to be afraid

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A Brief On Procrastination

Good morning Great People!

In spite of hundreds of thousands of books, poetry, business courses and procrastinators anonymous groups that offer the final technique for overcoming ‘the curse,’ procrastination continues to be one of the most prevalent plagues amongst homo sapiens, the supposedly most sophisticated lot in creation. Perhaps we can take a clue from our “lesser” four-legged siblings by doing now what needs to be done now because there is no other time in which to do it. The challenge for us is we think too much. Otherwise, we would not procrastinate. Anyway, I want to tell you how I am converting ‘the curse’ into a guard rail to keep me aligned with my vision. But not before explaining my perception of this forbidden word… here goes.

What is procrastination?

Time never flies backwards

Procrastination is an energy-draining emotion,  melancholy, a feeling of dread of taking risks to be your authentic self. It is a mental retreat into mono-dialogues about long dead situations and people. Its goal is to prevent us from allowing the self to materialize its purpose. Because the moment we glimpse our vast potential, power and possibilities (only discernible in a state of awareness), we will be strongly tempted to transmute genuine longings into physical reality. During the process, we will awaken to another aspect of the self that is indestructible, fearless and limitless. We will exhibit real liberation and have an exponential influence in the advancement of humanity. But from a one-grain-of-sand perspective, this is scary.

For this reason, procrastination is disguised as preoccupations: consumerism, obsession with becoming a sex symbol, and an insatiable hunger for fame to feel special, adored and superior. It appears as irresponsible pregnancies, hypochondria or excessive entertainment. Worse are the addictions to manifesting dramas or crisis and to nosiness—overly involved in the affairs of others by way of monitoring adult children or engaged in celebrity gossip or reality shows or mean-spirited chatter about most of the others we encounter. We attempt to eradicate responsibility by mentally reconstructing the past in order to steal credit from others or by harboring morbid thoughts for hours on end.

Another word for procrastination is resistance. Here is where we flatly flip off our true but socially unacceptable feelings, preferences, gifts and talents. We risk our well-being in order to gain a few dubious compliments and invitations into the shallow elite club. But habitual hesitation—to do what we want— bores big holes in self-confidence and compromises our immune system. We grow dull, slow and ineffective. Consequently, the urge to give away our gifts and talents by practicing and developing our skills gradually recedes into oblivion. And so does our experience of love, inspiration and fulfillment—birthright luxuries that we expect to come to us rather than from us. We must give everything we have to offer in the moment in order to give more. As we give, we fling open a bottomless reservoir of gifts and talents to emerge from within us. Simultaneously, we are allowing the world to give to us exactly what we need. What a beautiful exchange! The more you give, the more of  life you will experience!

Where did procrastination come from?

As far as I know, no one is born a procrastinator–babies are totally present. And so are young children before they learn to reject their natural instincts. During early childhood, we are, unfortunately, conditioned either to discard our ideas or to wait until some date in a future before we can act on inspiration—but that day, for most, never arrives. Children are too often prevented from taking minimum risk to implement a concept that might upset the cart of familiarity. Our keepers’ disciplinary tactics train us to discredit or ignore our intuitive nature, mistrust the self and to develop blind faith in folks whose comprehension of self is questionable.

Children are conditioned to submit to intimidation, scarcity beliefs and shame…and guilt, after disobeying. Fear of being ousted from home keeps rebelliousness at bay to a great extent. (By the way, getting ousted is not limited to income status.) Eventually our natural creative impulses and sense of invincibility descend deeply below the level of conscious access. So in order to earn a living, i.e., deserve to live via conformity (having the basic necessities of life and a sense of belonging), we instantly become master people pleasers, slaves of the whims and ill will of elder slaves we call family, friends and authority figures. The original plan for our life gets buried beneath inertia: the result of a habitual procrastinator.

Why do we procrastinate when we do not want to?

There is a tendency amongst adults to prefer a permanent position of receiver without contributing one iota to the motion of life. I call it adult toddler narcissism. But nature has never been stagnant. It pushes forward, upward to its fullest ever-expanding possibilities. Have you noticed how easily petit, delicate flowers push through a concrete sidewalk? They literally crack it open. Amazing! Imagine the dire consequences if these beauties had contemplated the weight of the mixture of gravel, sand, cement and water for even ten minutes. Hesitation would have killed an exquisite idea before its birth. Nothing in the universe (except you) can prevent you from bringing a clear, definite intention into physical manifestation.

Better to do what you love!

I have learned from bouts of battling against it that procrastination is not some armored enemy to kill off. In fact, it is nothingness. Eventually this self-inflicted habit will lead you to abandon trendy anti-resistance strategies and simply choose to do as you sincerely want to do and need to do, in order to nurture your soul, satisfy your creative impulses and to feel more of your own aliveness. Next, you must value happiness and freedom more than playing a puppet role. Finally, you have to start doing whatever it is that you have promised yourself.

However, it is absolutely necessary that you recognize subtle masks of inertia. I am sure some of these, if not all, will ring true for you or for someone in your circle. These masks have been gleaned from my personal experience and my coaching clients.

  • Avoiding the unfamiliar and giving your fear power by coddling a strong sense of unworthiness and self- contempt.
  • Terrified of dying—thinking that the longer you put off doing what you intuitively know to do, you will prolong life in this body.
  • Worse than the fear of dying, is the possibility of seeing the glorious self, radiating through your physical form when you give undivided attention to the present moment or now.
  • Addicted to the frustration that emerges from avoiding responsibility and blaming ‘them’, racism, gender bias, the neighbor’s barking dog or your partner’s snoring.
  • Refusing to accept that unfoldment is a process of coming into maturity and passing on (like clouds pushed by the winds) to give way to new experiences, which emerge from the consciousness of the individuals involved.
  • Preference for laziness and shallowness; to mistake mediocrity for greatness.
  • Scarcity beliefs—insufficient capacities, clients, money, opportunities, emotional support.
  • Quick to justify your stinginess—refusing to give what the present moment requires of you.
  • Defensive about breaking your promises to someone, which ultimately, is to yourself.
  • Daydreaming the day away, keeping busy and accomplishing nothing towards your dream.
  • Pretending not to see clearly what you are here on earth to be and to do.
  • A lack of unity of intention and attention…”a house divided against itself”—your mind, body and actions conflict with your in-this-moment intention. Examples: (1) While listening to your party speak on the phone, you are reading and responding to e-mails, watching television or sorting laundry. (2) While doing your creative work, you interrupt yourself to listen to the news for two hours or telephone someone for a long chat or go window shopping or do maximum housecleaning or finish off 900 ml of ice cream “because I deserve it.”
  • Habitually dreading doing what you have promised yourself can also reveal a lack of sincere interest in the subject. Time to examine what feels right to you… to hoot what others may think.
  • Fear of making mistakes or failing and inviting ridicule; therefore, valuing the opinions of others rather than your own knowing and needs.
  • Being where you are not wanted—in the cemetery of expired ideas and beliefs that fall way too short of present day requirements; or in the sanctuary of fantasy, excessive planning and inaction; or in your current reality that is contaminated by the invasion of references from the past rather than fresh pioneer ideas.

Is “feeling prohibited” procrastination?

Feeling prohibited is procrastination if you are blaming your inaction on something outside of yourself or you are ‘not in the mood’ to or ‘do not feel like’ doing it. Otherwise, this feeling of gentle hesitation, a soft pull to engage in another positive activity, could be your intuition making sure your intention unfolds with ease in divine sequence. This has happened to me countless times. My intentions did manifest easily with minimum effort.

Okay, one last word…

We are not condemned to a life of procrastination. Choice is available this second, right now. Crave to take the risk of being abandoned by relationships you value the most because you finally garnered enough self-respect to act on your behalf. Do not panic, you will always receive the support you need as you need it. Does it matter the channel that brings it to you? Crave to test drive your own potential on your private road—you have the remainder of this lifetime to do it. So do it now! What are you waiting for, your last breath of regret and self-pity?

Tell me: what are your insights, experiences? I would enjoy hearing from you.

So post your comments below before you forget. And if you find something useful in this blog, why not subscribe so you can receive email notification each time I publish a post. Also, I would be highly honored if you recommended this blog to others who might benefit. Thank you in advance.

Men Readers: Your comments are valuable too & highly welcomed! ;-))

Shall we meet up again in a few days?

Until then,

Allow happiness!

Tandi

Image credit: Procrastination 101! from mdjunction.com; “… flaw that has caused… from redeemedsheep.com

Copyright © 2010-2012 Thandiwe Chappot, thefemininefeminine®. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Successful whether you like it or not

HAVE A HAPPY, HEALTHY & FUN NEW YEAR, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!

Creative Life

For every spark of life, successful manifestation of its intention is inevitable. You, too, are luminous sparks of endless life. From the start you are lavishly endowed with everything you need to flourish, to succeed in manifesting anything and everything you sincerely desire or even unwittingly do not want.

There really is nothing to chase or grab hold of and hide from suspects or hoard for the days of famine you robotically construct in your mind. You are ready now to transcend this primitive, yet requisite, stage of awakening through forced actions—feeling forced by the expectations of people you respect more than your very own self; plus 12 to 20 years of sponge schooling in lieu of self-examination which inspires best actions. Are you ready to abandon your attachment to lassitude and neediness? Are you ready to jump off the jam-packed ledge of cowards and listen to and follow your deepest calling?

Success is not an enigma. Nor is it allotted to a privileged minority.  If achieving money, fame or coveted awards is the sum of success, then, at least 90% of the world’s peoples are failures. Of course, you know better! The first experience of mega success occurred in the moment you escaped the womb, somebody cut the umbilical cord and you swallowed your first liquid food. After that, everything you have learned and have practiced enough (whether labeled right or wrong) has prepared you for the next sequence in your upward spiral development. So then, why does the majority of humanity minimize or prevent their innate propensity to succeed? Here is my abridged view.

You have been duped both by implicit and brazen advertisements since babyhood. You get the impression that phantom puppeteers control the brains of ad agencies, which bombard your senses with streaming adverts to induce feelings of unworthiness and inferiority unless you succumb to excessive consumerism. They maintain their position of puppeteer of the masses by strengthening the fear of being alone with yourself, ridicule from others and of taking full responsibility for your life. They provoke an infantile wish to be breastfed and the sole object of attention—i.e., narcissism.

Thanks to maliciously crafted crowd-hypnosis, you blindly rush to join the self-defacement society. I am not speaking about egoism: the need to fit in so not to risk exclusion from the flock or to pretend humility and kindness and appear lofty or privileged. I am referring to collective self-defacement as an effective mechanism to keep you distracted from the bigger self within and your original plan for exploring life in human form.

Caution! We are not jumping on the victim wagon here. Remember: you were born with the capacity to decide how you want to experiment with your life—via resistance, struggle or flow, a state of allowing. You can succeed on every level by simply being true to yourself, authentic in your intention. If you deliberately let your life flourish, even though you will not know beforehand the sequence of actions and coincidences, you will easily do whatever is required to transmute your intention into physical reality. No one can cause you to fail. No one. Because what you are witnessing today is the result of your choice. Therefore, you are creating an endless success story right here in the timeless now.

“If it is to be, it is up to me.” – Anonymous

 (I cover in depth the subject of success in my book-in-progress. I will keep you informed as it progresses.)

Tell me: what are your insights, experiences? I would enjoy hearing from you.

So post your comments below before you forget. And if you find something useful in this blog, why not subscribe so you can receive email notification each time I publish a post. Also, I would be highly honored if you recommended this blog to others who might benefit. Thank you in advance.

Men Readers: Your comments are valuable too & highly welcomed! ;-))

Shall we meet up again in a few days?

Until then,

Allow happiness!!

Tandi

Image credit: “KidsArt”, Da Vinci Creative Kids. Timeoutkl.com

Copyright © 2010-2012 Thandiwe Chappot, thefemininefeminine®. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Friends Are Like That

Jump 4 Joy!

Good morning Beautiful People,

The following text is a gratitude poem. But because I’m temporarily inept in using this blog platform, alas, I had to convert it into paragraph form.

Dear Friends, how much I thank you!

You broke my fall into an abyss of despair. You added me to your holiday guest list,  and sent me fabulous people links and web links to boost my morale, to boost my knowledge, to boost my income.

Thank you Friends for confiding in me.

You trusted me to guard your worst fears and ‘hideous’ wants and secrets.  And thanks for safeguarding mine! We taught each other those things that we ourselves had not grasped. All that sincere sharing grew us, especially me, hopefully you too.

Thank you Friends for playing my playmate—

Did we not wake up our carefree, giggly, silly selves? So much fun had we, to be responsibly irresponsible & spontaneous! Being immune to disciplinary stares in public places, we modeled pure joy.

Thank you Friends who pretended to be strangers passing in a flash.

You reflected back to me what I needed to examine & keep me synchronized in integrity. Thank you for being a caretaker when the babyish me was bigger than the adult me…You provided a refuge so that i could lick my wounds from battling the invisible war in my head.

Thank you Friends for applauding my little successes.

You have been my first row fans & competent critics who pointed me to excellence. Without you, I would exist as vapor…unable to stand upright in the world.

Thank you Friends for your sunrise concert, your upbeat chatter & wing flapping…

Just before you dove faster than fighter jets from roofs to grab beaks-full of dry stalks or balls of green moss, weeds & loose gravel from my balcony garden; and peeled off dead slivers of bark to build the most exquisite weather-proof houses, meticulously arranging one piece at a time. What presence! What intelligence! What love! You show me how to design with finesse.

Thank you Friends for reminding me of “seed of potential.”

How wise you are to speak loudly & clearly without an audible voice! You bend with the tempest without breaking. You shed yourself bare & bow low in gratitude, reverence for life. Every time I look towards my balcony there you are—growing, forever elegantly, new leaves & limbs & bark with original color schemes to attract the perfect residents. You are allowing your own seed of potential to flourish to its fullest.

I thank you past & future, my ghost Friends, for making it plain how you do not exist.

Past is a pretty synonym of mental cemetery: A favorite, highly frequented spot where human beings indulge in exhuming the same old bones gone to dust, the material used to build a feared or longed for future. Because ‘you are not,’  I have returned to living fearlessly: I create right now & I experience the results right here in my consciousness!

Thank you critter Friends: especially the spider that weaved a web across my window that attracted strange teeny-weeny critters that left unsightly stains that compromised my view. So I sprayed vinegar water to chase it away.

The next morning, spider had constructed a new more elaborate web. This time I thoroughly cleaned my window of web & stains. But on day three, a new web just as beautiful had trapped several tiny critters frantically attempting to escape. What is your message Friend?

“Never give up! Give total attention to your intention. If failures seem endless, do what you do better until your intention is manifested”.…Yes, Spider is me.

Thank you Friends–the light, air, earth & water that sustain this physical body; the mind that designs my whole life experience: this planet playground in which I have fun trying out my talents & gifts; examining results (what is, a finished product); contemplating cause & effect to expand my awareness & capacity to give more of the limitless reservoir of love intelligence that I am.

Thank you Friends. Thank you.

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Flashes of Insight2

–There is no risk in truth.

–So much endless searching for your purposeful work, passion, gift to the world…procrastinating to avoid loving or giving. Why not start at your current level of understanding? What are you waiting for–for your gift to descend from a summit? But what is it? you ask. Your gift is sitting quietly in your daily choices. It is the subject of your outrageous daydreams that you dare not expose. It appears as your persistent preferences, pleasures and intuitive knowing and in your leisure moments. It is smack in the middle of your relationships. All.  It infiltrates each nuance of living because of its seamless presence in your experience. There is nothing to seek. Simply pay attention to your intuition edging you forward rather than vacillating between what you know and the imposition of puny opinions and judgment of spectators. What do they have to do with you? Nothing at all. Their projections are none of your business. Know that what you are running from is clinging to you. Why not give it a big hug and make it your lover?

–“It’s very immature to be afraid.” Wanda J. Pilot

–There is never anything to wait for…to happen or to do or to come to us. It is already done, already complete and is present, with us here now. Our job is to become acutely aware of it. In that moment, we will have initiated an easy accomplishment.

–We’ve been hearing since forever: “Outflow determines inflow.” But there’s more to outflow than working and scheming for monetary returns. Outflow starts with our thinking, desires, moment-to-moment choices, intentions, attitude, beliefs, feelings and words, which direct each single action or activity. At the same time, everything we’re experiencing today is inflow–the result of yesterday’s internal and external actions.

–Loneliness does not emerge from solitude or alienation. It is an effect of believing we are separate beings, on the outskirts of life. And the thought of joining the game of self-responsibility feels too threatening to attempt.

–I like knowing that no matter what happens, life is unfolding in Love order, in divine sequence.

–Fear and frustration arise when we attempt to control the flow of Life, which is impossible. If we persist, the resistance triggers a deterioration process of the mind, then the body. And no quantity of injections, pills, clever flesh carving or padding can prevent body rot. Let Life have its way and the mind plus body will jump for joy!

–The primary reason relationships dissolve into chaos is each party forgets that Love is always omnipresent. If Love is omnipresent then it must be all the power, all intelligence. All it takes is one person to remember this truth frequently. This I can witness: Love does heal all ills.

Is Life the activity of Love? Its outer reflection, manifestation? Is mind an amusing instrument of Life to create and pretend to play all the characters in its imaginary physical universe?