Overcome the procrastination trap

 

… The more significant difficulties appear, and the more complicated certain situations are, the quicker I say to myself (even today): I’d instead rest, get a bar of chocolate or a cup of tea until I’m strong enough until I am “ready” to deal with these difficulties. However, I found it essential to keep an eye on this process of getting “ready” so that it won’t remain everything I will eventually achieve. Otherwise, I’ll postpone certain things and accomplish much less of what I wanted.

When you grant yourself rest and get time for some self-awareness, such as there is in an exercise situation, of course, many of the things that are floating around in your head become more apparent and more prominent (feelings, worries, questions, things to be regulated, needs). Sometimes the mind is more peaceful, and sometimes it’s like we’re in a hive – some things are louder and more urgent, while others are just humming in the background. At that time, that was why I thought I would have had to create the perfect exercise situation in which everything would be done and trouble-free. I would have had the necessary peace and time if everything had been done. Then everything would be great. But over time, I realized that this perfect situation came only extremely rare, so I got used to keeping an open eye for “the right time”. Each chore had to be done beforehand, so it wouldn’t bother me while practising. I thought that only if everything was quiet and all the work done could I practice my HÜ exercises.

But the pain brought me back to my desire for healing; it wouldn’t wait for the tea to finish.

So I started practising during my everyday life. Still and despite every obstacle. Persistent at the borders of my time and day, despite the fatigue, pain, and limitations due to the RA. I learned to divide my attention and practised within every day’s chaos. Quiet times were rare, but I went on anyways. Sometimes things go wrong, the soup burnt, or my child would paint something pretty on the walls – with the family-pack face cream. “No problem, I’m still training. I can’t get on with everything at the same time.”, I told myself in such moments and continued to practise.

To postpone specific actions has its reasons. We want to take care of ourselves first until we are fit again, especially if the work ahead of us seems too much or too difficult. One way of ‘postponing’ is to overburden oneself with everything else, leaving too little time and energy for things that are uncomfortable because they are unfamiliar or unsettling but necessary.

However, we can successfully deal with postponing, respectively procrastinating when we only know how. We can divide our work into feasible and manageable steps. If that turns out to be more challenging than assumed, I take pen and paper and write my problem down (depending on the need several times, from different views), or I start a helpful conversation. Especially when I can’t figure out a solution to my current problem and or can’t even name it. If I do that, I can do something, and then I eat my chocolate just for that. I reward myself and increase my enjoyment of my actions and the fact that I have moved on. In the other case, I would associate my feelings of insecurity, helplessness, failure and sadness with chocolate related to a sense of comfort.

This way, I became an expert at finding gaps and possibilities. And that was the way to my success. Above all, I always needed to know exactly what I wanted: the healing of my inflammatory joint disease. Even though my body wasn’t playing along well with my thoughts, I was free to do whatever I wanted. Leading a life that, thanks to RA, felt like an uphill struggle with no end in sight for me, I devised exercises that were doable in my situation. I thought that now I needed stamina and mindfulness. I had to divide my strength well on the way and note my breathing, that I needed hope, an idea for life after RA or, even better several as well as more precise ideas of how I would move: Easy and free.

Therefore I would practice while washing my hands, eating, ironing my shoes, watering the flowers…and didn‘t wait for an improvement in advance, enough relief and care first, or for others to do something before I could start exercising. I practised no matter what.

That’s why I practised in the middle of the illness, in the middle of tiredness, in the middle of fear, in the middle of worries, washing my hands, eating, cleaning shoes, watering the flowers … and no longer waited for an improvement in advance, enough at first Relief and care, or that others do something first to begin healing practice. I practised in every situation, no matter how more or less favourable they seemed.

Next post:

Overcome the problem-mix trap

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Manja and the HeilÜben team

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