Bootstraps, baby! On gumption, procrastination, and perfectionism

What do you do when you fail, when there's just too much?

Bootstraps, baby! Pick yourself up and get yourself going! Well, it turns out there is help in the world if the mind allows us to see it. These days, help brings me so much gratitude. 

I still believe that picking oneself up is helpful when it comes to many self-realizations. For example, no one can really choose joy for us. Only we can choose to pursue joy for ourselves. So up go the bootstraps again, pure gumption, choosing to pursue joy. 

More on that in another writing. Let's instead consider choosing to start any task that'll secure us massive results in the near future. Aaaaand... how to start?

With compassion. Always compassion. Put it this way: once we start, we may screw up and get sidetracked. Screwing up hurts many people, and it's sheer torture for the perfectionist. That's one reason why we procrastinate, whether we know it or not. So compassion and gumption are key. 

The compassion is for ourselves. After all, when we fall off track and get distracted, we may call ourselves lazy pieces of sh**. This isn't even true; we do lots and lots of amazing tasks! But if life has gotten us to believe that we really are lazy, or not all that bright, we really start to believe it and procrastinate in order to avoid doing something that will appoint the masses to believe how lazy they think we really are. We want to get everything done quite perfectly so we can prove to ourselves, and to them, our worth.

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Perfectionism is often acquired at a very young age and it inhibits starting. We perfectionists may require a “start” button; an imminent deadline or some such (think Tim Urban). It’s often not that we need to keep working to tweak it but more that we have a completionist attitude (I'm guilty, and recovering). There may be a fear that we will fail to finish, and complete the task excellently, in the time we have, avoiding the teeth of judgment. Thus we do not start anything unless it is urgent (in the malaise of pondering our own worth in the back of the mind, urgency can be the fire under our butt that trumps judgment for a moment.)

These are not rational thoughts. If we ask ourselves about this inner dithering, “Is this true?”  and we are honest, we'll probably find that the banter in our minds is just a chorus of pundits from the past and not a reasonable dialogue.

Just to let you know, I don't tend to have trouble starting, or finishing, when I am composing music. I usually do it on a whim quickly and am confident. It's a peak activity and it's encouraging and motivating for me. 

Try it yourself. Clear your schedule for some time tomorrow or later in the week - don't stress yourself out. Wake up and get your eyes into the bright natural light. Drink water. Eat well. Other activities and things to do will be there later. Pursue a peak activity for an hour right now. You may even get two hours before you realize the time has passed. Then rest - do not keep going! Take a walk or do some yoga or weights, watch birds. After you have had plenty of that break, come back and do another hour of the peak activity.

There! You just allowed yourself to do something you love! You even realized some results, and half the day is still around to finish the tasks you left behind. Don't worry if it didn't work perfectly... you can try again. Still, you started, right? 

Imagine convincing your mind that it's awesome getting that other task done, the one that'll make you lot's of money or get a great grade... and it's probably not true that you'll be judged if you start that project. I'm asking myself, "How can I do more awesome things?" and remembering that it's a continuum, not a switch.

BTW - guess who procrastinated writing this blog?

💜Until next time...