuli. Set performance standards and reward yourself. Rewards can be small or large. Pamper yourself with a short break as soon as you finish some work. Did you pass the exams with excellent marks at the end of the year? It deserves a bigger reward: give yourself a whole weekend to celebrate with your friends. Try to use rewards that will motivate you to move on.
4. 4 Consider best and worst case scenarios. Stop and think: what is the best thing that can happen if you succeed in making your plans a reality? What's the worst part? If you are truly committed to a goal, remind yourself of what you can potentially achieve by continuing towards it, or how much you can potentially lose if you fail. Weigh these two options. What can you expect if you apply for a job in your dream area - architecture? What's the worst thing that can happen if you fail? In most cases, this worst case boils down to fear - fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of regret - while a positive outcome promises quite tangible benefits.

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