Is it procrastination, or fear of failure?

“I’ll fill out that job application this evening, once I’ve done the food shop and put everything away, and the kids are in bed”

“Once the in-laws have gone home from visiting”

“Once I’ve taken the kids to school”

“I’ll sign up to the Career Academy when I have more time to focus on it”

“Once I’ve done that qualification”

“Once I’ve finished this course I’m on”

“I’ll update my CV once I’m done cleaning the kitchen”

“And the dog needs walking. . .”

“And I need to call the plumber about that leak!”

“And my friend is having a tough time right now, so I have to make time to meet them for coffee”

“My husband is coming home and we need to spend time as a family”

How many of these things have you said, or even just thought?

How often during a day, a week or a month do you put the wants and needs of others before your own wants and needs?

Do you often accuse yourself of simply ‘procrastinating’ and wonder why the things you want to achieve never get prioritised, why the steps you want to take towards your goals feel like walking through treacle?

Do you feel like maybe you just don’t try hard enough, aren’t committed enough or are too ‘lazy’ or ‘disorganised’?

What if I told you that wasn’t true, that it wasn’t some character flaw of yours that was causing these things to always fall to the bottom of your to-do list and that blaming procrastination alone wasn’t quite true either?

What if I told you procrastination is often just a fear of failure?

That we usually procrastinate things that are important to us, that we really deeply value, because we’re worried about the potential outcome. We’re worried about doing or saying something wrong and missing an opportunity or finding out we’re just not capable or worthy of the things we want (we are absolutely capable and worthy, by the way!).

We put off sending an important email or making an important phone call because we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing or getting a response we don’t want.

We hope that maybe tomorrow we’ll be struck with inspiration over what the ‘right’ things to say are or wake up motivated and ready to take on the world.

We procrastinate filling in a job application, even though it’s the perfect job in terms of hours and pay. We’ve already visualised ourselves in that role, seen the difference it could make to our family in our mind’s eye and mentally spent the salary already. We’re terrified that if we apply we might not get it and that it will be not because we didn’t apply but because there’s something wrong with us, because of something we didn’t do or could have done differently.

So, we tell ourselves we’re going to send the application, the date gets closer and we start coming up with all these reasons why “now isn’t the right time” and “maybe it’s better if I wait until . . .”; we do all of this to protect ourselves from that feeling of failing at something that was truly important to us.

We want to get it just right. We want the timing to be perfect, the words to be perfect.

If we’re honest with ourselves we kind of want the stars to align and for everything to fall into place for us.

That’s okay – it’s okay to want that, we ALL want that! But we must meet the world in the middle.

We must knock on some doors hoping that they open, even though some of them will stay closed.

Because if you don’t knock on the door, it will definitely stay closed.

We must ask for the opportunities, even though the answer might be no, because if we don’t ask, the answer will always be no.

We need to aim for good enough and done, rather than perfect but never finished. Because 50% of something is always better than 100% of nothing. We need to let go of perfect.

We need to trust that we are good enough exactly where we are and that the only way we can improve and grow in work and in life is by reaching out and asking for help and support and trusting that sometimes the doors will open and the answer will be yes.