Hissy Fit - January 2024 - Don’t Wait: To Stop Procrastinating

January 2024 Issue
by Elizabeth Skenes Millen

 Forget about all of your New Year’s resolutions right now
unless you are one of the few who will actually stick to them.
There is only one resolution that if you can conquer it, you can achieve anything:
Stop procrastinating! That’s right. Procrastination is the one thing.

Although quite complicated and difficult to overcome, procrastination is holding you back from achieving your immediate goals and future dreams. Procrastination is a big, long word meaning to put something off until you are pretty sure you can no longer do it, remember it, or recall why it was important to you. Basically P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N spells failure. It does not mean you are a pro at crastinating, so don’t euphemize it, like today’s society tends to do.

Oh boy, do I know it firsthand, so, it’s not just you. We’re in this together, sister! I went a whole decade—that’s 10 years/3,650 days— telling myself I’ll start my diet tomorrow. You know the reassuring bogus self-talk we lull ourselves into complacency with: “One more day to eat French fries, then no more”; “I’m going to blow it out tonight and tomorrow it’s boot camp for me, baby”; “Starting January 1, that’s it…it’s do or die”; or “Today I’m just going to eat the rest of the ice cream in the freezer and then never buy it again…ever!”

The same empty mantras apply to smokers, hoarders, vapors, couch potatoes, binge drinkers, and all the other titles we have decided to call our bad habits. Just one more day, one more piece of cheesecake, one more cigarette, one more drink, one more pill, one more anything that will make me not have to start my journey where I actually get real about my life and figure out what it’s really going to take to love and care about myself enough to finally have the self-discipline to do what the hell I’ve been telling myself I was going to do for years. In other words, I’ve got to learn to trust myself. And there it is.

You’ve probably never realized there is a sacred bond of trust between you and yourself. This is a concept I have learned over the last few years. It’s kind of like the three of us: me, myself, and I. The question is, can I trust Myself? Can Myself trust Me? Can I trust Me? If you’ve been putting off tasks and accomplishments important to you, unfortunately, the answer is probably not. No, you cannot trust yourself right now, and rightfully so. If someone had lied to me as many times as I’ve lied to myself, I wouldn’t trust them at all.

But here’s the good news. You can rebuild your reputation with yourself! At any given moment, you can begin to tell the truth, speak the truth, and live the truth. And, you don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations but your own.

Let’s take a moment to talk about truth. In order to restore trust in yourself, it’s imperative to get real. Don’t even start your old antics such as these:

I’m going to lose 35 pounds by Valentine’s Day. (No you’re not!)
I’m never going to smoke again. (You might!)
That’s it. No more French fries ever. (Yeah right!)
I’m going to walk five miles every single day, rain or shine. (Bulls#*t)

If one of your friends made any one of these statements, wouldn’t your response be similar to the responses above in parenthesis? The same goes for rebuilding trust in yourself. When you think and plan unrealistically, you are not fooling yourself. Subconsciously, your brain is thinking: “Here she goes again. She’s living in La La Land. The girl hasn't lost 10 pounds and kept it off in 10 years, but somehow, she thinks she’s going to lose 35 pounds in 45 days. Yeah, right, whatever; I’m outta here.”

There’s more good news, though! Start out realistically with something your subconscious can believe in, and you are on your way to conquering your New Year’s resolution.

It’s time to decide you can do it differently this year, whatever it is. Don’t focus on the end goal, focus on the journey. Set tasks you know you can accomplish, then accomplish them. Put procrastination out to pasture, get real with yourself, and know you can and will. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll begin believing in yourself, which is so cool because you are the only one with the power to make it happen. You don’t have to hope and pray that someone doesn’t let you down, because you are in control.

What do you want for yourself? What do you REALLY want for yourself? Figure it out, girlfriend, because 2024 is our year to soar!