Are you really procrastinating?

I’ve been working on a BIG shift in the way I approach work over the last year (as many people have!)

 And… I’ve allowed myself to pause and hold space for ideas for fully form.

If I’d followed the common approach to productivity and success, I’d have gone down a hole of punishing myself for being such a procrastinator over the last 2-3 months. I have not really marketed my services… yes I post on here but mainly informational posts sharing what I’m learning. Generally with social media, I teach my clients to do about 25% brand posts, 25% community posts, 25% educational posts and 25% sales posts.

I know that if I ask the question of how to stop procrastinating as it relates to this phase of my business, I’m asking the wrong question. Sure, resistance can show up as procrastination –  I know I have quite a lot of trepidation about this shift.

I am working on a two new group courses which I feel really passionately about as it’s all about making starting and growing a business accessible, supportive and fun (I think we often get too serious and forget the fun part!)

I teach my 1:1 clients all about gradually learning and applying a cyclical approach to the way you work- every moon cycle (or menstrual cycle) we have 4 phases: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn

It’s a way to organise the tasks you do each phase by the *kind* of energy they require:

Winter: Reflective, low energy, relaxed, offline, disconnect, time in nature. Depending on your personality, for you this may be a great time to write content (you decide later which parts you want to share). It’s a great time to connect with yourself at a soul level and come back to what you really want. When you skip this phase, you often wind up in burn out because you may be pursuing a path that doesn’t truly light you up.

Spring: Taking the ideas that came from your higher self during the winter phase- by that I just mean really connecting with what you TRULY desire. Now you start putting plans in motion. Brainstorming into how to make the visions practically actionable.

Summer: This week is the time to put yourself out there, be visible, go for your goals. It’s often the phase we feel we ‘should’ be at all the time!

Autumn: This is the time for wrapping up, seeing things through. Looking back and assessing your work. Finalise details.

 

The problem with the way we work in our culture is that we skip Autumn and Winter phase of projects and life!

 

We’re trained to move right from planning and initiating to launching right back to planning and initiating and launching. Over and over and over again. And we wonder why we’re so tired and burned out. We’ve skipped a full half of the seasons necessary for the growth and sustainability of anything in nature. The planet would not work without autumn and winter and neither should we. 

Some projects take longer in certain phases or seasons than others. The project I’ve been working on has certainly required a longer Winter phase than I had initially thought. I know I generally work my best close to deadlines. My creative process (when I truly allow it) is one in which there’s a lot of reflection, reading, journalling and space-holding (winter phase) and then a shorter visibility phase when things actually become materially visible. I’ve watched a time-lapse of seeds taking what seems like a long time to root down before them sprouting up, so I know this is flowing in alignment with nature (why fight against nature- it’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face!) Anything not aligned with nature ultimately isn’t sustainable!

If I got sucked into beating myself up for procrastinating, being in resistance or not being ready to launch when we originally planned, that would be A LOT of time and energy wasted that I could have been directing into rest and creativity.

Luckily, I did not get sucked into beating myself up.

 

I decided to trust the timing that this project had, even if it didn’t align with the timing I thought it would have.

 

Our Businesses have souls and energy of their own – as my coach Caroline Britton says- they are energetic extensions of us – similar to how as parents, we are responsible for supporting our children and keeping them safe but not in control of who they will become in the world, we are here to be in co-creation with our businesses. 

This big thing I’ve been working on has taken as long as it has taken (and it’s still not ready!)

And I trust that, while I may not ever know all the details as to why, that it needed this timeline to become all of what it was meant to be.No matter what creative pursuit you’re working on, remember that creativity has cycles and seasons.

Our human timelines are just as flawed as we are.

When we do more allowing and less beating ourselves up for our supposed “procrastination” we become a lot more abundant with a lot less friction.

 

Now, I’d love to hear from you:

What are you working on right now that’s taken longer than you expected? What’s your relationship with procrastination? Was what I shared here today supportive of your ability to trust and let go? Leave a comment and let me know!