4 Tips for Moving Past Your Excuses and Towards Success

Christine Li  0:01  
Hello, welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 100. 

As you might imagine, I am very excited about the fact that this is episode number 100. It's been so amazing to have this show, to have you as my listener, to be the wonderful guests that I've been able and lucky to interview over the past two years and the past 100 episodes. And to be able to just communicate, the things that I feel are important about living a good life being productive, avoiding negativity, Dread, frustration, and procrastination. It's all been just a wonderful experience. And I'm so grateful that you are on this podcast journey with me, I'm so grateful for your attention. And for your partnership. 

In this journey. I want to share a little story about recording episode 100 That you're about to listen to. I delayed and delayed and delayed. I think I had in my mind some sort of conflict or over excitement about the fact that I had actually reached this podcast milestone of the 100th episode, and I made myself a little bit nuts about it. But finally, I recorded the episode. It's really, I think, a great short but valuable lesson and how to get past your own nerves, your own experiences, your own excuses, that prevent you from moving forward. So it's timely. It's time for this episode to be birth. And again, I'm so glad that you're here to listen to it. Thank you so much again. Let's go listen to this episode. Now I'm going to share four tips for moving past your own excuses and getting yourself back into success. 

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Lee, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Well, hello there. Today we're going to talk about four very powerful ways that I know how to help you to move away from your excuses, and much more directly into action and positivity and getting your work and projects done. I think we spend so much time massaging our excuses and our stories of the past and when we lose such precious present moments. And I just want to help everyone to do a little bit less of that if I do that, that I feel like I will have succeeded. So let's move right in and go to the first of the four techniques. The first technique is called Get into the proper time zone. And I will explain. I recently did a somewhat popular tic tac post about the topic of clutter. And how I've noticed that clutter is really painful for people and really a difficult project to kind of take on and to get through. And I noted in the Tick Tock posts, that clutter tends to carry negative energy. That's one thing, or unfinished energy and projects. That's too, but it also carries our feelings from the past. And that was probably the most salient point in that post. And when you think about it, whenever you look at a pile of clutter, it's layers and layers and layers of things from the past things that you don't really even need in the present moment. And that's why it can feel so difficult to kind of re connect with that pile to even touch or go near that clutter. You would rather leave it there in the corner of that have to manage all the feelings that those papers and clothes and knickknacks tend to bring into your body in mind. And I think that's fascinating, but I do think that's the reason that clarity is so darn sticky in our lives and can be such a tricky thing to get past. And I noticed that the comments to that post were really interesting. One person said that she cried upon reading the post, or seeing the post another person was then called me the perhaps rational cousin of Marie Kondo, which made me laugh because I'm not really that rational. And if Marie Kondo ever came into my own, she would probably immediately get on her hands and knees and start sending blessings to my home because they need our help, to be honest. So why am I telling you this story about the tic tac post, I think I'm telling it to you because we need to be very purposeful in centering ourselves in the present moment. That is why any effort that we can put into eliminating clutter from our homes or our cars or our purses is well spent, because we will then have clear space, we will have clear clarity about what we need to do and handle and experience in the present moment. As long as we have distraction or as long as we have our view towards the past, we will not be functioning at our best. And guess what happens when we're not functioning at our best. More Excuses come in, we can say oh, I've really got too much on my plate. Oh, I really can't focus now. You know, the drought. So the first step again, is to get into your proper timezone get into the present moment. This is why things like transitions can feel very difficult for people to tilt, you're losing the past and moving away from the past, while trying to set up the present. At the same time. This is why jetlag feels difficult for so many of us, because we're moving from literally one timezone into the next. This is why when people pass away, and leave us, we also feel that that is an incredibly difficult time, because we're reviewing our memories, we're sending people off into their future. And we're trying to envision our own future. Without them. These are difficult moments when we're trying to straddle or when we need to straddle different time zones. So whenever you can center yourself into the present moment and ignore any past mistakes or experiences that you just might want to forget, you will do much better in the present moment. All right. Now the second tip that I have for you, is to make it easier for yourself, to see yourself as the winner. And I will explain this one too. I believe there's a battle of sorts between the unfinished product and that desire, finished product or activity. And there's this tension, and then there's this conflict, and you can almost feel it. But oftentimes, I've noticed that my clients come to me arguing that they can't do it, that they're feeling lazy, that they're feeling uncomfortable. They're feeling unready they're feeling pressured by time, stress or obligation, all the things, of course, the list goes on and on. And I have recently been wondering to myself, why do we argue so vehemently and intensively about why we can't do things, but really what we should be doing, in my opinion, is we should be arguing exactly the opposite. Arguing ourselves into the finished product or activity that we so desire. We all know we're heading in that direction, even if we're not admitting it, so why don't we just speak it out loud to ourselves? So I asked my clients, how can you convince yourself that you are headed to your intended outcome? And what I have them do is take a piece of paper, put a line down the middle, and on the left side, write down all the reasons why you think you can't do it. Why do you think you're not able to finish and then line by line, I ask my clients to match that item or that statement about themselves with an equally or more powerful statement about why they will. So if the statement is I'm such a lazy person, the statement on the right side of the paper would be I have the energy and focus to get this project accomplished. It's much easier to say it sounds so much more positive and fulfilling and promising. And then when you finish this paper with the two columns exercise, you will feel like you've tangled with your resistance. And you will have convinced yourself that there's so much more to you than just the resistance and the negative feelings. Really, the negative feelings are the much smaller part of you. It's your desire, and your purpose and your ambition and your desire to just finish things that is much, much more powerful. So don't ever forget that. So remember, point number two is to always make it very easy for you to see yourself as the winner. The third powerful tip that I have for you today is I want you to get really good at having great I am statements. What do I mean by that, instead of arguing for the unfinished product, like we just talked about. And tip number two, I want you to start to literally speak into existence, what you want to be and what you want to have. So like the example I just gave you, I am focused and energized, that is a powerful I am statement. And the reason why I am focusing on the words I am, is because whenever we follow up the words I am with some words, we are creating an identity for ourselves, we are literally telling ourselves who we are. And we make the mistake. So often of saying very silly things after the words I am like, I'm always late, or I am so impossible, or I am irresponsible, or I am never going to get through this or I am going to fail. I used to say that all the time to myself in high school. So really be very careful to never say a negative word about herself. Especially when the sentences start off with a words I am I am sentences are your personal identity statements, craft them on purpose, craft them well, and start to build yourself up in a much more powerful way with the I am statements. All right, the last powerful tip that I have for you is to really understand that your mood has nothing to do with the results that you want to achieve. We often make the mistake of thinking that when I feel this way I will start or when I achieve results, a B or C I'm going to feel better. And this is really just following our path of our emotions down a windy road. And when we do things like that, when we say Oh, my feelings are blocking me or I don't have the right feelings until I see the end point. When we do that, I think we waste a lot of time because we're spending our time focusing on how we're feeling and how we're proceeding things. Rather than how we need to get things done. What are the steps that I need to take? How can I ask my emotions to step to the side so that I can actually have even better focus than I think I might be able to emotions are helpful in a lot of circumstances. But oftentimes, when we're trying to get things done, it's best to kind of ask them to step aside so that you can actually focus so that you can actually tell yourself that clear, accurate and true story about what needs to happen oftentimes is just, I need to do X at this time on this day, and I need to get myself this time limit. Those are probably the only four things you need to observe or figure out or plan when you're trying to get things done. You do not have to say, well, I need to feel happy, I need to feel energized, I need to feel motivated, you don't need any of those things. To have the four things I mentioned the time the place, the time limit, and the result that you want to achieve. It's really much more simple when we take the feelings and our moods out of the equation. So there you have it. It's basically a little bit of a conversation between you and me about how to protect yourself from your excuses how to protect yourself from your erratic mood if you happen to have an erratic mood, how to protect yourself from old negative stories that you've come into adulthood with that you no longer need to protect yourself from over focusing on what has happened in the past. And investing all of your energy, all of your beautiful, pure, positive, powerful energy into the future that is going to be amazing. So speak positively, speak accurately. And then go have fun, make sure that anything that you're attempting has a bit of fun woven into it. That's kind of a bonus tip. Thank you so much for being with me today and on the podcast. And thank you for taking my words in week after week. Please tell your neighbors, friends and family about the make time for success podcast. And join me again next Thursday for another episode of get by. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. We'll talk to you soon

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