Mind Gym (10 page)

   
•   Consider any decisions you made in the past that led to situations you later regretted. What can you learn from these that will help you make a wiser decision this time?

You have a choice in how you run your life. There is no “can’t,” only “will” and “won’t.” The trick is knowing why you are, or aren’t, moving around the existential cycle and, in particular, crossing your Rubicon. Like we’ve said, the right thing isn’t to always cross or always not cross. The right thing is to understand why you want to cross or don’t want to cross, and then make your decision.

Nevertheless, none of us want to live our lives in a constant state of doing. I might not be in good enough shape today to swim 2.4 miles, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be in the future. Plus, our reasons for remaining in one state may not be strong. At some point, in certain aspects of our lives, if we want to progress, we must cross the Rubicon.

A decision to not cross the Rubicon based on the wrong reasons—when catastrophic fantasies rule our mind-sets—is what causes people to look back on their lives and think
If only
. . . . All of us who have looked back and been proud of what we have done have crossed the Rubicon at least once and maybe many times.

There’s a famous Latin maxim, carpe diem, which translated means “seize the day.” The question you have to ask yourself is,
When it comes to crossing Rubicons, just how much of a Caesar am I prepared to be?

GIVE YOUR MIND A WORKOUT

1. Think about one of the main areas of your life—say, your career or your home.

2. Ask yourself which stage of the existential cycle you are at most of the time.

3. Analyze whether this is a good place to be. Or are you preventing yourself from moving around the cycle? Is there a danger that you might be saying
If only
. . . in a few years’ time? If so, how can you change your internal conversations to help unblock yourself?

1. Think of an issue, something you’ve wanted to do for a while but are putting off because of fear.

2. Make an exhaustive list of all your fears about this issue and try to examine the root fears that underlie them all by asking
And then what?
after each fear. For example, “I’ve wanted to ask Sarah out for a long time, but I’m afraid she will say no.” Now ask,
And then what?
“I’m afraid I’ll lose the courage to ever ask anyone out again.”
And then what?
“I’m afraid I’ll always be alone.”
And then what?
“I’m afraid I will never be happy.” And continue in that way with each fear. Doing this will help you get closer to the root of your fears.

3. Now categorize your fears. Go through each one on your list and decide whether it is rational or irrational. (Hint: Irrational fears frequently include absolutist terms, such as “always” and “never.”)

4. List some benefits of conquering each of your fears—not necessarily reaching the goal you want (e.g., Sarah says yes) but rather what conquering that fear will do for you.

5. After working through the previous steps, decide whether to address the issue you chose at the beginning. Maybe your fears are well founded and you’ll continue to sit tight, or—more likely—you’ll realize you’re filled with irrational fears and catastrophic fantasies that you don’t need to listen to any longer.

W
aiting until later is one of life’s guilty secrets: Everyone says they don’t procrastinate, but everybody knows they do. Whether it’s in work or in relationships, getting healthy or breaking bad habits, we all have the capacity to turn into an ostrich, put our heads in the sand, and hope that whatever it is we don’t want to do will just disappear.

Sometimes it’s the small things, like leaving a pile of laundry unfolded or not cleaning out the cat’s litter box. Other times the issues are slightly bigger, like going to the dentist or knowing that it’s time to lose some weight—things that might affect our lives in the longer run. And there are the more time-sensitive issues, like ending a relationship or asking for a promotion.

Let’s face it, when we want to put off doing something, we can get pretty creative about coming up with a list of excuses: the student who wants to give up drinking coffee but “can’t” until her exams are over; the single man who won’t ask someone out because he doesn’t feel strong enough to cope with a possible rejection; the office worker who knows she should write that report but is too stressed to even start; or the Scorpio who won’t send off that proposal because his horoscope warned about an unpredictable disappointment.

While we all procrastinate from time to time, it’s far too easy for an occasional lapse to turn into a destructive habit. It’s as if life is a credit card: Just as you can treat yourself to some new clothes and decide
I’ll worry about the cost next month
, you can catch a movie instead of sitting down on a Saturday afternoon to pay your bills. Of course, the problem is that at some point you still have to pay the credit card company—looks like in the near future a Saturday afternoon paying bills will be even less pleasant.

Like credit card bills, it’s all too easy to build up debts in your “life bank,” putting off one little thing after another. And paying back these time debts can take a long time and be painful—because in all areas of life those “bills” accumulate “interest.” The weight-loss plan you wanted to start three months ago now has seven more pounds to contend with.

The good news is that procrastination, rather than being a characteristic you are born with, is actually more of a bad habit you pick up over years. And just like you can learn how to procrastinate, you can also unlearn it. You can teach yourself to earn money before you spend it. You can teach yourself to finish projects before you treat yourself to an entertaining afternoon at the movies. And you can teach yourself to get in shape so the guilty-pleasure foods are in fact a guilty pleasure. As a result, you will not only feel less stressed and more in control but also have a lot more time to spare.

The secret to overcoming procrastination is to find out how, in any given situation, you are procrastinating. Then it’s just a short step to working out what you can do to teach yourself new habits.

Scientific and psychological research has shown that there are five main reasons why you put off doing things.

Believe it or not, the first form of procrastination comes from an overly strong sense of self-confidence. It’s the belief that you are on top of the situation and, therefore, you don’t need to bother with it yet. This level of confidence can lead to complacency. It can appear as almost laziness or a general lack of concern—you’re so certain of the outcome that any special effort is unnecessary. However, rather than a coasting ride to success, this form of procrastination quite often leads to the opposite result. In the fable of the tortoise and the hare, the hare is so sure of victory over the tortoise that he settles down for a quick nap, only for the tortoise to defeat him. Similarly, in almost every James Bond film, there is a scene where the arch-villain has Bond in his grasp, only to let the spy escape and thwart his plans for world domination. In these situations, evil cunning and overconfidence always seem to go hand in hand.

One way to deal with this form of procrastination is to imagine a great reward in the future. But you can only take advantage of this great reward if you’ve completed the task at hand. So, for example, if your passport needs renewing but you leave it until the day before you go on vacation because you think it’ll be so easy to renew, you need to imagine a friend calling you in the middle of the night with a spare ticket for a weekend in paradise. The kicker is that the plane leaves at five
A.M.
If you don’t have an up-to-date passport now, you can’t go.

Alternatively, set more challenging goals for yourself. If you aren’t motivated to finish an undesirable task, you need to change the situation. With the story of the hare and the tortoise, it clearly isn’t enough incentive for the hare to just beat the tortoise: he feels (wrongly, as it turns out) that he can accomplish that in his sleep. But if the hare had challenged himself to not only beat the tortoise but also break the course record, he would have continued sprinting to the finish line and would never have lost the race.

Finally, if the task you face is relatively easy, just get it done. If you’re an arch-villain in a James Bond film, just pull the trigger and carry on with taking over the world. Don’t pause to gloat and show 007 the evil genius of your plan. While you’re wrapped in your gloating, he’ll be raising an eyebrow and delivering a sharp one-liner, and you’ll be plunging to earth without a parachute. If you’re not an arch-villain in a James Bond film, you won’t be rewarded with a new world order, but your world will be a little more ordered, and that’s a start.

This sort of procrastination focuses on the unpleasantness of an activity, particularly compared with a far more enjoyable alternative.
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When there are dishes to be washed, that television show about gardening can suddenly become fascinating. Perhaps the visit to the dentist can wait until next month, the telephone bill can be left until after payday, and that tax return can be filed tomorrow. Right now a great gardening show is on television.

There are more serious examples too. You might be unhappy in a long-term relationship but can’t face the unpleasantness of ending it. You might know your health is at risk if you don’t change your habits. You might worry that you could lose your job if the big, painfully long project isn’t completed. In each case, the anticipated discomfort involved in taking action is enough to make you delay taking action.

When your discomfort stems from the size of a task (the tax return), break it down into bite-size tasks instead (get the bank statements, read the form, fill in section A, and so on). Doing one of these smaller activities makes the whole task feel easier. Once you get on a roll, the whole project may be completed before you know it.

A second idea comes from the Mary Poppins school of philosophy: a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Many of us don’t enjoy household cleaning, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it less of a chore. Pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine to sip while you scrub away (but only if you do it now); crank your favorite tunes—even create a playlist specifically designed for doing the dishes.

Here’s a final challenge: Every day do one frustrating activity that you would normally put off until tomorrow. Not only will you be amazed by how much more you get done, but you’ll soon run out of really frustrating things to do.

Sometimes the prospect of not succeeding is enough to halt any movement forward. Imagine there’s someone you find attractive and want to ask out on a date, but you don’t because you’re afraid they’ll say no. Or there’s the possibility of a promotion at work, but you don’t raise your hand because you’re worried you might not get the job. Trying to get into a hip nightclub, making sales calls, signing up for salsa dancing classes—there are hundreds of things you may avoid doing for various reasons, but the real reason is a fear of failure.

You may even use this form of procrastination as a sort of escape clause.
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By not doing work, not trying, not making an effort, you have an excuse for when things go wrong:
It’s not that I’m not a good writer; it’s just that I didn’t bother with the revisions
. Or
I know I could give a better presentation than Phil, but I just don’t want to put all my effort into it
. These excuses may dull the pain of failure, but you’ll never taste the satisfaction of succeeding against the odds.

The problem here has nothing to do with failure; it has everything to do with fear. Mistakes, after all, are nothing to be afraid of. In fact, they are often the primary source of learning. Henry Ford may have said it best: “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Confront your fear of failure head-on by considering what you have to lose and/or gain by taking action. Think, for example, about relationships. Which is worse: never dating anyone because they may not like you or occasionally being rejected? Think about it. All you really need is one person to say yes. And beyond that, if you can learn from the “No thanks, I’m not interested” rejections, you may be able to get a lot more yeses.
Is it my deodorant? Is it my language or manners? Am I trying too hard?
Likewise with jobs: It doesn’t matter if you get turned down, so long as you learn from the experience; you’ll keep improving, and sooner or later someone’s going to say “You’re hired.” But no one’s going to say this if you never apply in the first place.

Sometimes we use emotion as a reason to stop ourselves from taking action.
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We convince ourselves, for whatever reason, that now isn’t the time to do something and we’re better off waiting for that “perfect moment.”
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