Procrastination - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Procrastination - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Sometimes you really should do X but you dont. Heres some excellent advice from AmbivaBlog for all of us procrastinators: According to archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who at some point dissolved my own suicidal feelings of frustration and failure into laughter, procrastination is a disease only from the point of view of the heroic ego, which believes it can and should control everything first discipline the self, then save the world. (Enormous inner strength and will! The fight of your life, for the rest of your life!) Procrastination is one of the signs of the soul at work, undermining and sabotaging the grandiose aspirations of the hero-ego, perhaps so that something real can happen, or not happen, as it, not I, wish. In Hillmans work procrastination means uncountably many things to the soul. Its an intrinsic part of the work process, resisting the pen the way the knots in wood resist and redirect the chisel; its like the dance of avoidance all animals do on the way to their most primal gratifications, building up the intensity of mating or fighting by postponing it. Its much like the way we t urn red-faced and flee from the very person weve fantasized confessing our love to, or the way we eagerly look forward to going home and then sink into a ghastly regressive lethargy, binge-eating on our parents couch, because what the soul wants is something less literal than we think we want. And one of the things it wants, and loves, is its problems, which Hillman says are like heraldic emblems. Read the entire excellent post here. I often berate myself for not just getting the stuff done I need to do but I also find that I can force myself to do it, and it turns out to be difficult, or I can wait until he right moment (whatever that is) and suddenly its so easy, it feels as if the work does itself. On the other hand, sometimes I DO force myself to do it and it also turns out to be easy :o) Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related