How to Stop Procrastination From Ruining Your Dreams

There’s no time like the present to start working on your goals. But it’s not whether you can do it, the real question is how to stop procrastination from ruining your plans?

No, really. Starting a business or a new venture can seem a bit overwhelming and scary. For many of us, there’s a lot to get done and it can be tough to find a good starting place.

Besides, old habits, as they say, die hard and that’s what procrastination feeds on.

If you’ve been struggling with procrastination, it can be difficult to break out of your routine or that laziness feeling.

Fortunately, habits can be broken!

You have the power to change your ways and get the things that you’ve always wanted. Laziness can be beaten and you’re about to find out how.

The following tips will help you manage your time wisely and achieve all of your most important goals.

Figure Out What You Really Want

Many people go through life without any clear idea as to what they want.

These people never think about where they will be in five, ten or even fifteen years. They don’t even know what they want to achieve in the near future.

For whatever reason, most people never put much thought into the things that they want out of life.

They are satisfied with milling around, waiting for someone else to make all the decisions for them.

But here’s the thing…

Before you do anything else, you need to visualize what you truly desire.

This doesn’t have to be anything detailed. It could be as broad or as abstract as knowing that you want to be “successful,” “happy,” or “rich.”

Take a few minutes a day to visualize what you want most.

Where do you want to live? What do you want to do for work? How do you want to spend your time?

This little visualization exercise may sound silly but it can have a profound impact on your entire life. By knowing what you want, you can start working towards achieving those goals.

Once you’ve figured out what it is that you honestly and truly desire, you can take the appropriate steps to reach it.

A few things that you must understand are:

• Success cannot be sustained if you’re hurting other people
• Happiness is not a goal in itself, it’s only a feeling. Therefore, your goal should be to pursue things that excite you such as your craft, dancing, singing, sports etc.
• Hard work and determination is of the absolute necessity! But you must choose where you devote your time. For example, you can write a blog post or hire someone to do it. The latter allows you to devote your time elsewhere.

Follow Your Dreams

Now that you know what you want, you need to start planning to make it happen.

This means creating a plan and taking ACTION on what you’ll need to do in order to live the life of your dreams.

It’s time to get specific and stop procrastination dead in its tracks!

Many people never accomplish what they want, simply because they never set clear goals and take action.

As motivational speaker Earl Nightingale observed…

“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.”

Listen, merely picking an objective will greatly increase your chances of success.

If you want to improve the odds of completing your goal to an even greater degree and make it nearly impossible to fail, write down what you want to do.

Put it on a piece of paper and hang it where you’ll have to see it every day.

Once you know your goal, come up with a series of actions to reach it. What needs to be done in order to achieve the thing of your dreams? Figure this out and break the process down into manageable steps.

For example, you may need to take an accounting course to get promoted at your job. Similarly, a new entrepreneur may start a side business in order to get the cash flow they need for opening their dream business.

Knowing what you want and how you will reach it should eliminate most of your fears. You no longer have to worry about “the unknown”.

On top of this, having a written plan of action will make it easier for you to identify what’s holding you back, providing the opportunity of solving the problem.

If your goal is to operate your own business, you’ll need a website and don’t let anyone tell you different.

Some people believe that just because they’ve got a presence on social media, it means that they can avoid creating a website for their business.

Well, it’s a rookie mistake that is costly. Why would you spend hours upon hours growing someone else’s platform? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others should only be used to grow your own platform that you control (your website).

>> RELATED: How to Develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset

Getting Your Website Launched

Yes, starting a website can seem intimidating. There are a lot of technical features involved and some of the setup processes can seem a bit tricky at first.

Luckily, launching a site is actually a lot easier than it appears these days.

There’s a lot of designers willing to help you get your website off the ground. In fact, almost everyone you encounter during the process is hoping for you to succeed. Why?

Because your success is equivalent to their’s too!

The hosting company, theme creator and front-end designers all want you to do well. Many of them will even offer their support through live assistance or pre-written tutorials.

Everybody wants you to do well and has your best interest in mind. The process isn’t scary because you’re not alone. There’s a whole army of individuals ready help you reach your destination.

Your friends and family have your back as well but understandably, this isn’t the case for everyone. Sometimes, the people closest to you can really harm your mindset with negativity.

But overall, most people want you to do your best and will support you as much as they can. Never discount the power of friendship or loved ones, they can do a lot to help your business.

Need a website? Here’s a good place to start: Web Design Packages

Identify What’s Holding You Back

What do you think your biggest challenge is? How can you overcome it?

Achieving your goals and living out your dreams can be challenging. Every successful person has hit some rough spots on their journey. They’ve also acted fast to find the problem and eliminate it.

Being prepared is something that almost every great thinker, leader and business person has found invaluable.

Confucius, considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time, once noted that:

“Success depends upon previous preparation.”

If you know what you need to do and the challenges you must overcome, then you’re well on your way towards achieving everything you could ever wish for.

While focusing on a positive outcome is good, it’s also critical that you set specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely goals (aka SMART).

Always ask yourself what the biggest challenge is, what is causing it and how it can be solved.

The Fears We Must All Face

Understanding your fears is an important step towards stopping procrastination and getting things done!

Once you know what you’re afraid of, ask yourself if the fear is rational. No, seriously.

What’s the worst that can happen if whatever you’re worried about does come true?

When most people ask themselves this question, they quickly realize that there are no permanent repercussions.

Here’s a fun exercise!

Take a sheet of paper and draw a line that splits everything into two columns. Write “pros” on one side and “cons” on the other. Then put down every advantage and disadvantage that comes to mind whenever you think about your goals.

Nine times out of ten, you’ll find that the pros far outweigh the cons.

You’ll also discover that many of the disadvantages are both temporary and highly unlikely. If anything, you have more to lose when you don’t take action than you do from pursuing your goal and stumbling along the way (the stumbles are learning opportunities).

Being scared is nothing to be ashamed of, it happens to everyone. However, it’s important to determine whether or not your fears are legitimate.

Once you analyze them, you’ll probably realize that the things you worry about are not particularly significant. And that the benefits of achieving your goals are far greater than any setbacks or failures.

Take The Leap

All the planning and preparation in the world means nothing if you don’t act on it.

At some point, you’ll need to take action and the best time to start is right now!

Interestingly enough, procrastination often makes challenges seem scarier than they actually are. People who wait around end up feeling overwhelmed and fearful.

They spend so much time worrying that they actually trick their brain into thinking that the goals they’ve set are unobtainable.

If you want to achieve that life that you truly desire, you need to start right away and continuously build up momentum along the way.

Take the leap and jump right in!

You’ll be able to figure things out as you go and quickly realize that most of your big fears were a lot smaller and less significant than you had originally imagined.

Everything you want can be yours but to get what you desire, you need to take action.

Manage Your Time

Time is the most valuable resource in the world. It’s the one thing that you can never make more of.

Although making more time is impossible, you can restructure your day for maximum achievement. Figure out what is and isn’t important, then prioritize your time accordingly.

This approach will let you take on serious tasks and make significant progress towards your objective.

You see…

No matter who they are or what their situation in life is, everybody has the exact same amount of time in a day.

Successful people understand this and work to get as much value from every hour as they possibly can. They’re able to separate what matters from what doesn’t.

In order to determine whether or not something is important, ask yourself what the impact of not doing it will be. If the impact would be huge, then the task is important.

If the impact is small or there’s none whatsoever, then the task will have little effect on your overall goal.

Watching television, mindlessly surfing the web and maybe, creeping your friends Facebook feeds, are all tasks that can be classified as low priority. Not doing them really won’t hinder your progress.

On the other hand, working on your website, networking with other businesses and finding potential customers will all have major consequences for your success. These activities need to be done.

Dealing With Excuses

Plenty of people look for ways to procrastinate on their objectives.

They fail to properly address their fears and avoid pursuing their plans because they’re secretly afraid.

For real, people will go to great lengths to create excuses for why they can’t do something. They will say they’re too young or too old or don’t have enough money.

Every reason they come up with is a way to protect themselves from what they fear most:

Chasing their dreams!

While excuses are generally meaningless, it’s important to differentiate them from actual problems.

In order to do this, you should ask yourself this:

Is there anyone else with the same issues as me who has still managed to become successful?

After asking yourself the above-mentioned question, do some research and find an individual who overcame similar problems for inspiration.

Find out what they did and how they did it.

This process helps you form a blueprint in your mind of what needs to be done. It can also give you a boost of self-confidence. After all, you now know that what you want is achievable.

Finally, You’re Woke!

It’s about time you pursued your dreams and achieve everything you’ve ever wanted to, real talk!

If you take action today, you’ll make tremendous progress by the time the year ends and the next.

To achieve the things you want out of life, you need to form a plan. Figure out what it is that you really desire, then come up with strategies to accomplish them.

Learn to face your fears and in doing so, develop the self-confidence needed to go after what you really want in life!

If you’re serious about achieving your objectives, start managing your time better.

Step outside your comfort zone and pursue what you want, you’ll be rewarded in ways that you could never have even imagined. This author testifies to that.

Lastly, ACTION is what sets the wannabes apart from the high-performers in life.

Gabriel Nwatarali

I’m a freelance copywriter and SEO specialist. I aim to empower individuals and businesses with impactful marketing solutions and insights. In my downtime, I recharge by embracing the beauty of nature or cherishing moments with my loved ones. If you found value in this post, please consider sharing it.