Overcoming Personal Roadblocks
When it comes to the process of successful self-change, we can be our own worst enemies. Instead of acting on the desire to get organized, we come up with an array of excuses for why we can’t, or we fail to make a goal concrete by devoting time to planning and executing it.
As you start to make changes in your life to get more organized, be on the lookout for these agents of self-sabotage. You’ll need to get past them in order to get organized quickly.
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ROAD HAZARD |
When you first jump into your new, organized life, put on a pair of blinders. If you stop to survey the entire road ahead of you, it’s easy to get discouraged and fall by the wayside. Instead, keep your eyes on what’s immediately in front of you, only the next step you need to take. Staying focused on your next action keeps you from being overwhelmed by the entire journey.
Here you are, determined to find a way to make your life easier and flow more smoothly. You’re reading this book, thinking about some changes you’d like to make, and you’re getting ready to move forward.
Now enter the excuses. Just at the moment you’re poised to take action, excuses operate as a last-ditch effort to prevent change. And oh, how creative they can be! Do these excuses sound familiar?
• I don’t have time to get organized.
• Organized people are boring. Who wants to live that way?
• Being organized will stifle my creative side.
• We’re going to be moving next year. Why bother?
• I can’t afford to buy all those expensive organizing products.
Whether stated in terms of time, money, convenience, or identity, excuses will tap any remotely conceivable rationale to do one simple thing: stop the pending change. Most of us can expect to do battle with them along the way, so be prepared.
To handle excuses, you can safely ignore the particulars of their message. You don’t need to debate the excuse or try to counter it. Instead, focus on the messenger and the underlying issue: your fear of change.
When excuses crop up, cut straight to the underlying issue and address it. Tell yourself, “Yes, change is frightening, but I know I can do it!” This cuts the ground right out from under any excuse, no matter how it’s stated. Acknowledging the risks and uncertainties that an excuse represents is the best way to send it fading into the background, so you can move past it to better organization.
No Time to Plan? Plan to Fail!
In the telecommunications world, it’s called the “last mile problem.” For any communications network, the most difficult and expensive segment of the route is always the last mile to the customer’s door.
For successful self-change, that difficult last mile is setting aside the time to plan. You can read about getting organized, you can stock up on file folders, you can hang a new calendar on the wall—but until you make time in your day for your organizing program, you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Make your organizing desires tangible by devoting time each day to plan and execute your get-organized program. You won’t need to give all your time to the job; even segments as small as 15 minutes a day will be enough to bridge that gap between your dream and the reality of a new organized life.