Tag: personal-growth

Procrastination Interruption

Are you tied up in knots by “I would have, I could have, I should have _______” self-talk? How often do you interrupt your progress in meeting a goal with procrastination? If you have ever relied on procrastination’s crutches, you have lots of company. The procrastination part of me lingers too long on some projects. Let’s interrupt our procrastination!

Retired professor and researcher of procrastination at Carleton College in Canada, Timothy Pychyl maintains that poor time management is not the cause of procrastination; rather, the culprit is our emotional regulation. The key reason we avoid doing something is not due to lackadaisical time management, but the task at hand generates some uncomfortable emotion – fear, anxiety, and/or self-doubt.

Research by Pychyl found another procrastination myth — that we work best under pressure. While stress might force you to complete something, it may not result in your best work. You may gain an adrenaline rush and believe that without pressure, it’s difficult to “find” motivation.

Pychyl prefers to call procrastination a choice. For example, we may choose to read some self-help book instead of addressing a distracting emotion. We may learn some information and tell ourselves, “I learned what I need to do!” When we take in some new information in this way, there may be a temporary relief that we are closing in on a solution. Brains love learning. In learning there is a sense of “solving” some concern. Yet, research suggests that this fleeting satisfaction might get in the way of actual motivation to follow up with actions. After all, most of us are elaborate excuse-makers.  

It is good to learn about change! Actual change is the real pearl.

So, what is the procrastination story? Pychyl writes a “Don’t Delay” blog with Psychology Today. He advocates taking small, achievable steps to address both your stress level and deliver a jumpstart to your motivation. In an interview with Eric Zimmer, the creator of “The One You Feed” podcast, Pychyl offered tips from his book, Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change:

  • Present-self explains there is benefit from procrastination. Future-self reaps the results.
  • Ask yourself, “How are you actually going to implement this goal?” Your implementation intention can start the engine of motivation.
  • Leverage a positive habit you already have: “After I brush my teeth, my next morning action is _______________.”
  • We do not do projects; we do actions.
  • Follow this quote by a monk: “You’ve got to give the monkey something to do.” 
  • Most of us seem to believe that one must be in the mood to do something, that motivation proceeds action. However, it’s often the other way around.

Research offers ways to interrupt our procrastination: take action! I would add, be curious; greet your exiled emotions like old friends: “Ah, you always have my back. Let’s take baby steps together!”

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

524. When do you catch yourself procrastinating?

525. What project calls out to you to interrupt procrastination?   

Self-Communication Grit

Social work researcher Brené Brown teaches employees how to fail. She calls this training “Daring Leadership.” Millennial employees and interns make up half of her staff. She reports that nearly every Millennial who works with her has confided some version of a kind of innocence: “I never learned how to have these kinds of conversations.” “I never learned about emotions or how to talk so openly about failure, and I’ve never seen it modeled.” “When you’re used to using technology for everything, these hard face-to-face conversations are awkward and so intense.”

If tough communication skills are not taught at home, then public education might pick up the slack. However, schools do not like the word “failure” any better than parents. This communication grit training then falls to OJT, or on-the-job training, the great teacher in most work settings.

I recently read that researchers report evidence for humans speaking as many as20,000 to 75,000 different languages in a timeframe between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago. I wondered if early humans had vocabulary for failure or disappointment in any of their languages. According to an internet search, every culture has a linguistic version of mistakes, or lack of success. However, it is impossible to know vocabulary from thousands of years ago! Many questions have few clear answers.

Irish organizational consultant Annette Clancy did her PhD research on emotion in organizations with a questioning focus on disappointment. She found that the wider the gap between expectation and reality, the greater the disappointment. Major disappointment entails a grieving process, even if the reality of some special thing happening never existed. This applies to one’s work as well as one’s relationships, but disappointment frequently is masked by distracting or numbing oneself. Most of us have little training in addressing our disappointments.

Disappointments need communication, often first with ourselves.  And we need passion plus perseverance (grit) to be frank in our self-communication. Why exactly are we disappointed? It is only one part of one’s personality, but it can link up with a chain of personality parts that exude vulnerability, blame and/or anger, the other parts that we try to avoid.

Your disappointment has roots. This simple recognition is a starting place for some investigation. What were your expectations about a given situation? What were some earlier times when you were disappointed? Can you think of any disappointments from your childhood years? Was some failure ignored or denied at that time? It is time to admit failures, flubs, and disappointments. In fact, learning from failure may be key to creativity. Post-it Notes were created from “failed” weak glue.

Let’s adopt Brené Brown’s approach: “No vulnerability, no creativity. No tolerance for failure, no innovation. It is that simple. If you’re not willing to fail, you can’t innovate. If you’re not willing to build a vulnerable culture, you can’t create.”

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

520. When has a disappointment eventually led you to innovate?

521. What gets in the way of meeting your goals?

Emodiversity Complexity

Computer Complexity

It turns out that negative emotions are useful. Whether you initially agree or not, stay tuned for a different slant on pesky emotions. Jordi Quoidbach has a Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Liège, Belgium, and spent several years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard; he studies happiness and decision-making. Quoidbach’s research into emodiversity (a piggyback idea from biodiversity) suggests, “…people who experience a diverse range of emotions…tend to be healthier, mentally and physically.” With increased emodiversity, his research found decreased depression, number of doctor visits, and days hospitalized per year in participants. 

Having emodiversity means acknowledging a variety of emotions in your day — allowing for frustration, disgust, jealousy, gratitude, tranquility, and elation. Quoidbach explains: “…it is not just having a diverse range of positive emotion, but we also find that having a diverse range of negative emotion is better than having a narrower range of negative emotion.”

My understanding of so-called “negative” emotions is that they are protectors, often shielding an individual from some unacknowledged small-t trauma situation (or a big-T trauma such as a natural disaster). When one can accept that there is a reason why a “negative” emotion pops into consciousness, there is a possibility of coping with one’s history. It is not useful to ban emotions when they can serve as maps that lead to problem solving. Often the mapping of a “negative” emotion takes one on a follow-the-memory consciousness back to an earlier year when some event triggered alarm. Such memories still sting from youngster years.

Quoidbach’s research relates to correlation, not causality. However, his steps to increase emodiversity might serve as stepping stones for a deeper dive down memory lane’s complexity:

  1. Create an Emotions Matrix
    • Audit your emotions for a week. Jot down each emotion you recognize in quadrants: 1. Pleasant, high-energy emotions (joy or excitement are examples); 2. Pleasant, low-energy emotions (perhaps serenity or relief); 3. Unpleasant, high-energy emotions ( such as anger or disgust); 4. Unpleasant, low-energy emotions (boredom or sadness are examples).
    • Ask, “Why am I not more diverse? Am I afraid of experiencing specific feelings? Maybe [that’s] because I’m afraid that some stuff will come out?”

       2. Put Yourself in Situations That Evoke Certain Emotions

    • Establish the areas in which you may want to expand your emotional life. Recognize how often you evoke those feelings.
    • Recognize if you never feel angry; it may suggest that some inner conversations could prove useful.
    • Also, if you are constantly chatty and cheerful, consider experiences that allow for you to be still and calm.

    3. Expand Your Emotional Vocabulary

    • Make an effort to name your emotions. Then expand your emotional vocabulary. It could prove useful to use words from ancestral native languages.
    • Quoidbach relates, “When you learn new words for emotions, you start paying attention to situations differently… you expand the range of emotions you experience.”

    Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

    452. When are you most aware of your emotions?

    453. Are there times when you feel shame for an emotion?

    Broaden-and-build Purls and Pearls

    I cannot give away my grandmother’s crochet hook…yes, this is a scarcity mindset at work (see Pearls of Peace, 1-13-25). I am hooked on warm memories of my childhood hours in my grandparents’ home. I recall many hours that Grandma sat in her rocker, wearing her hand-sewn apron and dress, making one doily after another to gift the many females in her family and friend network. I never learned knit-and-purl stitches, but I watched with fascination as Grandma created with her crochet hook, building one stitch upon the next to broaden her handiwork. Handmade gift-giving was on her unofficial resume.  

    Psychologist Barbara Frederickson created her broaden-and-build theory when she realized that there was a greater amount of research on negative emotions than positive emotions. For every positive emotion, there appear to be 3 negative ones! The reason for this disparity is that negative emotions are linked to our survival in big and small ways.

    The broaden-and-build theory emphasizes that the expression of positive emotions can expand one’s repertoire of psychological, social, cognitive, and physical resources. Positiveness improves one’s resilience. It may help one’s coping skills. This approach is not meant to erase negative emotions but instead allows for the co-existence of both kinds of emotions.

    A negative emotion is a protective signal that something does not “feel right.” When such emotions are brushed off, sometimes there could be dire consequences. The bodymind is a listening machine, always on lookout to protect one from physical and/or psychological harm. The idea with broaden-and-build theory is to make space for ALL emotions.

    Expressing frustration in a trusted relationship is often necessary before gaining access to a more centered space where one can choose a positive action. The key is having an awareness of your positive emotions so that you can repair touchy situations. Building upon a growth mindset reminds one that others roll with negative emotions also.    

    Here is a list of positive emotions that you can broaden-and-build for more resiliency. You probably do not need a list of negative emotions, as they seem ever-ready for action. However, you may miss out on positivity time if you do not have these positives tucked in your pocket for ready use:  

    • Admiration  
    • Affection
    • Altruism
    • Amusement
    • Anticipation
    • Awe
    • Cheerfulness
    • Confidence
    • Enjoyment
    • Enthusiasm
    • Euphoria
    • Gratitude
    • Happiness
    • Hope
    • Inspiration
    • Interest
    • Joy
    • Love
    • Optimism
    • Pride
    • Relief
    • Serenity
    • Surprise

    Best of all, positive emotions are keep-on-giving gifts. I took interest in “crewel” (Welsh word for wool) embroidery when I was in graduate school dealing with a dissertation committee at odds with one another. I needed to broaden my outlook to create something that was positive, one stitch after another, for my own well-being. I realized that one situation is not destiny. Looking back on Grandma’s knit-and-purl self-therapy, I wonder what she was working through in her mind.  

    Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

    361. When have you used an art form to increase your positive coping skills?  

    362. How often do you catch yourself with an initial negative emotion in situations?