How To Overcome Procrastination With EFT Tapping?
EFT Tapping For Procrastination
Are you tired of procrastinating taking actions until the last minute? In this blog, you will be knowing what could be the possible reasons that you procrastinate and how EFT Tapping technique can stop it from becoming a habit!
“I should be perfect at this or I shouldn’t do this at all!”
Have you ever found yourself thinking along these lines?
If yes, you might wish to know how did you end up reaching this stage. What caused you to think like this? And most importantly, is there a way out?
Let’s take this from the very beginning.
You just received a call that management is allotting you a new project. You are way too excited and your voice is enough for affirmation. It’s human nature to display exhilaration when starting a new project. As you fragment the project into small goals, the level of your excitement keeps elevating one goal after the other. It seems all lovely until you reach a saturation point. And right there you lose your momentum.
You do nothing. Either you get bored or find the next goal too hard to achieve.
Soon, you may end up losing all confidence and feeling useless.
If you’re reading this, I’m sure you don’t want to give up and work on your recently developed habit of procrastination.
Here’s everything you need to know about procrastination. From root causes to EFT Tapping Therapy that will help you reverse this habit; I have got you covered.
WHAT IS PROCRASTINATION?
Procrastination is the act of delaying, postponing or voluntarily putting off tasks despite knowing the negative consequences.
If you’ve ever delayed tasks unnecessarily until the last minute or past the deadline, you fall into the category of procrastinators.
The following are commonly said by procrastinators:
- Can’t it wait till tomorrow?
- I’m kinda busy! (Doing nothing goes silent)
- I’m gonna get to it… eventually!
- Oh, I’m currently in deep denial that that’s happening.
The bottom line that turns you into procrastination is the responsibility that comes on your shoulder as soon as you begin taking action.
Now, think about the last time you delayed a task. What did your inner thoughts look like?
Were you trying to get away from the assigned task? Did you lowkey wish everyone to forget you're accountable for that task?
If yes, you portrayed what I call 'winging it.'
When you try to wing it, it implies that you’re hoping and praying that nobody gets to hold you accountable, and you easily get away with all the responsibilities.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF PROCRASTINATION?
Before discussing causes, let’s have a look at what’s at stake with your tendency to procrastinate.
A large-scale study conducted in 2013 reported that procrastinators have the tendency to face approximately $15000 reduction in salary.
It’s a lot! Imagine how better off you would be if you cut off ties with procrastination.
Got all dreamy? Let’s turn it a reality.
I can't emphasise enough how procrastination doesn't bother people initially. It's because slowly and steadily procrastination is making way to your schedules.
It'll start bothering you when you have a wake-up call. Now you know you've submission one day from now. And you also have an idea of the amount of work you're supposed to do. Being so close to the deadline, it's even scarier to put in all those efforts now but you'll still do it!
Why? Because you know the thought of getting away with it was entirely wrong. Everybody knows you’re the person in responsibility and they won’t let you go without submission!
Here are some of the reasons behind your act of procrastination:
1.
Involuntary
No matter how hard you try, if you still put off things, it might be involuntary. You don't want this outcome nor do you desire to put things off, yet it happened! (2)
There’s an unconscious impulse for some people to procrastinate. Especially when there’s a belief system in place, which ends up encouraging the act of procrastination.
2.
Aversion to the task
It happens when you're overwhelmed with the task at hand. When the scope of that project is so so huge, you start to avoid the task in question and do not get started with it in the first place.
3.
Timing of the reward and punishment
If the timing to complete a task has a reward associated with it, you tend to procrastinate less. For example, I offer Soul to Soul group trainings where there are certain assignments that delegates have to submit. In my recent batch, when I associated a reward to the deadline say a free one-to-one coaching call with me, I saw the maximum number of submissions. The next week I allotted a slightly harder assignment that needed a little bit more effort in terms of putting research and case studies together. Suddenly, the number of people who were handing in their assignments in the wake of the free coaching call went down.
In a nutshell, if the timing associated with the reward or punishment is too long, the person is more likely to procrastinate. And with shorter timings, you procrastinate less. Only because it puts pressure and allows you to take a peaceful breath only after the work is done and dusted.
4.
Low confidence
There's a high tendency that you will find yourself procrastinating because of the most challenging task or tasks never done before. Similarly, low self-efficacy and consistent self-doubts are associated with procrastination.
5.
Depression
A person dealing with depression is not in an emotional state of motivation. They might have lost interest in activities they normally enjoyed. Therefore, their ability to plan out a basic sequence of actions and get things done is all cloudy.
In fact, those dealing with the label depression have a "what's the point" mentality. Since they are having difficulty stringing thoughts together and are not able to link the efforts required with the outcome, they are highly likely to procrastinate.
6.
Tiredness
It is more common for students. You'll often find them saying, "I don't have enough energy to begin the task."
Have you ever wondered why are students generally tired when they reach home after school? It doesn't only happen because they have done their studies all day. Even indulging in conversations with friends plays a major role. No textbooks or course curriculum can teach them as much as talking with friends. I have myself learnt a lot about politics, philosophy and life in general in those 3 am chai visits to my friend's room in college.
Similarly, for school-going students, chat times with friends play a crucial role in building their skills and personality that can be mentally exhausting. Therefore, they might want to skip homework and coaching classes or may altogether avoid starting a new hobby.
7.
Fear of failure
This is linked with the concept of perfectionism. You have your own standards set and past deliveries have successfully met them but now, you are struck. You are scared what if taking the next action results in failure.
8.
Resentment and rebellion
Procrastination can also happen when you are forced to do a task by your mentor or reporting manager. In such cases, rebellion ‘you’ are out and no matter how they try to lure you, you are not going to complete the task. These could be your common thoughts in such a situation.
- “I don’t want to do it!”
- “Don’t make me do it!”
- “Stay away from me!”
- “Leave me alone!”
9.
Sensation seeking
Sensation seeking is the form of procrastination where you look forward to completing your tasks last minute. You seek excitement as well as motivation in the adrenaline pumps you get when taking actions last minute. This also implies that you add spice to otherwise boring tasks by procrastinating them until the deadline is right above your head.
10.
Feeling anxious and/or overwhelmed
If you felt anxious with long to-do lists, believe it or not but you use procrastination as a coping mechanism.
Despite knowing that procrastination will worsen the situation for you, anxiety and other negative emotions succeed in throwing you off your to-do list. Be it the quantum of research required to complete a task or strict time management needed, you end up relying on procrastination simply because it was getting too much to handle.
HOW ARE PERFECTIONISM AND PROCRASTINATION RELATED?
What has been noticed is that some people procrastinate due to the presence of perfectionism.
Perfectionism is a trait that people usually run after. It is a belief that everything should be perfect. This wish of yours for everything to be correct or perfect ends up becoming a cause of procrastination.
Following are the types of perfectionism because of which people having a perfectionist mindset usually procrastinate:
Other people's opinions:
If you invest all the time you have in hand in thinking of consequences and worrying about other people's opinions, you have a perfectionist mindset. This might occur because you fear that the standards have already been set high. And any and every effort will fail to safeguard you from spoiling the image they have of you.
Fear of evaluation:
No one likes getting evaluated. Evaluation can be constructive but you might take it as critical judgement. This is why you might find yourself suddenly hating all of the attention. Be it in a social gathering or project submission, you’ll find a way out with one or the other excuse because exposures will result in evaluation.
Negative self-evaluation:
It is connected with both the types connected above. When born into this world, you were totally clueless about what's good or bad. In the process of learning, you might have found nosy people judging your actions in the name of quoting apt examples. These external opinions gathered inside your brain tend to self-evaluate and frame negative self-beliefs. This results in low self-esteem and negative self-evaluation. Also, this can be a major contributing factor in you leaving a project incomplete or your avoidance of taking up a new task.
Inability to experience satisfaction even after a successful performance:
When you had delivered successful results, the client was happy, and your team was all praises, yet you found yourself unhappy with the performance. This highlights yet another form of perfectionism. Now it might have happened because of preconceived results or hurdles you may have faced in the process of completing deliverables. But you start taking it personally and feel no matter what you can't be satisfied. Thoughts like "What if I don't meet my own standard of perfection", and "What if I didn't make it to the finish line" are the real reasons stopping you from taking action.
WHY DOES CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOUR HELP?
In 2020 and 2021, covid has been the ultimate procrastination excuse. You had covid or not, you got covid. Some were able to influence their workload with this excuse while some had to unveil the truth one day or another.
Since I've seen the corporate world from the inside, I can vouch for the fact that your behaviour is largely influenced by the working culture of the company you're a part of. If they take deadlines too seriously, you'll find yourself taking deadlines dead serious. But if the culture is flexible to embrace creativity, you can often find yourself losing momentum.
In my initial corporate life, I called myself lastminute.com.
By that, what I actually meant was that, if the submission deadline was 12th May 10 pm, I was incorporating final changes and polishing documents at 9:55 pm. In fact, quite a few times, I got late by 2 to 3 minutes. But not more than that. Had that been the case I would categorize myself as lazy!
Some years later when I joined another company, they were rigid with processes, workflow and deadlines. There that 'last minute' version totally disappeared and I worked as per the set standards. I never got late with submissions. In fact, I completed my tasks 2 to 3 days in advance.
That's when I realised changing habits is the only way to break the roots of continual procrastination.
It's good if you admit your flaws and say, "Yes, I'm a procrastinator!" And yes, it's even better to accept the areas you lack but the self-labelling of a procrastinator is threatening in the long run.
It was never your whole truth and hence ‘being a procrastinator’ should not be your habit.
Hence, whether you are an employee or run your own enterprise, changing your behaviour will truly help you in coming back to your initial form.
It is suggested to change your habits if:
- You’re still unaware of what work-life balance looks like.
- It’s getting too stressful.
- It’s getting too demanding on your body
EFT TAPPING FOR PROCRASTINATION
There's a technique that can help you eliminate the tendency to procrastinate from its root. It's called Emotional Freedom Techniques. It is based on the combination of ancient Chinese medicine with modern psychology and involves tapping on specific pressure points using fingertips while uncovering memories of procrastination.
The common meridian points used in EFT are:
- Karate chop point on the hand
- Eyebrow
- Temple
- Under the nose
- Chin
- Collarbone
- Under the arm
As you explore EFT therapy, you become more aware of your thoughts, belief and emotions.
If you would like to experience the power of EFT Tapping first-hand, just download the EFT Tapping Booklet below.
New to EFT? Learn how Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping heals.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (tapping) is clinically proven to lower stress, tension, anxiety, past-trauma to enable health, happiness and vitality.
HOW TO OVERCOME PROCRASTINATION WITH EFT TAPPING THERAPY
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT): EFT Tapping for procrastination
If you are a patient yourself, or healing a client, use the following steps:
Step 1:
First, use EFT tapping on what it feels like being a procrastinator
Explore the physical sensations in the body associated with procrastination and use the physical tension tapping process to reduce these sensations.
1.
To get started, begin by investigating the physical nature of procrastination.
Ask yourself the following questions to uncover procrastination and connect with the symptoms.
- What are you procrastinating?
- What actions or tasks are you procrastinating?
- If you were to complete the action or task, what is the worst that would happen?
- If you were not to complete the action or task, what is the best that would happen?
- What are you really fearing?
Now, bring into your awareness, a time when you procrastinated. Briefly, you can also ask yourself the following questions to explore further:
- What triggered you the most?
- Where in the body did you experience the symptoms triggering?
- What are the sensations like? For example, rough or smooth.
2.
Truth scale rating:
Say the belief out loud and use a truth scale rating to measure how true the statement is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is true and 1 is not true at all.
Just go with whatever comes up spontaneously, without thinking too much about it.
3.
Tap on the belief:
Tap on the presenting limiting belief and emotions to bring the VOC down till it feels manageable; or down by at least 1 point.
“Even though I am scared of writing my book and I lack the confidence that I am a good writer and can get it done, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”
Repeat this 3 times.
4.
Tap on the events:
Identify reinforcing events as well as previous related events by asking:
- “When have you felt like this before?”
- "Why were you so scared to take the action?"
- “Why did you leave that task in middle?”
5.
Root memory:
Get to a root memory of procrastination. Ask yourself these questions:
- “When have you felt like this before?”
- “When else?”
- “When was the very first time?”
- “How old was I?”
- “Why did I resort to procrastination?”
- “What else was happening?”
With these questions, you have an uncovered memory of procrastination along with the series of memories associated with the feeling of being a procrastinator.
6.
Initial incident:
Tap with the initial incident and bring the SUD down. Begin tapping on the Karate Chop and say:
“Even though I have this ..... (incident/event/ memory name) and I can feel it in my ..... (location) and it is a ..... on 10 (1,2,3 etc. on 10) and it makes me feel ..... (name of feeling or sensation) right here at ..... (part of the body where the feeling or sensation is), I deeply love and accept myself.”
Then tap on the facial and upper body points using the reminder phrases while saying the reminder phrases out loud:
- Eyebrow: This ..... (incident/event/memory name)
- Side of the Eye: Number ..... (SUDs)
- Under the Eye: So ..... (feeling or sensation)
- Under the Nose: Makes me feel so ..... (feeling or sensation)
- Chin: This ..... (incident/event/memory name)
- Collarbone: It makes me feel so ..... (feeling or sensation)
- Thumb: I just feel so ..... (feeling or sensation)
- Index Finger: In the ..... (location)
- Middle Finger: This ..... (incident/event/memory name)
- Little Finger: So ..... (feeling or sensation)
7.
Close the sequence:
Close the sequence by coming back to the EFT Karate Chop tapping points and repeat once:
"Even though I feel anxious about writing the next chapter for my book and I lack the confidence that I am a good writer and can get it done, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”
7.
Relax:
Take a gentle breath in and out and take a sip of water.
9.
Test:
At the end of the EFT Tapping directions, ask yourself the following questions to test the original limiting belief:
- What happens when you think about procrastination?
- How does taking an action make you feel?
- How does it feel to have a task incomplete?
You will notice a cognitive shift. If it has reduced to a level that you feel happy with, you can stop. Otherwise, you can repeat this process by going back to Step 1.
Step 2:
Argumentative tapping
Use argument tapping to clean up any remaining conflict with the belief. These can even be a result of unconscious thoughts that are preventing you from growth. For example,
- From "Yes I am a failure" to "No, I am not a failure."
Follow the tapping sequence after this.
Step 3:
Close each session with positive tapping.
Ask the client what they choose for themselves and tap with statements like" "I am open to the possibility" and "I choose."
Examples of positive tapping sequences are:
- “Even though it’s really hard and I worried about it, what if I could relax now.”
- “Even though I get angry and frustrated when starting work from scratch, I know it’s going to be ok and it will get better.”
- "Even though I feel anxious about writing the next chapter for my book and I lack the confidence to get it done, now I am open to letting it go and trust the Universe."
- “Even though I am scared of not getting the approval even after the second draft, I choose to love and accept myself.”
Step 4:
Imagine future:
Get the client to step into the future and notice how things are different. These differences in the present situation and future situation will push them to not procrastinate.
TESTIMONIALS
Geetanjali, one of our delegates who attended my EFT Tapping masterclass on Procrastination says,
Bhavesh, another delegate of mine said, “The feeling of being bound somehow, not having time for myself and possibly overwhelming myself is a major contributor to my procrastination. Knowing myself, I would end up working hard instead of working smart is my fear.
I am quite sure that when I go through the recording, I will find other issues and things that help and ways to overcome my fears.
One of my biggest fears was probably finding out and acknowledging these fears. Thank you!”
CONCLUSION
Continual procrastination can be dangerous.
It’s time that you find the root cause and work on it. Using EFT will allow you to tune your body’s energy into a more positive outflow and make a shift.
If you're looking forward to winning over procrastination and living a cheerful life, then your next step would be to attend EFT Training. Book a Complimentary Discovery Call.
Continue to learn and explore!
Love,
Dr Rangana Rupavi Choudhuri (PhD)
How To Self-Heal & Become An EFT Practitioner
Discover how EFT Tapping can help you to self-heal or to become professionally qualified as a Certified EFT Practitioner. Emotional Freedom Techniques (Tapping) is clinically proven to lower stress, tension, anxiety, past trauma to enable health, happiness and vitality.
In summary, it is not easy to deal with procrastination with a single motivation video. EFT Tapping can however help you tap away all deep-seated emotions, worries and thoughts associated with procrastination. Take it as a sign to try out EFT therapy on yourself!
References:
Disclaimer: The information on this website is purely for educational purposes and does not in any way replace the requirement for medical and psychological diagnosis and treatment. Please seek professional medical and psychological diagnosis and advice for all medical and mental health conditions. It is advised to always book any consultations with qualified professionals.
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