Self-confidence, fear and the inevitable procrastination
One of the main reasons most people avoid tasks that can free them from mediocrity is their lack of self-confidence. Mediocrity is nothing but a failure to live up to your true potential. What you can do is absolutely incredible. What you will do is often disappointing. Most people are conditioned to do only what they can do or only do what they have been told they “can” do or what they have successfully done before.
A lack of confidence in yourself will automatically prevent you from doing this because you lack that sense of certainty that comes from being confident. Self-confidence is nothing more than a belief in your intuition level in yourself and in your abilities – even if you have never done so before. Procrastination is not just a way to avoid mundane tasks but on a much higher level it is avoiding “big” decisions and “big” actions that can make a real difference in your life.
This is a huge problem because the only way you can continually move forward with your life is by continually taking action. When you fail to move forward, you fail to grow and without growth there is “death.” If not physical, then certainly emotional and spiritual. To get from where you are to where you eventually want to be, you have to do things that feel uncomfortable; Unfamiliar things. Without a sense of certainty and confidence in yourself, you most likely never will. Your doubt will stop you from trying it.
On the other hand, if you are full of confidence, then you are confident in yourself and sure that you can achieve a specific result – regardless of past performance or whether you have done it before. Self-confidence is what creates a sense of certainty within you. This feeling of certainty is nothing but a feeling you create. When you have done this before, it is relatively easy to recreate the feeling and therefore the certainty. It’s not something you have to face all over again. As humans we tend to avoid uncertainty and the unfamiliar. This is why procrastination can steal your future because procrastination will prevent you from taking actions that will create the future you want. Confident people are people who care about work. They are people who know that action and confidence go hand in hand because one creates the other.
With a lack of confidence comes a certain level of fear. Confidence is not the absence of fear, it is having the courage to face fear and do it regardless. Action is what drives fear away. Failing to take action not only conditions fear, it actually creates it and out of fear of failure, you will find a ‘good reason’ not to take action and to procrastinate.
Taking action is the ultimate cure for a lack of confidence and a wavering sense of certainty can be cemented by using your personal power to take action. When you use your mind and emotions to get your nervous system into action, you are literally walking away from uncertainty because uncertainty and lack of confidence is nothing but a “state of mind.” whether or not you think you are confident; Either way you will be right. Confidence begins and ends with the image you hold of yourself. It’s that easy. the image you have of yourself; Your self-esteem, will either boost or take away from your confidence level. You may now decide to start focusing on a different image of yourself. Start directing your thoughts towards who you want to be, rather than what you fear becoming. As you do this, you will start to feel more confident. Remember, confidence is only a feeling, and as you dig deeper into those feelings results will surely follow.
Many people today wake up in the middle of their lives only to realize they haven’t done anything they’ve always wanted to do. They realize they have spent 30 years procrastinating – putting off what they should have done. This is a major cause of depression and what is commonly referred to as “midlife crises”. But the “cure” is to eliminate procrastination, take action, and work towards your dreams and desires. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. It’s never too late to take action on your dreams and desires. More than anything else, it is your actions that will shape your life. What you do and what you fail to do will make your life and you (and only you) have complete control over that.
When you take charge of your life and realize that it is all up to you, you enable yourself to make it the way you see it. Nobody else is responsible. When you take responsibility, you assume your ability to respond and take action. The moment you do this, it unlocks a level of confidence within you that can enable you to take action. Confidence does not come from any physical evidence, but from an inner knowledge that it is possible. You create a sense of certainty by beginning to doubt the doubts you previously had about yourself. Ultimately, procrastination cannot survive in the mind of a confident person who is thinking about action.
