Page 80 - End Procrastination Now Get it Done with a Proven Psychological Approach

48 End Procrastination Now!

longer-term gains. You accept life as being neither great nor ter-
rible; rather, it is what it is. Paradoxically, your willingness to accept
tension means that you’ll have less tension to tolerate. Without the
limitations set by tension-driven procrastination, you’ll see and
have more opportunities. Productive choices are at the gate of
those opportunities. As you will see when we move ahead, there
are various ways to build your emotional muscle, to strengthen
your resolve to get things done.
There are three primary steps on the path of developing emo-
tional muscle:

1. Developing tolerance through acceptance is a step on
the path.
2. Reframing ego and discomfort threats as positive oppor-
tunities and challenges is a cognitive step on the path.
3. Stretching for excellence, or actualizing your finest abilities,
is the third step on the path.

Willpower alone is often not enough to determine the outcome
of a conflict within the mind. Instead, our ability to accept a nega-
tive affective state is an important start in guiding our behavior
away from procrastination tendencies and toward productive ac-
tivities. Accept ant states of mind are calmer states that are associ-
ated with fluidity, flexibility, and productivity. It is simpler and
easier to regulate follow-through activities to address issues that
trigger the procrastination process. In this chapter, you’ll learn
about the seductive emotional side of procrastination and how to
resist false emotional signals to retreat when it is wiser for you to
advance. On this trek you’ll:

• See how emotions fuel a procrastination process, and how to
redirect those emotions to a productive direction.
• Find a Y condition in productive or procrastination directions,
then learn to emphasize the productive direction.