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Why do men procrastinate? and how to stop it.

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Let’s start with understanding the word itself:
Pro Towards/Forward
CrastinusTomorrow

Procrastination therefore means to be in pro of tomorrow (which makes it the close cousin of Regret).

Regret is to wish you acted differently in the past.

Procrastination is to assume you’ll act differently in the future.

Both of them stem from a man’s wounded relationship with the present moment.

He is then bombarded with motivational and inspirational posts that tell him just to *plow* and work hard through it all…

Or new-agey “go with the flow“, abstract and vague advice…

But in essence, what a man must do to deal with his procrastination is to face death.

He delays it until tomorrow because he takes today and tomorrow for granted, he is assured that he will have another day…

  • Another day to quit that job he hates and start doing something aligned with his purpose and deeper values.
  • Another day to delay sorting out his internal nonsense so he can find a girlfriend and have a loving relationship.
  • Another day to take care of his body and stop drinking, smoking, eating poorly.

And because he believes himself to be immortal, then today can wait.

But in reality it cannot, and it won’t. 

Not unless he faces one of these three things:

  • Excruciating Pain
  • Loss
  • Commitment
  1. Pain:
    Most men wait until their bosses fire them (after having sacrificed a big portion of their time and life serving a company that did not hesitate to let them go) to then start paying attention to what else they can do to make a living.

    Most men wait until illness, stress, cancer, depression and anxiety hits because this is when the pain of their mortality is brought to the surface – to a degree that he can no longer ignore it

  2. Loss:
    Most men wait until they lose their loved one, until they lose their “safety net” or until they reach a point where they feel they’ve started losing themselves.

  3. Commitment:
    Finally, very few men choose Commitment as their catalyst for transformation.

    This is because Pain and Loss are forced upon you, whereas Commitment is a personal choice.

    Commitment requires that you give up your excuses…
    – That you give up your distractions…
    – That you stop delaying things for another day that may never come…

    It requires that you throw yourself into a place where you have no choice but to grow, and commitment is rarely just personal.

Most of the time men need accountability, guidance, a support network and other men to talk to so they can be held up to a higher standard than they have for themselves.

So when a man is facing procrastination, the message he gives to himself and to the world is this:

My life (and what is REALLY important for me) can wait.

which is a subtle expression of unworthiness/undeserving but I won’t go into that.

You think life can wait

And life will show you that it cannot. It won’t.

For everything has to move and evolve, whether you do it by choice or by being forced, that’s up to you.

Pain and loss,

Or conscious commitment...

You have to get there eventually.

So why not do it now?

Do you have a good reason to NOT be planting the seeds of everything that you wish to sow tomorrow?

Do you not want to let go and die to the boy you’ve been so far so that you can welcome the man that you really are?

PS: If you enjoyed reading this, don’t forget to sign up for my Mindful Mondays Newsletter

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