It has been quite a while since I’ve posted, for the lack of consistency I must apologize. Which of course got me thinking (a dangerous activity if there ever was one):

Why do we put things off that we’ve committed to do?

Reason #1

The commitment was a ‘should’ not a ‘will’. It is a goal, activity, action item that other people believe is important…. but I don’t. It was easier to make what I call a fake committment than to tell that person I wasn’t interested.

Sometimes in my life that is because the person ‘shoulding’ is an authority figure, other times it is that I didn’t want to hurt their feelings – regardless of the reason I ended up disappointing them (the not doing part) and myself (not keeping a committment).

Do you have any shoulds in your life? Time to either get rid of them – or figure out a personal why and make the commitment into a will do!

Reason #2

Once I didn’t do it once (or twice, or for some time frame)…. it was harder to RESTART than it was to beak myself up about it.

Exercise falls right into the middle of this reason for me. One day missed, turns into a few, into weeks, into – yup forever. The best fix in my world is to reexamine what my goal is and to turn the committment back into little action.

Need an example? Stretching for 15 min/day… easy right? Then I can start to expand on it if I want, but regardless 15 minutes of stretching is still better than NOTHING. What is better than nothing that you can commit to doing today?

Reason #3

Overwhelm caused inaction. I don’t know about you, but in my life there are waves of overwhelm that come crashing down over me on occasion.

The times when I feel like I have a handle on life, work, etc – then SPLASH everything is just littered on the beach (or worse washing out to sea). Then I’m standing there staring at it all – not even able to decide what to pick up first.

My only solution is to choose 3 little things that I have complete control over and do them – leaving the rest on the beach, until I can get something done.

Let’s face it doing nothing sure doesn’t help – but doing everything isn’t an option either!

Reason #4

It was toooooooooo hard. There is a 4a and 4b to this reason.

• #4a – I’m missing a skill that I need meet my commitment. To fix that, I need to learn it – pay someone else to do that part – use my resources and move forward.
  
• #4b – I didn’t break it down into small enough chunks. I need to make sure that I have all my commitments broken into chunks that I can handle. Little pieces that I can accomplish. It is my need to be able to look both back and forward and believe I can do it.

Reason #5

I got lazy. ‘nuf said right? Well I think that laziness tends to be either just that OR some combination of the first 4 reasons – examine that and then decide what you want to do.

What’s your reason? and do you even want to ‘fix’ it?