Page 222 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

186 End Procrastination Now!

established relationship with another sales representative
and want to maintain it. A competitor may have a special
pricing opportunity for the customer that he could not
match. He may not have made a good personal connection
because of style differences between himself and a purchas-
ing agent. Sometimes he would never know the reason.
Making this connection provided a way for Ted to generalize
what he knew in one part of his life to a comparable area.

• Meeting the second challenge. Ted put himself into the position
of looking over the materials for his performance reviews
and allowing himself to feel the tension that would ordinar-
ily start his procrastination process in motion. He allowed
himself to live with the tension until his normal impulse to
retreat vanished. This is the emotive way to cut through a
procrastination barrier.
Ted used two emotional tolerance-building techniques.
(1) He looked for a connection between what he was think-
ing and what he was feeling. He told himself that he couldn’t
do it (meaning talking with the sales force about his ratings
of them). He heard himself say, “I’ll look like a fool.” He
observed that his level of discomfort jumped with those
thoughts. He felt a strong urge to escape the tension.
(2) Instead of retreating, Ted stuck with the tension. He also
retrofitted his understanding of default procrastination self-
statements. Just because they are automatic and linked to
emotions, he discovered, doesn’t make them true.
Mapping the connection between his default negative
thinking and his discomfort paid a dividend. He reported
that this tension tolerance development exercise was the
most important of the three. By accepting tension, he felt
less tense.