It’s over there but I’m not looking…

Yeah yeah, some day…

These are some of the ways people describe procrastination, along with the accompanying feelings of frustration, disappointment, dread and overwhelm. Procrastination doesn’t feel good inside and it means that we don’t get to contribute as deeply or impact as greatly as we want.

Here is a six-strategy approach for overcoming procrastination:

1) Eat It Like You Would An Elephant

“How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time”. Often we aren’t moving forward with a project because it’s just too big and overwhelming; it can help to break it down into bite-sized tasks. “Sort workshop” means nothing – what is the next tangible step? And then the next? You may be surprised by how many itty bitty actions are involved.

2) Find The Missing Piece

As you create a plan of clear action steps, it becomes easier to identify where there’s a missing piece. One client was struggling to record her album and when we went through her action plan, we stumbled upon a piece of technical knowledge that she was lacking ten strides down the track. Often the missing link is a piece of technical, logistical or legal information; resistance can set in if you know you have to deal with that down the line and don’t yet know how.

3) Find The Fear

If you actually DID this, what might happen? Identify what you’re resisting, what you’re wanting to avoid. Perhaps it’s fear of failure – or fear of success. Fear of being wealthy, being visible, having expectations made upon you. Fear of being busy, fear of the unknown, fear of change. What potholes do you fear this journey will take you into?

4) Set A Deadline

If you’re a natural starter, this practical strategy can help channel your energy into completion mode. When you’ve got a messy house, does inviting people round catalyze you into action? A date in the diary commits you, it holds you accountable. The deadline anchors your good intentions in reality and provides external motivation.

5) Clear The Clutter

Declutter coach Sue Rasmussen maintains that 75% of the ‘stuff’ in our world is not moving us forward. Whether it’s appointments in your diary, files on your computer, paperwork on your desk or stress in your body, if you are living with a lot of clutter, you are blocked. Do you need to get a shredder? Have a car-boot sale? Or shelve less meaningful engagements to make space for what really matters?

6) If All Else Fails, Picture Your Deathbed

Firstly, what if nothing ever changed? What if you procrastinated on this forever? Connect with the horror story sense of huge regrets and dissatisfaction. What would you have missed out on? And who else would miss out? This is the stick approach. Secondly, imagine yourself having actually accomplished this. How does this feel? Really connect with the wish fulfilled. If your project currently exists as a bland, one-dimensional imperative e.g. “Write a book”, then it probably has no juice or fuel about it. However, if you can feel it in your hands, picture yourself at your book signing, imagine someone approaching you in the street and telling you the impact you had on them, then you’ll connect with why this is so important for you.

Which leads us to: If this project is NOT deathbed important, perhaps it’s not really worth doing. Perhaps all that procrastination is there for a very good reason – protecting you from wasting your time. In which case, practise that all-important skill of being able to say NO. You can then put these overcoming-procrastination strategies to better use, on a project that you care passionately about.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Identify an area of your life where you notice you procrastinate. Go through each of these six strategies with pen and paper to hand, or with the support of a coach. Be honest, be thorough, and make shifts.

2) As you work through, you may notice you crave support at various stages. See below for suggested pathways forward and take advantage of these opportunities.

3) Leave a comment on this blog, letting us know what helps you to overcome procrastination. Which of these strategies is new for you? How does it help? What have you missed out on because of procrastinating in the past?

Does accountability and structure appeal? Click here to find out more about group programme and 1-1 coaching options > >

Want me to give a talk/workshop on How To Overcome Procrastination for your group? Contact me here > >

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2010

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Idea… Vision… Plan…. Nitty Gritty.

Many of us get stuck in the lofty idea stage of a project: expanding on our colourful visions and dreaming big. This is the perfect place to start… but it’s not much good to anyone if we stay here.

Others of us get stuck in the planning stage: making lists and devising strategies. Again, very useful – but only if we actually see these actions through.

When it comes down to it, you’ve just got to get on and do some work.

I know this from recent first-hand experience. Last Friday night, thirty-five people came out on a bitter-cold January evening to watch an inspirational film, dance salsa and discuss peak oil over locally baked cookies. This was the launch event for Transition Cambridge in our village. The vision had been made reality and we left on a high, savouring the new connections made and feeling a genuine sense of community.

The behind-the-scenes reality is that I’ve been planning and preparing for this event since last September. That one event has been the result of 100+ small, tangible actions: “email him”, “phone her”, “attend this festival” and “post that flyer to them”. This nitty gritty makes all the difference – and it’s also where we can really run into difficulties.

It’s understandable that many of us baulk at the detail. It’s slow and somewhat boring and repetitive. It can be frustrating, it takes persistence – and because the process takes time, there’s lots of opportunity for the self-doubt and resistance to take hold. I can’t count the number of times over the past four months I’ve thought: “Why am I doing this?!”

Your job is to grab those pesky detail gremlins and stay in action regardless. These gremlins can be seen as internal mechanisms set up to protect ourselves: What if our action steps don’t work and our vision collapses? Those ‘gremlins’ would rather we didn’t find that out and so they keep us in safety and our dream remains as a dream. Where there’s the possibility of pain, few dare to venture.

Aside from the fears and self-preservation, there’s another reason we avoid the nitty gritty: It’s just not all that sexy. Once the eureka moment has passed and the drug-like emotional high of an idea has faded away, we’re left in our office, toiling away, step after step after step. It’s simply not particularly glamorous. Are you okay with that? Can you put in the hard-graft, knowing what might await you at the end?

You can quickly assess whether you’re a detail-o-phobe or not by glancing at the action steps below. Do you look forward to that section of these blog posts? Do you actually DO the action steps? Or do you avoid the nitty gritty? If so, how does that impact your projects? Instead of taking a generic “It’ll all be okay” or “It’ll happen someday” approach, perhaps it’s time for you to dare to sit in the detail.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Make a note of your idea in its raw form – like “put on a community event”. Capture that light-bulb moment, that split-second insight.

2) Grow that idea a little. Pad it out, develop its colour and texture and depth, until it’s more like a vision. You may well want to ask your friend or coach to help you with this stage.

3) Now make a list of twenty action steps that would actually move this idea forward. What is literally, tangibly required of you?

4) DO THE ACTIONS! Commit to taking at least ten of those action steps this coming fortnight, so they’re done by the time the next issue of this blog, The World Needs Your Passion, comes out. As you get down to work, notice what resistance comes up. Is it a fear of failure, or a fear of success? Is it a feeling of being out of your depth, not knowing if these are the ‘right’ steps to take? Are you turned off by the tedium of the nitty gritty, do you long for the euphoria of the dreaming visioning space? Keep taking the action steps with awareness on the resistance and notice if it shifts as you move forward.

5) Leave a comment on this blog, letting us know how you find the nitty gritty. Love it or hate it? Which type of actions come easiest and which do you put off? What is your predominant resistance to getting down to the nitty gritty? And what is the impact when you get down to it and actually take the steps that need to be taken?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2010

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Want support?

If you find yourself in the same patterns of resistance over and over again, and if you’d much rather be moving forward with the vision and getting down to the nitty gritty, you might really value individual coaching support. Find out more here.

If you’d like to explore and expand your idea with others and commit to some tangible action steps, come along to the next Kickstart Your Venture workshop on 24th April. Find out more here.

Have you experienced that? You’ve had that same idea nagging away at you for a fair little while now, tugging at you to take a closer look.

But when you do, it all just feels too overwhelming. You stumble when explaining it to others, you freak out when you think about whether you’re up to it and you have no idea where to start with all the practical and logistical aspects of this idea.

And finally, the biggest of all, the grandmother of all fears: MONEY. How on earth will you make a living out of this crazy idea?

Fear not, there is one very good solution: Forget about it. Put this idea out of your head – in fact, pretend you never had an idea at all. “La la la, I can’t hear you….”

This works very well. It means you get to stay right where you are and not deal with any of this, including with any of that fear.

It also means that you won’t get four years in to running a business, like me, and feel that scariness still showing up. You won’t schedule a workshop and find that less people sign up than you’d expected; you won’t experience fear gripping you, you won’t feel “Oh my God, no-one wants what I’m offering” shudder through you.

As I’ve been experiencing this fear and these doubts first-hand, I’ve been reminded of how very scary this whole offering-your-passion-to-the-world thing really is. You are putting yourself out there, on the line, on a regular basis. It can feel incredibly vulnerable and it can be very tempting to chuck it all in.

And because I’ve been experiencing this myself, a suspicion has dawned on me. As I look out on this frosty day, I have an image of all these ideas out there, frozen under the ice. Ideas that are so exciting and yet so daunting that they’ve been hidden away, determined to avoid being thawed out. Ideas for community activities… small businesses… projects… workshops… charities. Ideas that you would love to get into action about but which just feel way too big and clumsy and complicated and downright scary.

Well, guess what? I’m not standing for that. I know what that fear is like and I know that it feels horrible. I also know that it is absolutely worth it to do it anyway. Yes, you need to be courageous. Yes, you’ll need to overcome challenges. Seeing an impassioned idea into reality is certainly not always easy, but it is absolutely worth it.

I absolutely love what I do and I am so grateful that I get to follow my passion. This is why I want to share with you my fears so that you know they’re part of the journey – and that I would choose it again and again anyway. As I read the emails from those who’ve already signed up to the Kickstart Your Venture workshop, I am struck by the bravery as they take those first steps, and I urge you – if you’re in ‘can’t thaw/won’t thaw’ mode – to find that bravery yourself.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Sign up for the workshop. If you live within 200 miles of Cambridge and you have an idea that you’d like to get out of your head and just a little bit more out there in the world, sign up now. The workshop is taking place in central Cambridge on Sat 16th January, 10am – 4.30pm, £40 per person. You’ll receive a workbook and leave with clarity, solutions to some of your key challenges, energy, motivation, contacts and possibly even a few new friends.

Click here, scroll down to the ’Buy Now’ button at the bottom and pay for your place today.

2) Laugh at the scariness. Put on some dance music or whatever rocks it for you and move. You’re not abandoning that scared part of you at all – in fact the opposite – you’re standing eye to eye with the fear and going “Yep, there’s a whole lot of scariness right now… and you are NOT going to win”. Then dance and laugh some more.

3) Leave a comment, letting us know whether my suspicion has any truth… Has the scariness been getting the better of you? What’s it like to freeze an idea because it’s just too scary to think about? How much evidence do you have of feeling the fear and doing it anyway – and it being worth it? (and if you don’t have much, what could you do to find some more…?)

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2010

The likelihood is, you never are.

Short story for you: I led a workshop which showed fellow coaches how to use Twitter to grow their businesses. Lots of them wanted to learn more so there’s now a masterclass series available, via teleconference, starting 9th November. That’s just three weeks from idea to actualization and the point is: the interest was there, the timing felt right, I was being encouraged from all sides – so why not?

Every time I’ve launched a new workshop or programme, I’ve offered it with just a title and a synopsis. I’ve known the general stake and have felt the heart of the work – and people have hired me or enrolled based on that. Having the date in the diary and people to whom you’re committed provides that all-important external deadline that every solopreneur craves. The detailed planning and structuring then takes place with that date in mind.

So much of what we do as entrepreneurs is stuff we’re not ready for. Our first radio interview, first talk, first community workshop, first funding application. I’m reminded of that scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding when Cameron Diaz’s character has the microphone thrust into her hand  and is told she’s singing. She holds back, petrified at first, and yet soon she is reveling in the experience, delighted to have been pushed. On the entrepreneurial path, it is vital to respond to pushes, give ourselves pushes and then feel ourselves being pushed onwards and onwards by the dates we set and the commitments we make.

There’s obviously a balance to be found here. We don’t want to be underprepared. We don’t want to commit to offering anything which we genuinely don’t have the time or resources to put together. Yet nor do we want to fall into the too-common trap of overpreparing, letting a project fall stale because it’s continually being revised on our office desk. We need to trust that there’s a point where we can release into the public domain because so much of the evolution of a venture takes place collectively. If you look at a movement like Transition Towns or 10:10, you’ll see that so much of what takes place is beyond anything that an individual could have conceived in his or her own mind.

The secret is: We’re never really ready to offer anything because the readiness comes as a result of the offering. As with my Twitter masterclass, as long as there’s one person enrolled (and there is!), people will take benefit and the venture will move forward.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) What are you sitting on? What project have you been mulling over and over without really getting anywhere?

2) How could you start nudging this into the public domain? What step do you not quite feel ready for but which might actually be the step that helps you BE ready? One action may be to join a social networking forum – like Facebook or Twitter – and start connecting with others who could collaborate with you, or help you move this project forward.

3) Time for some bravery. Launch an idea knowing the heart of it and with some structure (e.g. a date or a way for people to get connected with you), trusting that ideas and support will flow in from others and in turn bolster you in your feeling of readiness.

4) Leave a comment on this blog post, letting us know how you are doing with moving your venture forward, piece by piece. What helps you know you’re ready? When does holding back… hold you back?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

Stop Waiting – Time To Spread The Word

You have a venture and want to let more people know about it. Maybe you want to find your ideal clients, maybe you want to find collaborators or funders.

In my experience, Twitter is a fantastic way of networking with vast amounts of people whilst using little energy. It makes it fun and easy to spread the word about the project you’re passionate about.

Join us for this 4-week masterclass series via teleconference. We start Monday 9th November and then speak again the following three Mondays throughout the month. You also receive a 45-minute mentoring session which helps you get super-clear about who you want to communicate with and how to reach them in the most effective ways.

For more information, click here. There are now only five places available so to avoid disappointment, do book yours now.

I recently watched The Waitress, a highly recommended film about a woman’s journey to escape an abusive relationship and create a more fulfilling life for herself. It was with shock that I discovered that Adrienne Shelly, the writer, director and a cast member of the film, was murdered before the film was released; she did not see her project premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, nor see it go on to win its many awards.

Her husband set up the Adrienne Shelly Foundation in her memory, providing grants to help young women pursue their film-making dreams. One of those grant recipients, Cynthia Wade, won an Academy Award for her documentary film, Freeheld. I feel raw to my emotional core as I watch the trailer of this film, which I urge you to do here.

The knock-on effect of Adrienne’s work is a reminder to us that our actions never exist in a vacuum. When we tell ourselves that we can wait until ‘one day’, when we fritter our time away and procrastinate, we are depriving others as well as ourselves. If Adrienne had waited even another year to move her project from idea to reality, the film and its legacy would not be with us.

We all, like Adrienne and Cynthia, have stories to tell, messages to convey, gifts to share. Our uniqueness is such that when we hold back, our piece of the collective jigsaw is simply missing. Life is too short to procrastinate. Life is also too long to procrastinate. There are hopefully too many years ahead of us to spend with shelved dreams and regrets.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) How would you define procrastination?

2) Investigate your own procrastination strategies. Do you play “What celebrity are you most like?” on Facebook or colour-code your nail varnish? Do you take up an honourable new hobby? Or spend hours on ‘very important’ internet research work? Keep an honest list this week of activities you engage in which don’t move you forward in the direction you truly want to go.

3) Inquiry: What is underneath my procrastination? This is a BIG question so just note your instincts as they come up. Do you detect fear of failure, fear of success, lack of organisational skills, fear of the unknown, fear of change, lack of support, fear of visibility, lack of self-confidence…?

4) Leave a comment below and watch as others join in, creating between us a supportive online community.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** Do You Dream Of Creating A Film Which Matters? **

Or an event… pieces of art… workshops… a retreat… an album… a healing centre…. ?

Then join us in Cambridge on Sat 24th April 2010 for Kickstart Your Venture, a community workshop. Click here for more details.

Also see Recommended Resources on my website for films, books, people and resources to inspire.

NB Copies of the featured book Be The Change by Trenna Cormack will be available at a special rate at the forthcoming Kickstart Your Venture workshop.

Well okay, not literally, but quantitively. My gym has launched ‘Channel Challenge’ where we sign up and keep tally of our lengths between now and the end of August, aiming to rack up 21 miles in total.

When I first saw it advertised, the idea was intriguing. I asked a lifeguard for more details and he said his team were about to have a meeting to formulate a plan. It turned out to involve tally cards, celebratory drinks at key milestones, conversion tables to calculate mileage in the indoor versus outdoor pool, plus a giant chart representing how far each of us has travelled.

There are some bonuses they hadn’t necessarily planned for. There’s been a buzz by the pools with the lifeguards excited and engaged, suddenly enjoying a role other than merely saving us from drowning. My own fitness is increasing and my partner has started accompanying me, inspired by the personal target setting. I’ve got to know a fellow swimmer: a 62-year old grandmother of eight with some amazing life stories which she shares with me in the jacuzzi, after having put me to shame with her stamina. People are breaking their own personal bests, challenging family members, enjoying the outdoors, losing excess weight.

All this because someone had an idea.

We all have ideas, often a lot of them. Many of them stay merely as ideas without accompanying plans. Sometimes this can be a relief: we get to enjoy the fantasy. Other times this gulf between what’s in our heads and what’s in reality can be overwhelmingly frustrating.

With an idea that could benefit others, whether it’s bringing laughter or insights, sanctuary or motivation, ease or excitement, this idea is not just for us. We receive it, with no input on our part, into our consciousness and it is our choice whether we delve deeper. Whether we share it with others. Whether we take it from idea to clearer idea. To compelling idea. To plan. To action. To reality.

Had any ideas lately?

The World Needs Your Passion, So….

1) Action: Make a list of all those ideas you have that just will not go away.

2) Inquiry: What do your personal idea-full, plan-less places feel like? Are you quite comfortable there with no action required, or do they feel frustrating?

3) Found this blog helpful? Irritating? Inspiring? Challenging? Let us know by leaving a comment below….

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

* A Place To Go With The Idea That Won’t Go Away *

If it’s time to take the first step towards turning it into reality, the Kickstart Your Venture workshop has been designed for you. Click here for more information. Pre-booking essential. Date: Sat 10th October 2009 (Cambridge)

“At school, certain kids were being labelled as ‘disruptive’ or ‘low achievers’. Then we created a farm. Suddenly, these tough kids with harsh backgrounds were going gooey over the rabbits. It was the first time some of them had ever cuddled anything. They were people, not labels. That’s when it started for me.”

Jane Tewson is the pioneering imagination behind Comic Relief, PilotLight & Timebank. We’d met at the Chain Reaction event (see my earlier post) and I asked for her words of wisdom: What would she say to other women who had ideas that could make a real difference in the world, but were blocked from seeing them into action?

Her perspective is that our focus needs to be over there on those we want to help. “People sit back and say ‘I’d love to help’. I say, if you have an idea, just get in there. Go and test it out. If you want to work with homeless people, find out about a charity, visit the night hostel, learn more about the area. Talk to people, listen to what they need. Once you do that, you can’t not follow your passion”.

She finds her way through blocks that many of us would stumble over because of this focus. She’s also an advocate of acknowledging what you’re not so suited for. “The reason I do the work I do is that I learnt very early on that I’m not made of the stuff you need to work directly with people who are suffering. I do the second best – which is supporting those people who are made of that stuff.”

I tell her she makes it sound so easy. “You have to find where you are most able to use who you are. I recognise that I’m not very good at very much. I’m shy, I’m not good with numbers or writing or speaking. I’m not actually that clever or talented. At school, I really lacked confidence because of my dyslexia. As I’ve got older, I’ve got much more honest about that. What I am good at is being a catalyst. I have an idea, I think about all the people you need to get a campaign off the ground and I get us all together in a room to brainstorm. My role is to inspire people and help them feel confident about the idea. More and more, people just come and say, ‘I want to work with you’. I’ve been overwhelmed by that.”

As we find and follow our passion, what would it be like to make it less about us? Imagine if we could all put ourselves fully in service, warts and all, knowing that we aren’t brilliant at everything, that we won’t always be successful, but that we will act anyway because something other than us compels us to do so. Each of us carries ideas and gifts which others need. It is our duty and our honour to put them into action, into reality.

The World Needs Your Passion, so….

1) What’s it really about? Your dream, that nagging ambition that won’t go away…. Imagine that the idea is not yours, not for you, but that you are just a vehicle for it. Who are you carrying the idea for? Action: Make a list of the people your idea would help and commit to speaking with some of them about what they need and how you can help. (Some would call this ‘market research’)

2) What are the strengths that you currently have which you can rely on to help you turn this idea into reality? What are the areas you need to seek the help of others? Who could you enlist? Action: Contact them to ask for what you need.

3) Leave a comment here on this blog, letting us know what it’s like to see yourself as carrying an idea which is for others, what it’s like to put your focus on others, and what it’s like to enlist the help of others…

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

** Ready to make the difference you’re here to make?**

If you’re blocked by fear of failure, it’s not just you who’s missing out. Your project could be helping others… and that means you need to risk the highs and lows, the successes AND the failures. Ready? Join a Fail Is NOT A Four Letter Word workshop – visit the Workshops section to read more and find a date and location which suits you.