As human beings we’re designed to move, to act, to have an effect on our external reality, that is going to be a reflection of our inner reality and it is only by actions that we are able to release our virtues, our abilities, our intentions and even our thoughts..
And yet performing or doing an action towards something that you want sometimes or some days seem so complex and challenging that we often postponed it ..for a “better time”. This creates the so called disease of the future procrastination and why do I call like that ...because with the immediate trends, the shortcut fever, and the instant rewards each time we are becoming more lazy to do the effort of many things, to the extent that thinking about your purpose or just about what you enjoy seems like something you “don’t have time” for ...
Ironically you do have time to search for the best app, guru, nutritional or mental aid, or for someone to help you ..do what you are not able to start. And you also ask for quick results, low investment and if possible not time consuming!!
It is so clear in the air, in the environment ..that the number one emotion to stop people from going inside and within is FEAR!!
Surprisingly acting on what you want, moving your thoughts, activating your intentions is the only thing that will diminish the fear that you are feeling to do the things, once you start giving the first steps, you activate your chemical pharmacy of neurotransmitters that boost your confidence that begins with dopamine, endorphins, and most likely oxytocin.
These three “horses of action” will lead the energy to allow your brain to expand your neural connections and as a result they will liberate another powerful brain chemical named Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which is the main trigger to expand your connections and generate new neurons. All this biochemical cascade will be transformed into a higher process called neuroplasticity which is the responsible of you feeling so focused, engaged and ready to access a flow state!! That will only happen if you work with your will power to give the first steps.
Emotion regulation plays a critical role for understanding the self-regulatory failure of procrastination. Individuals postpone or avoid aversive task in order to gain short-term positive affect at the cost of long-term goals. Regarding details of this process, Sirois and Pychyl (2013) suggest considering counterfactual thinking as an explanation of emotional misregulation that may promote procrastination. Counterfactual thinking means that individuals compare“... unfavourable outcomes that did occur in the past to possible better (upward, “if only” statements) or worse (downward, “at least” statements) outcomes that might have occurred”. (1)
As mentioned above if we keep being “slaves” of our emotions, then nothing really will be able to start, I discuss part of this behavior in a previous article “How do you let go..your past”, I pointed out that every time we feed our minds with any sort of rumination will end up being self-sabotage by our own mind and we’ll enter a loop of disempowering emotions, in addition to that the addiction to social media or “websurfing” looking for answers or help will eventually trigger comparisons that will lead you to “fake” scenarios that not only don’t have any support but they were just created with the help of this new digitalization that wants (when handled incorrectly) keep us attached and addicted to look for instant comfort but we end up producing long lasting sadness, low self-esteem and lowering our confidence to do the things or simply leaving them because we don’t feel up to the task (2).
The brain is the central organ of stress and adaptation to social and physical stressors because it determines what is threatening, stores memories and regulates the physiological as well as behavioral responses that may be damaging or protective. The physiological responses that produce adaptation via “allostasis” include not only the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the autonomic nervous system, but also their non-linear interactions with the metabolic system and the pro- and anti-inflammatory components of the immune defense system. Exposure to multiple stressors and the dysregulation of the non-linear interactions (e.g., not turning on or off responses efficiently) lead to wear and tear on the body and brain that is termed allostatic load and overload (3).
Allostasis is the active process of adapting to stressors via mediators such as cortisol and the autonomic, metabolic and immune system that act together in a non-linear fashion to maintain homeostasis (3).
It is so important to recognize that when we procrastinate and stimulate that kind of behavior either by self-sabotage thoughts of any past experience that we had when we failed, or any programmed message from our childhood or we experience an activated comparison behavior due to any digital platform we are self-inducing stress in our body and brain. Therefore we are eliciting a disruption of our internal homeostasis as we are creating a stressor that will be taken as threat and as supported by research we are not only decreasing our own ability to have a clear picture of what is happening, but we are also activating metabolic and immune mechanisms that will decrease our own internal highways to perform an action.
What is more important about this self-provoked situation is that if we continue to procrastinate or ruminate of self-negative thoughts we’ll eventually lower our immune defenses producing an illness that will give us the reason to avoid the task or endeavor justifying our self-created thought that we were not able to do it or we were not suited for the goal.
All of this sad scenario can be overturned by some “simple” strategies that will allow you to find the exit from that maze that you have created ...
First of all, you gotta breath ... as simple as it sounds …breathing is an ancient technique and it allows powerful effects in your body most of all on your awareness and mental capacity. Through breathing and relaxing techniques you will allow your blood to be fuller in oxygen which in turn travel to the brain allowing that cycling mess to stop. In addition to that it will lower your cortisol and adrenaline level which will allow your metabolic and immune functions to start restoring to a homeostatic balance.
Second, activate your body, yes you’re reading correctly, even a short stroll through a park can start clearing your brain and mind from a foggy state, exercise has been shown that increases the release of many neurotransmitters such as endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and lowering also cortisol and adrenaline. This self-producing pharmacy will help you to start changing your comparative or self-appreciating behaviour increasing also your emotional to state to start deciding and acting which is what we wanted in the beginning of this journey.
Evidence has demonstrated that both forced (treadmill) and non-forced (activity wheel) physical exercise increase hippocampal neurogenesis, cell proliferation and dendritic branching. Modulation of the release and utilization of neurotransmitters, such as monoamines, may also be related to physical exercise-induced neuroplasticity. Other possible mechanisms include the neurotrophic action of brain- derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and growth factors that can act in the Central Nervous System (CNS), such as insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). (4)
BDNF is one of the major modulators of brain plasticity. Apart from its action on the CNS, BDNF may also influence peripheral systems, such as reduced food intake, increased glucose oxidation rate, decreased blood glucose level and increased insulin sensitivity. Together, this evidence indicates that BDNF is not only critical for the nervous system but also interconnects central and peripheral processes related to metabolism regulation and homeostasis. Thus, it is proposed that peripheral levels of this neurotrophin are associated with cognition, metabolic diseases and psychiatric disorders (4).
And with the support of this research we arrive to the third powerful tool, as a consequence of applying motion in your body and even doing a short stroll, you will activate the release of one of the most popular nowadays and more cited neurotrophic factors which is BDNF, this internal chemical will allow you not only to expand your neuronal connections but also regulating your metabolic pathways by reducing your anxiety to eat processed, sugary or toxic foods which will give you a instantaneous short reward but eventually will lead you to feel tired, moody and lethargic. So if after you activate your body you no longer feel the need to eat these kind of food, then you can start consuming more “real” food, complex carbohydrates (found in vegetables and fruits), lean protein (chicken, meat, preferably blue fishes — salmon, tuna, sardines—) and healthy unsaturated fats (avocado, olive oil, nuts, almonds).
How can some simple shift in our knowledge and consciousness of very simple and practical things can give us such a larger picture of why we don’t want to act or do something, and we are missing the villain of this movie which is fear, what does this feeling provokes inside ourselves and why it paralyzes almost every single action that we want to perform?
Fear is one of the most toxic emotions in terms of acting and moving from our comfort zone or going deeper into knowing ourselves therefore we are going to get deeper into this feeling and what is the main fear we have when facing procrastination.
Procrastinating individuals tend to irrationally believe that they are inadequate or incapable and that the world’s demands are too numerous and difficult. Clinical observation highlights irrational fear of failure as a main cause of procrastination. For example, Solomon and Rothblum (1984) demonstrated that a factor labelled fear of failure (FF) accounted for 49.4% of the variance in a questionnaire that measured the reasons given for procrastination (5).
The cognitive component of fear of failure (FF) entails beliefs about the threat of not succeeding, appraisals about aversive consequences of not attaining a goal, and the potential evaluation based on possible failure. The emotional component is the negative emotions (e.g., anxiety) that are raised or accompanied by those appraisals (5).
In addition to this “imaginary scenery” that we create when we don’t want to engage in action, we know that internally and biochemically fear is a signal of threat to our brain that activates the emergency protocol, which activates cortisol and adrenaline to start pumping into our system, these two chemicals, which are the most commonly released and easier to understand, start a cascade of inflammation factors and cytokines (chemicals that mainly control inflammatory markers and immune function defenses) that will start stealing energy and altering the homeostasis of metabolic, endocrine and immune functions in order to be able to flight or fight towards the threat.
However as our brain, by repeated activation of this protocol, knows it is not a “real threat” but it is still overflowing with these pool of chemicals it will start a lethargic/paralyzing protocol that is the main responsible of not allowing you to move or get out of that procrastination state.
Coming back to the tools that we can use to overcome this state and now focused on reducing the fear we can apply a fourth tool that will allow us to create a bigger picture of what is happening inside of us, what is real, what is “imaginary” and why we are self-sabotaging ourselves. This tool is journaling about the issue and constructing a mental map with real threats, imaginary threats and solutions as well enlisting some of previous successful experiences pr even failures that we have been able to overcome in the past.
This technique of creating a diagram or journaling about the problem will give you clarity, confidence and will help you detect the root of the fear, as well as start producing dopamine and serotonin by doing it which will start to help you feel better. Nevertheless you have to really, sometimes force yourself to write, to move and to breathe in order to promote consistency that eventually aid the engaging component.
As you can see we begun the discussion of procrastination with an emotional/mental perspective that has led us again to connect four of your realms of integral health (wellness), which are your body, your mind, your emotions and your spiritual health.
So every time you think that one emotional issue, physical issue, spiritual hardship or eating disorder is separated from each other, you will get to the conclusion that it is all tied together and it has to be treated as a whole, not just by fixing one component and leaving the others “loose” because they will eventually pull the others toward the same level and drag you to the same time over time.
I can only end this article by giving you hope that you can get out of the “floor of the curve” and start seeing the light again if you engage step by step using the tools and allowing yourself to see the doubts and “threatening” scenarios with more objectivity and becoming again the observer of your own life.
#action #procrastination #mood #emotional #regulation #goals #tasks #BDNF #serotonin #endorphins #stress #cortisol #fear #adrenaline #Eckert #Ortega #McEwen #Cassilhas #Haghbin
References.
Eckert, Marcus, et al. "Overcome procrastination: Enhancing emotion regulation skills reduce procrastination." Learning and Individual Differences 52 (2016): 10-18
Ortega D. “How Do You Let Go...Your Past?”. https://www.gen-es.mx/bloggenesmx. July 09th, 2019.
McEwen, Bruce S., et al. "Mechanisms of stress in the brain." Nature neuroscience 18.10 (2015): 1353.
Cassilhas, Ricardo C., Sergio Tufik, and Marco Túlio de Mello. "Physical exercise, neuroplasticity, spatial learning and memory." Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 73.5 (2016): 975-983.
Haghbin, M., McCaffrey, A., & Pychyl, T. A. (2012). The Complexity of the Relation between Fear of Failure and Procrastination. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 30(4), 249–263.