Sometimes you just have to....

Have you noticed, you can talk yourself into and out of doing most things.

• We tell ourselves we are tired, so can't / shouldn't go to the gym tonight. The fact that it's raining, you're cold and don't fancy getting wet are probably the real reasons - but you convince yourself that it is your "tiredness" and you will feel better tomorrow so you'll bail tonight.
• We tell ourselves we really are hungry. It may only be 2 hours since lunch time, but because we are bored, because we don't want to face whatever it is that is looming we make excuses and make several cups of tea and eat cake / biscuits / fruit our bodies don't need just to avoid doing the task.

• We tell ourselves we can, we tell ourselves that if we just work on this for just 5 more minutes we can then stop (BTW this is a great technique if you are struggling - tell yourself you will work on something for just 5 minutes and then you will stop and do something else / more interesting).
• We tell ourselves we don't care if it is raining outside, we are going to the gym no matter what. Our bodies may be creaking at the seams, we know that once we get into the routine everything will be OK and we also know we will be able to work through most of the aching we feel.

so - honesty time:

• What have you talked yourself into or out of doing recently?
• How do you think you could have handled the situation better?

In the case of talking ourselves out of doing those things we know we should do, these situations are our block points, these are de-railing our progress and with it our motivation. So next time you are faced with a deliberate attempt by yourself to not do something you know you should be doing - acknowledge it. Once you have acknowledged the fact you are deliberately procrastinating or not doing a task you can then talk yourself into doing it. This might sound strange, but once logic takes over the previous arguments don't usually stand the scrutiny. And if you do decide not to do something - at least you will have made a proper and conscious decision - and that's a good starting point to overcoming the procrastination habit.