Defeating Your Draggin’ Dragon

Over the last two weeks, I have finally completed a project that I procrastinated for over 3 years. I am relieved and exhausted.

During the long era of paralyzed delay, the anxiety around my failure to take action on it felt like a tight grip around my chest. Whenever the subject was brought up, I would slip into a shame spiral of sighs and grumbles.

Sometimes you swirl around in avoidance of a task, only to find that it is way easier and less time consuming than you expected.

This was not that case. I have worked diligently on this for nearly two weeks, putting in around 60 – 70 hours on it.

This naturally would have been more reasonable to spread out over a longer period of time. However, I only got fully charged up after I found a person to assist me, and she starts a new job next week.

I am so grateful that I found amazing support in a compassionate and grounded professional to help me get this done. I wonder if I could have accomplished this years ago if I had simply made greater effort to seek out skilled support sooner.

Regardless of woulda-shoulda-coulda’s, it is complete, and I am free of that particular weight.

Last night, I had a dream about removing this monster from myself . . . uhhhh . . . quite literally. (Full dream story available upon request. it’s too creepy and gross to share without consent.) This made clear that my subconscious is also doing some house cleaning from my efforts. 

Today, I want to share some tips to break through procrastination that *actually* helped me. I have tried many many suggestions, and it seems that my draggin’ dragon will blow fire or slink around most. 

Body Doubling: Whenever I hear this term, I think of a fantasmagoric film like Dead Ringers, or The Substance. But okay, that’s the term I guess we’re collectively going with for a surprisingly helpful tool. 

It’s insane how much better I work when I have another person in the room with me doing their own work. If we make an agreement of what we are each working on, and can take timed little breaks to vent without going into overtime, it’s pure anxiety gold.

“Baby step onto the elevator… baby step into the elevator… I’m in the elevator.” : What about Bob? is one of my favorite comedies. It’s directed by one of my hero artists: Frank Oz of the early Muppets. Second, it actually has great therapeutic advice that I have used in my life to take risks.

The key foundation of the guidance of Dr. Leo is to break down your overwhelm into manageable parts, and eat the challenge piecemeal.

Bite Size Time Bites: On that note, only require yourself to work on it for 10 minutes at a time. 

I used this trick to get myself doing workout YouTubes. After 10 minutes, I found myself happy to do more, and was delighted to see myself sweating for 40 minutes or more.

Friends with Similar Problems: As mentioned, I likely would have accomplished this sooner had I reached out to my community to find my skilled and paid support. 

You also can find a friend to do a trade with, checking in weekly or monthly to see how each of you are progressing. When they make progress, it can inspire you and make it all seem more possible. 

When a Deadline is a Lifeline: Create a time that this task must be done by, and create reasons WHY so you believe it. 

I tried to just time block in my calendar, but would ignore it without reasoning behind it. Once I knew why the date mattered, I was more on it. 

Messy is Better than Perfect: Start sloppy just to get it in motion. If your anxiety is around how it’s not good enough, then celebrate a very rough start over no start at all.

Compassion and Knowledge Abolishes Fear: The people who helped me overcome my shame were the ones who had knowledge of the challenge and helped me see why my fears were common but overblown. They knew better from experience and I so believed them. 

The others were the people who simply said, hey, that’s understandable and you don’t need to feel bad about it. Let’s talk about your fear some more to unravel it. 

I would love to be one of those supportive people for you during a personal tarot reading.

You can also have a friend hold your hand through the tough questions during a Tarot Together session.

Tune into your own mind and body to see through what holds you back with an intuition coaching session.

Take a break from the anxiety when you hire a tarot or palm reader from Portlandia Fortune Tellers for your upcoming event. Halloween nights are filling up, so get your quote today! 

Hope you have a lovely weekend of getting some good stuff done and resting as well. 

You Got This, 

Jenna Lynne Roberts

Present Path Tarot

Portlandia Fortune Tellers