I’m a firm
believer that truth finds you when you’re ready for an evolution. In 2013 I experienced
a huge shift that forced me to re-evaluate my life. I was a new mom, my relationship just ended,
and for a reason unknown to me I had decided it was the right time quit my well-paying
job and become a full-time artist.
I honestly
don’t know what I was thinking.
Fear became
a huge part of my life, and in learning how to support my emotional maturation,
I had to recognize fear when it made itself visible, and also how to redefine
my understanding of fear, and its purpose in my life. Facing my fears instead
of running from it, I learned to sit still, converse and listen to what it had
to teach me. By giving fear space to reveal the parts of myself I hadn’t paid
attention to, it exposed a glaring flaw in the way I was living my life.
Procrastination.
I had
developed a toxic relationship with procrastination that was eating away at my
potential, and fighting a constant battle with an intense fear of failure.
Listening to fear, exposed these 3 truths in my life:
I was afraid to fail because I felt chronically
unprepared. When an
event, performance or speaking engagement rolled around on my calendar, I felt
a panic that stemmed from the glaring question “Why haven’t I started yet?” Started
event prepping, started writing and memorizing the poem, started getting my
talking points in order, why wasn’t the bare minimum even done?!
My fear turned into arrogance. I had grown comfortable in how good
at my job I was, I no longer felt I needed adequate prep time, because even at
my worst and most hurried, I was still better than good. What that arrogance
did was lull me into a false sense of security. By settling into
procrastination, I had allowed myself to shrink into the most basic version of
what I had to offer.
It aggravated my fear of being “found out”. What if people came to their senses
and realized I’m not as good as they thought? This fear of being found out
permeated so many of my thoughts, that I second guessed myself when accepting
bookings, and side eyed when people expressed a desire to work with or even just
have a meeting with me. It was also very common for my emotions to swiftly
toggle between arrogance and feeling like an imposter.
If you’ve just
had a “it’s me” moment, here are 3 tips that can help you get your life in
order.
Keeping your day planner current and on
schedule. Write
everything down, it’s a practice that will simplify your life and your
organizational skills.
Creating a de-stressing routine for when you
start to freak out. Because
the freak out will still happen at times, and having a self-care routine will
help squash many melt downs.
Create and stick to a “get ready” timeline. Understanding that the panic sets
in when there are too many tasks and not enough time to accomplish them, accurately
analyze the time it will take to prep and get ready for whatever you have
coming up, and put together a timeline to make it happen in bite-sized, doable
tasks.
The hard
truth; procrastination is a dim to your shine, but once you allow your fear to
teach you what you have been missing, you will be able to create the tools for
a more emotionally stress free life. Here’s to kicking procrastination’s butt
and truly living your best life ever! full-width
0 Comments