Procrastination is not a lack of motivation.  It is a dysfunctional form of self-care.  

To overcome procrastination, you have to get at what it is protecting you from.  As coaches, we help you get at the stories you’re telling yourself that make you believe you can or can’t do something. These stories must be debunked if you are to come up with an action plan to do that which you wish to accomplish.  

When you procrastinate, the key to your ignition remains hidden. It may be that some very deep, spiritual work may be in order, and navigating that may become the focus of the coaching. Or, it may surprise you to find out you’re procrastinating because you’re supposed to be doing something entirely different than what you’ve been putting off. Its pretty hard to figure out how to set effective goals around something when something else needs to happen first, or instead.  This is because we are all plagued with incessant ‘shoulds’ that douse the flame of our inner-knowing.  A coach’s job is to fan that flame in you. 

Your procrastination could be a sign that you need to work with a therapist for a while to heal some broken emotional bones by recognizing the trauma that caused them. Sadly, we don’t get to skip over anything in life, and procrastination may be the smoke signal that eventually holds your feet to the flame. 

Many of my clients do therapy and coaching concurrently, which can be a powerful, albeit admittedly significant financial investment.  That said, appropriate self-care is the only investment you can make that will give you the ability to create the life you want.That tired old metaphor ‘put your oxygen mask on first’ is empirically true. If you can optimize the level at which you function, you can optimize your positive impact on the world.  

Therein lies another vital coaching deliverable: the uncovering and optimization of your strengths.  I am not a world class athlete or ballet dancer. That isn’t my biological, spiritual or intellectual zone of genius. A lovely fellow creativity coach, Jess Grippo, once called me ‘a creative instigator’.  This really resonated with my recognition of what, for now, I’m here on the planet to do: instigate the greatness in my clients, who happen to be creative, divergent thinkers in need of methods to pull together the threads of their potential by deconstructing and weakening their procrastination, however it shows up.  

If you pay a coach because you procrastinate, that will be the first order of business.  Together we must get at how putting something off is serving you.  

So let’s get started!