The Internal Resistance Files
How to Overcome Avoidance
Learn to close the gap between intention and action
I recently listened to a podcast about procrastination by a big-name business coach. I was curious to see what kind of advice people in her position were giving their listeners.
This was one of her main suggestions:
Put a couple of hours on your calendar for things you’ve been avoiding, and then treat that time as an absolute commitment you’ve made to yourself.
As you’re following me on Medium, I feel confident that you will understand me when I say: Are you fricking kidding me, lady?
If it was clear how to keep absolute commitments to ourselves, no one would be be listening to podcasts like this in the first place. The entire problem is that we keep issuing ourselves strict marching orders — and then find ourselves still just sitting there, not marching.
Advice like this totally misses the target because it tells us what to do, but not how to get ourselves to do it it. Something is happening to us in that gap between having a sensible plan and actually executing that plan, and that’s the thing we need to a way to address.
