7 Smart Ways to Deal with Toxic People

post written by: Marc Chernoff

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Don’t let toxic people rent space in your head.
Raise the rent and get them out of there.

Surviving the ups, downs, and lightning storms of other people’s moodiness can be quite a challenge.  It’s important, though, to remember that some moody, negative people may be going through a difficult stage in their lives.  They may be ill, chronically worried, or lacking what they need in terms of love and emotional support.  Such people need to be listened to, supported, and cared for (although whatever the cause of their moodiness and negativity, you may still need to protect yourself from their behavior at times).
But there’s another type of moody, negative behavior: that of the toxic bully, who will use his or her mood swings to intimidate and manipulate.  It’s this aspect of moodiness that inflicts enduring abuse and misery.  If you observe these people closely, you will notice that their attitude is overly self-referential.  Their relationships are prioritized according to how each one can be used to meet their selfish needs.  This is the kind of toxic behavior I want to look at in this post.
I’m a firm believer that toxic mood swings (like chain letter emails) should not be inflicted on one person by another, under any circumstances.  So how can you best manage the fallout from other people’s relentless toxicity?

1.  Move on without them.

If you know someone who insists on destructively dictating the emotional atmosphere, then be clear: they are toxic.  If you are suffering because of their attitude, and your compassion, patience, advice, and general attentiveness doesn’t seem to help them, and they don’t seem to care one bit, then ask yourself, “Do I need this person in my life?”
When you delete toxic people from your environment it becomes a lot easier to breathe.  If the circumstances warrant it, leave these people behind and move on when you must.  Seriously, be strong and know when enough is enough!  Letting go of toxic people doesn’t mean you hate them, or that you wish them harm; it simply means you care about your own well-being.
A healthy relationship is reciprocal; it should be give and take, but not in the sense that you’re always giving and they’re always taking.  If you must keep a truly toxic person in your life for whatever reason, then consider the remaining points…

2.  Stop pretending their toxic behavior is OK.

If you’re not careful, toxic people can use their moody behavior to get preferential treatment, because… well… it just seems easier to quiet them down than to listen to their grouchy rhetoric.  Don’t be fooled.  Short-term ease equals long-term pain for you in a situation like this.  Toxic people don’t change if they are being rewarded for not changing.  Decide this minute not to be influenced by their behavior.  Stop tiptoeing around them or making special pardons for their continued belligerence.
Constant drama and negativity is never worth putting up with.  If someone over the age 21 can’t be a reasonable, reliable adult on a regular basis, it’s time to…

3.  Speak up!

Stand up for yourself.  Some people will do anything for their own personal gain at the expense of others – cut in line, take money and property, bully and belittle, pass guilt, etc.  Do not accept this behavior.  Most of these people know they’re doing the wrong thing and will back down surprisingly quickly when confronted.  In most social settings people tend to keep quiet until one person speaks up, so SPEAK UP.
Some toxic people may use anger as a way of influencing you, or they may not respond to you when you’re trying to communicate, or interrupt you and suddenly start speaking negatively about something dear to you.  If ever you dare to speak up and respond adversely to their moody behavior, they may be surprised, or even outraged, that you’ve trespassed onto their behavioral territory.  But you must speak up anyway.
Not mentioning someone’s toxic behavior can become the principal reason for being sucked into their mind games.  Challenging this kind of behavior upfront, on the other hand, will sometimes get them to realize the negative impact of their behavior.  For instance, you might say:

• “I’ve noticed you seem angry.  Is something upsetting you?”
• “I think you look bored.  Do you think what I’m saying is unimportant?”
• “Your attitude is upsetting me right now.  Is this what you want?”

Direct statements like these can be disarming if someone truly does use their moody attitude as a means of social manipulation, and these statements can also open a door of opportunity for you to try to help them if they are genuinely facing a serious problem.
Even if they say: “What do you mean?” and deny it, at least you’ve made them aware that their attitude has become a known issue to someone else, rather than just a personal tool they can use to manipulate others whenever they want.  (Read Emotional Blackmail.)
And if they persist in denial, it might be time to…

4.  Put your foot down.

Your dignity may be attacked, ravaged and disgracefully mocked, but it can never be taken away unless you willingly surrender it.  It’s all about finding the strength to defend your boundaries.
Demonstrate that you won’t be insulted or belittled.  To be honest, I’ve never had much luck trying to call truly toxic people (the worst of the worst) out when they’ve continuously insulted me.  The best response I’ve received is a snarky, “I’m sorry you took what I said so personally.”  Much more effective has been ending conversations with sickening sweetness or just plain abruptness.  The message is clear:  There is no reward for subtle digs and no games will be played at your end.
Truly toxic people will pollute everyone around them, including you if you allow them.  If you’ve tried reasoning with them and they aren’t budging, don’t hesitate to vacate their space and ignore them until they do.

5.  Don’t take their toxic behavior personally.

It’s them, not you.  KNOW this.
Toxic people will likely try to imply that somehow you’ve done something wrong.  And because the “feeling guilty” button is quite large on many of us, even the implication that we might have done something wrong can hurt our confidence and unsettle our resolve.  Don’t let this happen to you.
Remember, there is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.  Most toxic people behave negatively not just to you, but to everyone they interact with.  Even when the situation seems personal – even if you feel directly insulted – it usually has nothing to do with you.  What they say and do, and the opinions they have, are based entirely on their own self-reflection.

6.  Practice practical compassion.

Sometimes it makes sense to be sympathetic with toxic people whom you know are going through a difficult time, or those who are suffering from an illness.  There’s no question about it, some toxic people are genuinely distressed, depressed, or even mentally and physically ill, but you still need to separate their legitimate issues from how they behave toward you.  If you let people get away with anything because they are distressed, facing a medical condition, or depressed, even, then you are making it too tempting for them to start unconsciously using their unfortunate circumstance as a means to an end.
Several years ago, I volunteered at a psychiatric hospital for children.  I mentored a boy there named Dennis, a diagnosed Bipolar disorder patient.  Dennis was a handful sometimes, and would often shout obscenities at others when he experienced one of his episodes.  But no one ever challenged his outbursts, and neither had I up to this point.  After all, he’s clinically “crazy” and can’t help it, right?
One day I took Dennis to a local park to play catch.  An hour into our little field trip, Dennis entered one of his episodes and began calling me profane names.  But instead of ignoring his remarks, I said, “Stop bullying me and calling me names.  I know you’re a nice person, and much better than that.”  His jaw literally dropped.  Dennis looked stunned, and then, in a matter of seconds, he collected himself and replied, “I’m sorry I was mean Mr. Marc.”
The lesson here is that you can’t “help” someone by making unwarranted pardons for everything they do simply because they have problems.  There are plenty of people who are going through extreme hardships who are not toxic to everyone around them.  We can only act with genuine compassion when we set boundaries.  Making too many pardons and allowances is not healthy or practical for anyone in the long-term.  (Read Who’s Pulling Your Strings?)

7.  Take time for yourself.

If you are forced to live or work with a toxic person, then make sure you get enough alone time to relax, rest, and recuperate.  Having to play the role of a “focused, rational adult” in the face of toxic moodiness can be exhausting, and if you’re not careful, the toxicity can infect you.  Again, understand that even people with legitimate problems and clinical illnesses can still comprehend that you have needs as well, which means you can politely excuse yourself when you need to.
You deserve this time away.  You deserve to think peacefully, free from external pressure and toxic behavior.  No problems to solve, boundaries to uphold, or personalities to please.  Sometimes you need to make time for yourself, away from the busy world you live in that doesn’t make time for you.

The floor is yours…

What are your experiences with toxic people?  What have you done to cope with their behavior?  Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
Photo by: Monkeyc

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9 Fears You Will Regret Never Facing

post written by: Marc Chernoff

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt

Today, I volunteered at a blood drive downtown.  One of the women who came in to donate blood was literally crying in fear as I called her into the donor’s room.  When I realized just how terrified she was, I told her, “It’s OK, calm down.  You don’t have to give blood if you don’t want to.”  She looked up at me from the donor chair, cracked a half smile through her tears and said, “I know, but I want to.  Fear shouldn’t stop me from doing what’s right.”
Wow!  Talk about a wake-up call.  Her words immediately forced me to think about all the little fears that have been holding me back.  I’m sure you can relate.  So lets take a look at nine fears we can start facing today to avoid regret and heartache down the road.

1.  Fear of standing out.

Our greatest fear is not that we are not special enough; our greatest fear is that we are too special.  It is our brilliance, not our deficiencies that often frighten us most.  Sometimes you likely catch yourself asking, “Who am I to think I can do this?”  When in fact you should be saying, “Who am I to think I can’t?”  Ignore your doubts.  Forget about fitting in.  Stand out!
Don’t sell yourself short.  Don’t save face and then lose your soul in the process.  Doing so does not serve the world.  There is nothing helpful about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  You are meant to shine in a way only YOU can.  You were born to manifest all the unique brilliance inside you.  And as you let your light shine bright, you subconsciously give others permission to do the same.  As you are liberated from your own fear of standing out, your presence automatically liberates those around you too.

2.  Fear of not being good enough yet.

There will NEVER be a perfect time to pursue your dreams and goals.  You will never feel 100% ready, because you will never be 100% complete.  You’re growing every day.  You just have to find faith in yourself right now.  Faith means living with uncertainty, feeling your way through life, letting your intuition guide you like a flashlight in the dark.
What if, for today, you choose to believe that you have enough, you are enough, and that you’ve come far enough to be worthy?  What if, for today, you choose to believe that you are strong enough, wise enough, kind enough, and loved enough to move forward?  What if, as the sun sets on today, you choose to believe that you did a pretty good job?  And what if tomorrow morning, you choose to believe it all over again? 

3.  Fear life’s daily storms.

Sometimes life sucks.  Sometimes life gets so hard that you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning.  Sometimes life is so stressful that all you want to do is curl up and cry.  But sometimes life is beautiful.  Sometimes life is so amazing that all you want to do is smile.  Sometimes you just have to stay positive, and push through the hard times.  Why?  Because life is worth it.  The good times are worth it.  YOU are worth it.
Realize that fear is the worst of it; fear is your real enemy.  So get up, get out in the stormy weather of the real world, and kick fear as hard as you can right in the teeth.  Do so by staring at it dead in the eyes and then walking right through it into the storm.  Let the rain kiss your skin.  That’s the first step.  Because once you’re wet, you won’t fear the rain anymore.

4.  Fear of failure.

Life’s toughest struggles are intended to make you better, not bitter.  Your struggles with “losing” develop your greatest strengths.  Many of the most vital lessons you learn in life you don’t necessarily seek on purpose.  Sometimes the wrong choices bring you to the right places.  In fact, every time you screw up, you’re one step closer to your goal.  The only mistake that can truly hurt you is choosing to do nothing simply because you’re too scared to make a mistake.
Failure is not falling down; failure is staying down when you have the choice to get back up.  Ultimately, what you need to remember is that you are in competition with one person and one person only – yourself.  Your toughest competitor is simply the voices in your head.  You can’t fail; you can only learn what you need to know to get up and take the next step.

5.  Fear of losing control.

I hate to break it to you, but you can’t control everything in your life no matter how many safeguards you put into place.  Life is about finding a balance between what we can and cannot control.  You must learn to live comfortably between effort and surrender.  Life does not owe you anything; it has already given you everything you need.  Freedom is not overcoming what you think stands in your way; it is understanding that what is in your way is part of the way.
Quite simply, the reason you are sometimes miserable and stressed is because of an unhealthy attachment to certain things you have no control over.  So let go; release the tension and stress.  Realize you haven’t lost anything; you were never in control to begin with.  See what happens when you loosen your grip, throw your hands into the air, and allow life to just happen and flow as it does, without constant worry and micromanagement.  (Read The Power of Now.)

6.  Fear of an event in another time and place.

Some people spend their entire lives living in another time and place.  They lament about what has been, what they could have done, or what might become.  Don’t be one of them.  If you live your life with the regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you’ll have no “today” to be thankful for.  Let go and live!  Don’t let the past and future steal your present.
You act like it’s you against the world, but it’s really just you against yourself.  You become a prisoner in your own mind when you cling to the pains of another time and place.  Instead, be free and cling no more.  If you’re brave enough to say “goodbye,” life will always reward you with a new “hello.”  So keep your faith and focus on the present as you put one foot in front of the other.  Doing so won’t make all your dreams and goals easier, but it will make them possible.

7.  Fear of looking undesirable.

As you grow older, what you look like on the outside becomes less and less of an issue, and who you are on the inside becomes the focal point of interest.  You eventually realize that beauty has almost nothing to do with looks; it’s who you are as a person, how you make others feel about themselves, and most importantly, how you feel about yourself.
So no matter how plain and undesirable you may feel right now, if your truth is written across your face, you are beautiful.  What you do, and the way you think, makes you beautiful.  Don’t try to be someone you’re not.  You may look into a mirror and see flaws, but someone else looks at you and sees a person they love.  This is not because they’re blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul.  Your shortcomings then dim by comparison.  The people who care about you see the beauty of your imperfections, sometimes even before you do.

8.  Fear of what you don’t understand.

Nothing in life is to be feared, everything is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more, so you may fear less.  Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery from fear of what you don’t understand.
Those of us who can’t handle the tension of not understanding often judge and lash out at others.  We defend our circumstances by condemning people in different circumstances.  That’s how it works – you either learn to let your uncertainty come and go, or you don’t, and instead dump it on others.  So much depends on simply learning that feeling uncertain is not a sign that anything’s wrong with you or anyone else – it’s just a sign that we’re all human.  Nobody has it all figured out.  NOBODY!  We’ve all got confusion and joy and pride and exhaustion circling in our minds.  Beautiful things are hard to understand at first – they’re designed that way so we must study them carefully, which ends up bringing us together instead of pushing us apart.  (Read The Four Agreements.)

9.  Fear of change.

Change is often resisted when it’s needed the most.  Yet, if nothing ever changed there would be no sunrise the next morning.  Most of us are comfortable where we are even though the whole universe is constantly changing around us.  Learning to accept this is vital to our happiness and general success in life.  Because only when we change, do we grow, and begin to see a world we never knew was possible.
Ultimately, you can choose to let your past define you and confine you, or you can choose to learn, grow, and leave it behind you.  Just like the seasons, you have the ability to change.  In many ways, you already have.
And don’t forget, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change.  That’s the one thing you can count on.  So embrace it, and realize that change happens for a reason.  It won’t always be easy or obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it.

The floor is yours…

What fears have been holding you back?  What’s one fear you need to face sooner rather than later?  Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us.
Photo by: Nicolo Paternoster

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Why Procrastinators Procrastinate

waitbutwhy.com
 pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-| noun the action of delaying or postponing something: your first tip is to avoid procrastination.
Who would have thought that after decades of struggle with procrastination, the dictionary, of all places, would hold the solution.

Avoid procrastination. So elegant in its simplicity.

While we're here, let's make sure obese people avoid overeating, depressed people avoid apathy, and someone please tell beached whales that they should avoid being out of the ocean.

No, "avoid procrastination" is only good advice for fake procrastinators -- those people that are like, "I totally go on Facebook a few times every day at work -- I'm such a procrastinator!" The same people that will say to a real procrastinator something like, "Just don't procrastinate and you'll be fine."

The thing that neither the dictionary nor fake procrastinators understand is that for a real procrastinator, procrastination isn't optional -- it's something they don't know how to not do.

In college, the sudden unbridled personal freedom was a disaster for me -- I did nothing, ever, for any reason. The one exception was that I had to hand in papers from time to time. I would do those the night before, until I realized I could just do them through the night, and I did that until I realized I could actually start them in the early morning on the day they were due. This behavior reached caricature levels when I was unable to start writing my 90-page senior thesis until 72 hours before it was due, an experience that ended with me in the campus doctor's office learning that lack of blood sugar was the reason my hands had gone numb and curled up against my will. (I did get the thesis in -- no, it was not good.)

Even this post took much longer than it should have, because I spent a bunch of hours doing things like seeing this picture sitting on my desktop from a previous post, opening it, looking at it for a long time thinking about how easily he could beat me in a fight, then wondering if he could beat a tiger in a fight, then wondering who would win between a lion and a tiger, and then Googling that and reading about it for a while (the tiger would win). I have problems.

To understand why procrastinators procrastinate so much, let's start by understanding anon-procrastinator's brain:

Pretty normal, right? Now, let's look at a procrastinator's brain:

Notice anything different?

It seems the Rational Decision-Maker in the procrastinator's brain is coexisting with a pet -- the Instant Gratification Monkey.

This would be fine -- cute, even -- if the Rational Decision-Maker knew the first thing about how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn't a part of his training and he's left completely helpless as the monkey makes it impossible for him to do his job.

The fact is, the Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions -- he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment. He doesn't understand the Rational Decision-Maker any better than the Rational Decision-Maker understands him -- why would we continue doing this jog, he thinks, when we could stop, which would feel better. Why would we practice that instrument when it's not fun? Why would we ever use a computer for work when the internet is sitting right there waiting to be played with? He thinks humans are insane.

In the monkey world, he's got it all figured out -- if you eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, and don't do anything difficult, you're a pretty successful monkey. The problem for the procrastinator is that he happens to live in the human world, making the Instant Gratification Monkey a highly unqualified navigator. Meanwhile, the Rational Decision-Maker, who was trained to make rational decisions, not to deal with competition over the controls, doesn't know how to put up an effective fight -- he just feels worse and worse about himself the more he fails and the more the suffering procrastinator whose head he's in berates him.

It's a mess. And with the monkey in charge, the procrastinator finds himself spending a lot of time in a place called the Dark Playground.*

The Dark Playground is a place every procrastinator knows well. It's a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun because it's completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread. Sometimes the Rational Decision-Maker puts his foot down and refuses to let you waste time doing normal leisure things, and since the Instant Gratification Monkey sure as hell isn't gonna let you work, you find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where everyone loses.**

And the poor Rational Decision-Maker just mopes, trying to figure out how he let the human he's supposed to be in charge of end up here again.

Given this predicament, how does the procrastinator ever manage to accomplish anything?

As it turns out, there's one thing that scares the shit out of the Instant Gratification Monkey:

The Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close or when there's danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence.

The Instant Gratification Monkey, normally unshakable, is terrified of the Panic Monster. How else could you explain the same person who can't write a paper's introductory sentence over a two-week span suddenly having the ability to stay up all night, fighting exhaustion, and write eight pages? Why else would an extraordinarily lazy person begin a rigorous workout routine other than a Panic Monster freakout about becoming less attractive?

And these are the lucky procrastinators -- there are some who don't even respond to the Panic Monster, and in the most desperate moments they end up running up the tree with the monkey, entering a state of self-annihilating shutdown. Quite a crowd we are.

Of course, this is no way to live. Even for the procrastinator who does manage to eventually get things done and remain a competent member of society, something has to change. Here are the main reasons why:

1) It's unpleasant. Far too much of the procrastinator's precious time is spent toiling in the Dark Playground, time that could have been spent enjoying satisfying, well-earned leisure if things had been done on a more logical schedule. And panic isn't fun for anyone.

2) The procrastinator ultimately sells himself short. He ends up underachieving and fails to reach his potential, which eats away at him over time and fills him with regret and self-loathing.

3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Even if the procrastinator is in the type of career where the Panic Monster is regularly present and he's able to be fulfilled at work, the other things in life that are important to him -- getting in shape, cooking elaborate meals, learning to play the guitar, writing a book, reading, or even making a bold career switch -- never happen because the Panic Monster doesn't usually get involved with those things. Undertakings like those expand our experiences, make our lives richer, and bring us a lot of happiness -- and for most procrastinators, they get left in the dust.

So how can a procrastinator improve and become happier? See Part 2,How To Beat Procrastination


 

How to Beat Procrastination

This is Part 2. You won't get Part 2 if you haven't read Part 1 yet. For Part 1,Click Here
 
pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-|

noun

the action of ruining your own life for no apparent reason

Let me start by saying that I've had just about enough of the irony of battling through crippling procrastination while trying to write posts on procrastination and how to beat it. I've spent the last two weeks being this guy, who shoots himself in the foot while talking about gun safety, and I look forward to getting back to irony-free procrastination following this post.

A few notes before we begin:

- I'm not a professional at any of this, just a lifelong procrastinator who thinks about this topic all the time. I'm still in a total battle with my own habits, but I have made some progress in the last few years, and I'm drawing my thoughts from what's worked for me.

- In this post, I'm referring to both ADD and non-ADD procrastinators (and the line is often pretty hazy between the two), but not those with severe ADD/ADHD, who need something different than anything in this post can provide.

- This post was posted late, not only because it took me 2,000 years to do, but also because I decided that Monday night was an urgent time to open Google Earth, hover a few hundred feet above the southern tip of India, and scroll all the way up India to the top of the country, to "get a better feel for India." I have problems.

- I'm gonna be kind of extra serious in this post, because as much as people joke about procrastination, it's a pretty serious problem for a lot of people and it really affects happiness.

All right, so last week we dove into the everyday inner struggle of the procrastinator to examine the underlying psychology going on. But this week, when we're actually trying to do something about it, we need to dig even deeper. Let's begin by trying to unwrap the procrastinator's psychology and see what's really at the core of things:

We know about the Instant Gratification Monkey (the part of your brain that makes you procrastinate) and his dominion over the Rational Decision Maker, but what's really happening there?

The procrastinator is in the bad habit, bordering on addiction, of letting the monkey win. He continues to have the intention to control the monkey, but he puts forth a hapless effort, using the same proven-not-to-work methods he's used for years, and deep down, he knows the monkey will win. He vows to change, but the patterns just stay the same. So why would an otherwise capable person put forth such a lame and futile effort again and again? 

The answer is that he has incredibly low confidence when it comes to this part of his life, allowing himself to become enslaved by a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's call this self-fulfilling prophecy his Storyline. The procrastinator's Storyline goes something like this:

For the Have-To-Dos in my life, I'll end up waiting until the last minute, panicking, and then either doing less than my best work or shutting down and not doing anything at all. For the Want-To-Dos in my life, let's be honest—I'll either start one and quit or more likely, I just won't ever get around to it.

The procrastinator's problems run deep, and it takes something more than "being more self-disciplined" or "changing his bad habits" for him to change his ways—the root of the problem is embedded in his Storyline, and his Storyline is what must change.

           *    *    *

Before we talk about how Storylines change, let's examine, concretely, what the procrastinator even wants to change into. What do the right habits even look like, and where exactly will the procrastinator run into trouble?

There are two components of being able to achieve things in a healthy and effective manner—planning and doing. Let's start with the easy one:

Planning

Procrastinators love planning, quite simply because planning does not involve doing, and doing is the procrastinator's Kryptonite. 

But when procrastinators plan, they like to do it in a vague way that doesn't consider details or reality too closely, and their planning leaves them perfectly set up to not actually accomplish anything. A procrastinator's planning session leaves him with a doer's nightmare:

A big list of icky, daunting tasks and undertakings.

A big list of vague and daunting things makes the Instant Gratification Monkey laugh. When you make a list like that, the monkey says, "Oh perfect, this is easy." Even if your gullible conscious mind believes it intends to accomplish the items on that list in an efficient manner, the monkey knows that in your subconscious, you have no intention of doing so. 

Effective planning, on the other hand, sets you up for success. Its purpose is to do the exact opposite of everything in that sentence:

Effective planning takes a big list and selects a winner: 

A big list is perhaps an early phase of planning, but planning must end with rigorous prioritizing and one item that emerges as the winner—the item you're going to make your first priority. And the item that wins should be the one that means the most to you—the item that's most important for your happiness. If urgent items are involved, those will have to come first and should be knocked out as quickly as possible in order to make way for the important items (procrastinators love to use unimportant but urgent items as an excuse to forever put off the important ones).

Effective planning makes an icky item un-icky:

We all know what an icky item is. An icky item is vague and murky, and you're not really sure where you'd start, how you'd go about doing it, or where you'd get answers to your questions about it.

So let's say your dream is to make your own app, and you know that if you build a successful app you could quit your job and become a full-time developer. You also think that programming ability is the literacy of the 21st century, and you don't have money to spend outsourcing development anyway, so you decide to anoint "Learn how to code" the winning item on your list—the number one priority. Exciting, right?

Well, no, because "Learn how to code" is an intensely icky item—and every time you decide it's time to get started, you will coincidentally also decide your inbox needs to be cleaned out and your kitchen floor needs to be mopped, ASAP. It'll never end up happening.

To un-icky the item, you need to read, research, and ask questions to find out exactly how one learns how to code, the specific means necessary for each step along the way, and how long each one should take. Un-ickying a list item turns it from this:

Into this:

Effective planning turns a daunting item into a series of small, clear, manageable tasks:

Icky combines with Daunting into an Instant Gratification Monkey steroid potion. And just because you un-icky an item, it doesn't mean it's still not horribly big and daunting. The key to de-dauntifying an item is to absorb this fact:

A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of unremarkable, unglorious tasks looks like from far away.

No one "builds a house." They lay one brick again and again and again and the end result is a house. Procrastinators are great visionaries—they love to fantasize about the beautiful mansion they will one day have built—but what they need to be are gritty construction workers, who methodically lay one brick after the other, day after day, without giving up, until a house is built.

Nearly every big undertaking can be boiled down to a core unit of progress—its brick. A 45-minute gym visit is the brick of getting in great shape. A 30-minute practice session is the brick of becoming a great guitarist. 

The average day in a wannabe author's week and a real author's week looks almost the same. The real author writes a couple pages, laying a brick, and the wannabe author writes nothing. 98% of their day is otherwise identical. But a year later, the real author has a completed first draft of a book and the wannabe author has...nothing.

It's all about the bricks.

And the good news is, laying one brick isn't daunting. But bricks do require scheduling. So the final step in planning is to make a Brick Timeline, which slots bricks into the calendar. The slots are non-negotiable and non-cancellable—after all, it's your first priority and the thing that matters most to you, isn't it? The most important date is the first one. You can't start learning to code "in November." But you can start learning to code on November 21st from 6:00 - 7:00pm. 

Now you're effectively planned—just follow the schedule and you'll be a programmer. Only thing left is to do...

Doing

It's not that procrastinators don't like the concept of doing. They look at the bricks on their calendar and they think, "Great, this will be fun." And that's because when they picture the moment in the future when they sit down and knock out a work session, they picture things without the presence of the Instant Gratification Monkey. Procrastinators' visions of future scenarios never seem to include the monkey.

But when the actual moment arrives to begin that scheduled brick-laying, the procrastinator does what the procrastinator does best—he lets the monkey take over and ruin everything.

And since we just stressed above that all achievement boils down to the ability to lay that one brick during that slot when it's on your schedule, we seem to have isolated the core struggle here. Let's examine this specific challenge of laying a single brick:

So this diagram represents the challenge at hand anytime you take on a task, whether it's making a PowerPoint for work, going on a jog, working on a script, or anything else you do in your life. The Critical Entrance is where you go to officially start work on the task, the Dark Woods are the process of actually doing the work, and once you finish, you're rewarded by ending up in The Happy Playground—a place where you feel satisfaction and where leisure time is pleasant and rewarding because you got something hard done. You occasionally even end up super-engaged with what you're working on and enter a state of Flow, where you're so blissfully immersed in the task that you lose track of time.

Those paths look something like this:

Sounds pretty simple, right?

Well unfortunately for procrastinators, they tend to miss out on both The Happy Playground and Flow. 

For example, here's a procrastinator that never even gets started on the task he's supposed to do, because he never makes it through the Critical Entrance. Instead, he spends hours wallowing in The Dark Playground, hating himself:

Here's a procrastinator who gets started on the task, but she can't stay focused, and she keeps taking long breaks to play on the internet and make food. She doesn't end up finishing the task:

Here's a procrastinator who couldn't bring himself to get started, even though a work deadline was approaching, and he spent hours in The Dark Playground, knowing the looming deadline was drawing near and he was only making his life harder by not starting. Eventually, the deadline got so close, the Panic Monster suddenly came roaring into the room, freaking him out and causing him to fly through the task to hit the deadline.

After he finishes, he feels decent because he accomplished something, but he's also not that pleased because he knows he did an underwhelming job on the project because he had to rush so much, and he feels like he wasted most of his day procrastinating for no reason. This lands him in Mixed Feelings Park.

So if you're a procrastinator, let's look at what you need to do to get on the right path, one that will leave you much happier.

The first thing you must do is make it through the Critical Entrance. This means stopping whatever you're doing when it's time to begin the task, putting away all distractions, and getting started. It sounds simple, but this is the hardest part. This is where the Instant Gratification Monkey puts up his fiercest resistance:

The monkey absolutely hates stopping something fun to start something hard, and this is where you need to be the strongest. If you can get started and force the monkey into the Dark Woods, you've broken a bit of his will.

Of course, he's not going to give up anytime soon.

The Dark Woods is where you are when you're working. It's not a fun place to be, and the Instant Gratification Monkey wants nothing to do with it. To make things harder, the Dark Woods is surrounded by the Dark Playground, one of the monkey's favorite places, and since he can see how close it is, he'll try as hard as he can to leave the Dark Woods.

There will also be times when you bump into a tree—maybe the jog is taking you on an uphill street, maybe you need to use an Excel formula you don't know, maybe that song you're writing just isn't coming together the way you thought it would—and this is when the monkey will make his boldest attempt at an escape.

It makes no sense to leave the Dark Woods in favor of the Dark Playground—they're both dark. They both suck to be in, but the big difference is the Dark Woods leads to happiness and the Dark Playground leads only to more misery. But the Instant Gratification Monkey isn't logical and to him, the Dark Playground seems like much more fun.

The good news is, if you can power through a bit of the Dark Woods, something funny happens. Making progress on a task produces positive feelings of accomplishment and raises your self-esteem. The monkey gains his strength off of low self-esteem, and when you feel a jolt of self-satisfaction, the monkey finds a High Self-Esteem Banana in his path. It doesn't quell his resistance entirely, but it goes a long way to distracting him for a while, and you'll find that the urge to procrastinate has diminished. 

Then, if you continue along, something magical happens. Once you get 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through a task, especially if it's going well, you start to feel great about things and suddenly, the end is in sight. This is a key tipping point—




The Tipping Point is important because it's not just you who can smell the Happy Playground up ahead—the monkey can smell it too. The monkey doesn't care if his instant gratification comes alongside you or at your expense, he just loves things that are easy and fun. Once you hit the Tipping Point, the monkey becomes more interested in getting to the Happy Playground than the Dark Playground. When this happens, you lose all impulse to procrastinate and now both you and the monkey are speeding toward the finish.

Before you know it, you're done, and you're in the Happy Playground. Now, for the first time in a while, you and the monkey are a team. You both want to have fun, and it feels great because it's earned. When you and the monkey are on a team, you're almost always happy.

The other thing that might happen when you pass the Tipping Point, depending on the type of task and how well it's going, is that you might start feeling fantastic about what you're working on, so fantastic that continuing to work sounds like much more fun than stopping to do leisure activities. You've become obsessed with the task and you lose interest in basically everything else, including food and time—this is called Flow. Flow is not only a blissful feeling, it's usually when you do great things.

The monkey is just as addicted to the bliss as you are, and you two are again a team.

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Fighting through to the Tipping Point is hard, but what makes procrastination so hard to beat is that the Instant Gratification Monkey has a terribly short-term memory—even if you wildly succeed on Monday, when you begin a task on Tuesday, the monkey has forgotten everything and will again resist entering the Dark Woods or working through them.

And that's why persistence is such a critical component of success. Laying each brick yields an inner struggle—and in the end, your ability to win this very specific struggle and lay brick after brick, day after day, is what lies at the core of a procrastinator's struggle to gain control over his world.

So that's what needs to happen—but if procrastination could be solved by reading a blog entry, it wouldn't be such a large problem in so many people's lives. There's only one way to truly beat procrastination:

You need to prove to yourself that you can do it.

You need to show yourself you can do it, not tell yourself. Things will change when you show yourself that they can. Until then, you won’t believe it, and nothing will change. Think of yourself like a basketball player on a cold streak. For basketball players, it's all about confidence, and an ice cold shooter can tell himself 1000 times, "I'm a great shooter, I'm going to hit this next one," but it's not until he physically hits a shot that his confidence goes up and his touch comes back.

So how do you start hitting shots?

1) Try to internalize the fact that everything you do is a choice. 

Start by thinking about the terms we've used in these posts, and if they resonated with you, write them down. Part of the reason I assigned terms to so many of these feelings or phenomena—the Instant Gratification Monkey, the Rational Decision-Maker, the Panic Monster, the Dark Playground, Ickiness, Bricks, the Critical Entrance, the Dark Woods, the Tipping Point, the Happy Playground, Flow, your Storyline—is that terms help you clarify the reality of the choices you're making. It helps expose bad choices and highlights when it's most critical to make good ones.

2) Create methods to help you defeat the monkey. 

Some possible methods:

- Solicit external support by telling one or more friends or family members about a goal you're trying to accomplish and asking them to hold you to it.

- Create a Panic Monster if there's not already one in place—if you're trying to finish an album, schedule a performance for a few months from now, book a space, and send out an invitation to a group of people. If you really want to start a business, quitting your job makes the Panic Monster your new roommate. If you're trying to write a consistent blog, put "new post every Tuesday" at the top of the page...

- Leave post-it notes for yourself, reminding you to make good choices.

- Set an alarm to remind yourself to start a task, or to remind you of the stakes.

- Minimize distractions by all means necessary. If TV's a huge problem, sell your TV. If the internet's a huge problem, get a second computer for work that has Wifi disabled, and turn your phone on Airplane Mode during work sessions.

- Lock yourself into something—put down a non-refundable deposit for lessons or a membership.

And if the methods you set up aren't working, change them. Set a reminder for a month from now that says, "Have things improved? If not, change my methods."

3) Aim for slow, steady progress—Storylines are rewritten one page at a time.

In the same way a great achievement happens unglorious brick by unglorious brick, a deeply-engrained habit like procrastination doesn’t change all at once, it changes one modest improvement at a time. Remember, this is all about showing yourself you can do it, so the key isn't to be perfect, but to simply improve. The author who writes one page a day has written a book after a year. The procrastinator who gets slightly better every week is a totally changed person a year later.

So don't think about going from A to Z—just start with A to B. Change the Storyline from "I procrastinate on every hard task I do" to "Once a week, I do a hard task without procrastinating." If you can do that, you've started a trend. I'm still a wretched procrastinator, but I'm definitely better than I was last year, so I feel hopeful about the future.

Why do I think about this topic so much, and why did I just write a 19,000 page blog post on it?

Because defeating procrastination is the same thing as gaining control over your own life. So much of what makes people happy or unhappy—their level of fulfillment and satisfaction, their self-esteem, the regrets they carry with them, the amount of free time they have to dedicate to their relationships—is severely affected by procrastination. So it's worthy of being taken dead seriously, and the time to start improving is now.

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12 Lies People Love to Tell You

post written by: Angel Chernoff

“Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.”
―Michael Jackson

Over the years you’ve developed a set of beliefs based on what others have told you.  The problem is, many of these people weren’t telling the truth.  They were merely repeating the little, seemingly innocent lies someone else once told them.  Now, the false beliefs they’ve ingrained in your mind are impeding your potential and holding you back from the life you’re capable of living.
Here are twelve lies you’ve likely heard and the truth that will set you free:

1.  What you need in life is comfort and safety.

If you want to make an impact, big or small, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.  All growth begins at the end of your comfort zone.  Maybe the thing you’re scared of is exactly what you should do.  Sometimes life is about risking it all for a dream no one can see but you.

2.  You have way too much to lose.

In the end, you will not regret the things you have done nearly as much as the things you have left undone.  It’s always better to be left with a few “oh wells,” than a bunch of “what ifs.”  It’s better to have a lifetime full of experiences and mistakes you learned from, rather than a heart full of regrets and empty dreams.  Someday you will want to look back at your life and say, “I can’t believe I did that!” instead of, “Gosh, I wish I would have…”

3.  Your dream is impossible.

When a dream matters enough to a person, that person will find a way to achieve what at first seemed impossible.  Let that person be YOU.  It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.  Go after your dream, no matter how unattainable others tell you it is.  What’s impossible to them may not be impossible for you.

4.  Being self-centered is always wrong.

You must choose yourself and live your life from beginning to end; no one else can do it for you.  Claiming full control over your health, dreams, and well-being are some of the areas in your life where you get to be a little selfish and not feel bad about it.  If you want to reach your goals, you have to be the center of this part of your journey.  You have to make it work for you and you alone.  It’s not selfishness, it’s self-care and self-improvement.  Anything less is a setup for failure.

5.  You need the approval of others.

People are sometimes too quick to judge, but slow to correct themselves.  Don’t be one of them.  Focus on your own growth, goals, and self-worth.  Leave people to their opinions and judgments.  Let them respect you for who you are, and not for who they want you to be…  Or let them walk away if they choose.  Either way, they can’t harm you; it’s their understanding that is faulty, not yours.

6.  The strongest, happiest people have fewer problems.

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do; it comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t do.  When you are at your lowest point, you are open to the greatest positive change.  Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the strength to deal with them.  The strongest people are the ones who feel pain, accept it, learn from it, and fight through it.  They turn their wounds into wisdom.  (Read The Road Less Traveled.)

7.  Situations are either positive or negative.

The Chinese symbol for the word “crisis” is written using two strokes of a pen.  One stroke stands for danger, and the other for opportunity.  In other words, in a crisis, beware of the danger, but also recognize the opportunity.  Life always balances itself out.  Everything that happens is neither positive nor negative; it just depends on your perspective.

8.  Perfect relationships exist.

The love of your life isn’t perfect, you aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect.  But if you can make each other laugh once in awhile, cause each other to think twice about the sweetness of life, and both admit to being human and making mistakes, your relationship is something special.  No, you two may not always choose the most poetic words, and there will likely be inconsiderate slip-ups on occasion, but that’s what makes your bond real.  Smile when they make you happy, speak up when they make you mad, and miss them when they’re gone.  Love hard when there is love to be had.  Perfect love doesn’t exist, but true love does, and it’s worth the effort.

9.  Love is an obligation.

Love between two people comes because both people want to share their love, not because YOU want it from the other person.  Your family, friends, co-workers, partner – they all love you because they choose to, not because you want them to.  Love is meant to be felt, enjoyed and lived, not to be forced on anyone.

10.  You can’t be kind to everyone.

Kindness is not to be mistaken for weakness, nor forgiveness for acceptance.  It’s about knowing resentment is not on the path to happiness.  Having confidence and class is the ability to walk away from a bad situation with a smile on your face and forgiveness in your heart.

11.  You need more to be happy.

There are two ways of being rich: One is to have all you want, the other is to be satisfied with what you have.  Accept and appreciate things now, and you’ll find more happiness in every moment you live.  Happiness comes when you stop complaining about the troubles you have and offer thanks for all the troubles you don’t have.  And remember, you have to fight through some bad days to earn the best days of your life.  (Read The How of Happiness.)

12.  It’s too late.

Anyone can run away; it’s super easy.  Facing issues and working through them makes you strong.  Focus on your dreams, not your problems.  It’s not too late.  A hundred disappointments in the past can’t equal the power of one positive action right now.  Talk is cheap; action is priceless.  Go for it!  Give yourself another chance.

The floor is yours…

What would you add to this list?  What (seemingly innocent) lies do people often tell each other?  How have these lies affected you personally?  Share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment below.
Photo by: Shadi Samawi

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