Are You Wasting Time?

Famed Science Fiction writer and author, Robert Heinlein once said, “In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until we ultimately become enslaved by it.”

Are you allowing this to happen in your life?
Is it keeping you from accomplishing what’s important to you?

We sit down to take an action step that will move us forward, but often we first look at our email, we click on an inciting link, and suddenly an hour of our precious time is gone. We remember a call we forget to return.  We decide to return the call and another hour is gone - on and on it goes.  The time we allotted for a “needle moving action” comes and goes and we didn’t accomplish our task.  This happens day after day and we wonder why we aren’t moving forward. 

Let me explain what’s happening and what you can do about it.

Bob Proctor describes a paradigm as a mental program that has almost exclusive control over our habitual behavior and almost all of our behavior is habitual.  The previous example is a classic case of our paradigms at work.

Our paradigms thinks its job is to keep you safe by keeping you right where you are.  A paradigm will do what it can to keep you from taking those actions that will change your results.  This applies to going to the gym, eating better, different work habits and stepping outside your comfort zone.  Our paradigms pretty much run our lives and they are in our unconscious.

How do we bring them to our conscious minds so we can change them?

The first and most important step is to notice when a paradigm is surfacing. When you plan to take an action step, be vigilant and notice if you become distracted.  If you start, as in the first example to check your email or drift away from the task at hand, tell the paradigm its not going to win today.  Be firm with your paradigm.  Next, put your attention on how you will feel when you’ve accomplished the task at hand.  From the feeling , “ it’s all done and done well”,  take a step towards completing the task.

This sends a message to your unconscious that you’re moving forward and not allowing your paradigms to win.

An important tool we all possess that can use to help us stay on course and not become distracted is our calendar.  To-do lists aren’t as effective as a calendar because we can pick and choose what we want to do and skip the important items. I call to-lists, roll over lists. We can also become overwhelmed by a lengthy to do-list.

Map out on your calendar specific times for specific action steps.  Estimate the time it may take for a task or schedule how much time you wish to spend in that sitting.  This keeps you from going into overwhelm because you have a specific plan.   It’s all laid out.

Schedule the most important action steps first.  The ones that will move your initiative forward the most.  When the scheduled time arrives take the step without distraction.

If you do this on a consistent basis you will move forward and your habits will start to change.

We can bring our dream into reality one step at a time.  Next time I will share with you the most common ways our paradigms stop us and how to change them.

To your dream,
Cyn

P.S. Would you like help in becoming aware of your paradigms that are holding you back?  This is my specialty.  Schedule a Discovery Session and let’s talk.

 

 

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