PROCRASTINATION, FEAR, and WORRY

Procrastination can be helpful.

Being a procrastinator has its advantages, and in case of this project, it gave me time to think. This little endeavor of explaining a simple child’s game could be used in more than one way. I could just explain the game as played during my childhood but the phrase “he’s lost his marbles” kept haunting me. How many useful (more or less) bits of information have been lost over the centuries in passing teachings from life experience and parents onto our progeny. If we were to look at these things as something to collect and pass on rather than just using and discarding, we might save our family some time and trouble.  Looking back on one’s life is so much more accurate than trying to force our tomorrows and the reason is simple, we can see the cause in relationship to the effects.  I have been a procrastinator for quite a bit of my life and the main reason is probably fear.  However, don’t take that as just one fear, because there is generally more than one that can put us into a state of inaction.  The subject in this segment is not cause but putting procrastination to good use and keeping it under control.

Procrastination is useful if you really have no idea of how to handle a situation or problem, and in those instances you put off acting until you can get good counsel on how to correctly take care of the solution.  The thing here is to act on asking and not being afraid to ask for help.

   Fear and Worry major components of procrastination, and it has reactions that are basic to our being animal or human nature, fight, flight or freeze. The most commonly recognized is that of fight or flight and those two are the most acceptable. The one that causes procrastination is the instinctive protection mechanism of freezing all motion to become hidden in plain sight.  

 Procrastination is also used as a way of dealing with things we consider to be dangerous to our life patterns, so we worry and fret about all the things we are simply just imagining.  Looking back on life again it’s very evident that most of the things we spend worrying about never come to pass in the end.  If we use our procrastination as a tool for sorting out what is a real concern, versus imaginary demons, it becomes a positive means of dealing with  

 Worry is probably the biggest waste of time, and cause of mental problems of the human condition.  The idea that if you don’t worry you don’t care what happens is a ruse.  The secret is not to worry about a situation but to find an answer for dealing with it and then do it.  Worry saps your mental and emotional power, until there is no thought except the worry.