Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast.

It's good to have you here and it's kind of fun.

I'm doing a solo episode today.

Usually I do interviews so it's fun to do something different for a change and I want to talk today about 10 lies that make us procrastinate and I have procrastination on the mind right now because I will be beginning my How to Stop Procrastination class on October 6th.

You can find out more about that at barbravelling.com slash procrastinate.

And if you are listening after October 6th, this is an on-demand class you can listen to at any time.

But when we work on getting things done, accomplishing goals, whether they're big goals like hard, scary goals or just our to-do list, sometimes we procrastinate and we need to approach procrastination from two perspectives.

One is a spiritual perspective.

So we need to renew our minds, change the way we think about it.

And then the other one's a practical perspective.

But when we work on taking off the lies that make us procrastinate and put on the truth, the truth changes us and it gives us the desire to do our work.

So in my new course, every module, there's four modules in it, I will have a worksheet for you to fill out of 10 lies that kind of go with that module where you can put the truth each lie.

But I want to talk about 10 of the most common lies in this podcast episode.

And I came up with 40 in my class, and I bet I could come up with 100 if I try, because there are so many lies that fuel our procrastination.

So let's just go through 10 of those right now.

And the first one is a lie based on perfectionism.

And that is, I need to find the perfect solution.

I need to find the perfect way to do this.

I need to do this perfectly or anything along those lines of perfect.

And the truth is there is nothing perfect in this life except God.

So if I'm waiting for perfect, if I'm trying to do perfect, then I am pursuing an impossible goal.

And so my subconscious knows it's impossible.

And so it kind of pushes against me and say, and says, I don't want to do that task.

So perfectionism, it not only steals our joy, but it makes us not do our work.

And I have a whole lesson on perfectionism in my new class.

And also, you know, one of the areas that we work on perfectionism the most is in decision-making.

Have you ever tried to find a hotel or an Airbnb and taken hours and hours because you're trying to find the perfect one?

I also have a lesson on how to make decisions correctly.

Okay, the second lie is one lie that actually is a combination of two lies, and these are the lies I have used more than any other lies in my whole life.

If I were to read through all the journals I have written, these would be the two lies that would show up the most, and that is, this is too hard.

I can't do it.

And here's the truth that I have learned through the years.

First of all, you know, a lot of things are hard.

We expect them to be easy, but they aren't.

So I might put my journal, yes, this is hard, but it's not true that I can't do it.

I can't do it perfectly.

I can't do it easily.

I can't do it without the potential of failing, but I can do it.

And the best way to do that is to break it into little steps.

So ask yourself, think of something you're dreading on your to-do list today and say, what is the tiniest possible step the first step I could take that I went dread and so sometimes the first step is just to you know walk into the room where you're going to do the task and then ask yourself okay what's the next little step I can do because if you break it down into small enough steps you'll be able to do without dreading it okay the next lie is I don't feel like working so I shouldn't and this is a cultural lie.

You know, our culture right now is all about do what you want when you want.

If you feel like doing it, do it.

If you don't feel like doing it, don't do it.

And so that's why it sometimes makes it hard if we believe that lie makes us hard to do our to do list.

And that's definitely one I have struggled with.

And the truth is just because I feel like doing it, that doesn't mean I shouldn't do it.

And just because I don't feel like doing it, that doesn't mean I should not do it.

You know, just think of a mother with a newborn baby and she's dead tired and the baby wakes up crying in the middle of the night.

That mother doesn't feel like getting up in the middle of the night with her baby, but God wants her to, right?

The baby needs to be fed.

You know, a biblical example is Jonah.

Jonah didn't feel like doing what God wanted him to do, but God still wanted him to do it.

So God asks us to do things that are hard.

He asks us to do things we don't feel like doing.

One say, he asks us to do things we don't feel like doing.

But one thing I would say about this belief, I don't feel like working on it, so I shouldn't, is sometimes the answer is, that's right, I shouldn't.

You know, I think back to the first time I started procrastinating, and it was in high school.

I was on a dance team called the Demonettes.

Not a great name for a team for a Christian author, right?

So I was on the Demonettes, and I procrastinated practicing, because I really didn't enjoy doing the routines that much on my own at home.

And so I didn't do them.

But, you know, if I look back on that era of my life, since I didn't do them, why was I on that dance team?

There's no reason to be on that dance team.

So if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have done it.

So sometimes there's things in our lives we need to quit, things we don't feel like doing that we need to quit.

But other times there are things we need to, that we don't feel like doing that God wants us to do and we do need to do.

So it's good to evaluate that.

We wouldn't want to use the renewing the mind just to make ourselves do everything without taking some thought into, you know, planning and thinking about, okay, is this something I should be spending my time on?

And I actually do have a lot on planning in the class too, and setting up a work plan and that sort of thing.

Okay, the fourth lie is this problem will go away if I ignore it long enough.

And again, this is a lie, I have struggled with it, because some people, they'll see a problem, they'll just say, okay, how can I solve it?

And they'll, you know, feel like, yeah, I can solve it.

Whereas others, and I'm one of those others, I often see a problem and I'm like, oh, I just don't even want to think about it.

That's too hard to think about it.

So I ignore it.

And the truth is, it will never be easier to tackle than it is right now.

And usually, if the more we wait, the longer we wait, when a problem comes up, the harder it is to deal with that problem to think about it.

Sometimes the problem gets easier or sometimes the problems get harder because we waited so long.

So think about relationships.

What if one of the things you procrastinate is difficult talks in relationship?

You know, it's awkward, it's embarrassing.

You think the other person gets, might get mad at you, so you just don't want to do it.

Well, if you put that off, you could put that off for 20 or 30 years and it hurts your relationship.

So we need to learn to deal with those problems.

Okay, the next lie is I work better under pressure, so I'll wait.

And this was a strategy I used back in college.

I had two degrees in college.

One was a home economics education degree, which I loved.

I never procrastinated those classes.

And one was a business management degree.

And I thought that was so boring.

Most of those classes were so boring that I just always put off the study until the night before.

And whereas that worked when I was in high school and junior high, you know, it was harder in college because you had way more to read and I couldn't just breathe through it.

And so the truth is, usually I only work under pressure.

So that's why I think I work better.

And sometimes you might work better under pressure.

But if, you know, a lot of times things take longer than we think they're going to take.

So we might not end up with as good of a product or as good success if we wait till the last minute, which is, you know, my problem when I was in college, I didn't have as good of test scores because I waited until the last minute.

And the next lie is I don't have, okay, the next lie is if I don't have a big block of time to work on this, it's not worth doing.

And the problem with this lie is that many people are not in a stage of life where you do have a big block of time to work on this so I think back to the days when I had four little kids at home I think I also really you know learned to procrastinate during that era of my life because I couldn't do anything without interruption I'd start to do something I'd get interrupted and so it just made me not even want to do it so what I wish I would have learned back in those days is to you know, work on it for just a little bit.

The truth to this lie is often in life, all I have is little blocks of times.

So if I want to actually work on this and do it, I need to adjust my expectations.

So I need to change my expectations and recognize, hey, that's all I have is little bits of time.

And also recognize, you know, you can do things in little bits of time.

I, my first book, Free and Promotional Eating, I still had all those kids at home.

and I wrote that 15 minutes at a time because that's all the time I had available.

And Zechariah 4.10 says, do not despise these small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.

No, because that's all the time I had when the kids were at home.

Okay, this next lie, I'd be curious to see if you guys have heard this belief.

This belief was really prevalent around 2006 when I started writing.

And the belief is, if it's God's will, things will go smoothly.

I'll have the desire to do it.

And it may even just happen without me trying, because we just think, hey, if it's God's will, it's going to be easy.

And I remember when I first started writing, I was talking to somebody in my church.

and I was telling them how hard it was, all the problems I was having, how much I didn't like it.

And that person said to me, well, maybe if you're having all those problems, that's a sign that God doesn't want you to do it.

And that was nine books ago, two podcasts ago, one online course ago.

And if I had listened to that person and given up and thought, well, maybe God just doesn't want me to do it, I wouldn't have done all those things.

And so in some ways, I think this lie is kind of like a spiritual attack sort of lie because Satan doesn't want us to do certain things.

He might not want us to do things like write a book or do an online course, but he also doesn't want us to do things like, you know, spend time with our kids, spend time with God, spend time with our spouses.

Serve sacrificially, do things for other people that we don't feel like doing, because the more we continue to be selfish, the more we are controlled by our lists and controlled by procrastination, the better that will be for his purposes.

So, We want to learn to do what God wants us to do, even when it's not smooth, even when there are all kinds of problems, even when we have to put in a lot of effort.

And you see in the Bible, you know, God didn't make it easy for Moses when he was leading the Israelites out of Israel.

He didn't make it easy for Jonah.

We see all kinds of examples in the Bible where things didn't go smoothly, including Jesus coming to earth to die for us.

That was hard.

Okay, this next lie is just a pretty common lie that we all say, and that is other things are more urgent, so this can wait.

So this is the, oh, this isn't all that important lie.

And the problem is we can keep doing all the little things.

In fact, I had one woman tell me, I didn't realize I was a procrastinator because it was masked by busyness.

I was still always busy.

I was doing things, but I wasn't doing the really hard things or the big things.

And so the truth is, I need to be careful not to make the urgent take over the important.

Okay, we saw this with Mary and Martha.

Martha was doing the urgent.

She was working on dinner and maybe she was working on dinner as a perfectionism and felt like it had to be more perfect than it did.

And Mary was doing the important.

There was only so many minutes they had to spend with Jesus on earth, and she was doing what was important.

So, you know, God said the greatest commandments were to love him and to love others.

And so those important things, spending time with God, spending time with people, serving others, Jesus said, you know, even he came to serve.

Those are important things that we often don't do because the urgent thing.

We often don't do because we're just doing things that have to be done right away.

And in the class we'll talk about, you know, how to, how to prioritize.

So that will help with that.

Okay.

The next lie, lie number nine is one I am guessing every single one of you have said, and if this is a lie, you don't tell yourself right to me, tell me how you conquered this lie so I can have some little tips.

Okay, that lie is this will only take a minute so I will just check my email first.

I'll just check Facebook or Instagram or check the news and we all know it usually takes more than a minute, right?

Could lead into a half hour, hour but even if it only takes a minute, that hurts our concentration.

It's hard to get back on task again.

So the truth of that is this won't only take a minute it's going to take longer it's going to disrupt my thoughts and it's better for me just to keep moving and here's the thing I mean I just kind of quickly said that truth because I didn't write it down but each time we write down the truth we believe it because a lot of these lies you might look and you'll say oh I don't intellectually believe that but the problem is we believe it at the gut level and if we're believing at the gut level, we can't just say, hey, I'm not going to believe that.

It takes a lot of work to change our thoughts.

So yes, we need practical tools too.

And one thing I recognize, because one of the last things I learned about overcoming procrastination, I really have just had victory over these past, I don't know, four or five months, is learning how to handle afternoons well.

And for that, it wasn't so much because I was believing lies, those were practical tools that I need to learn, time management tools to change that area of my life.

But the lies are just important because if we're believing something at the gut level, it's going to affect our desires and it's going to make us not want to do our work.

So overcoming procrastination is important from both a spiritual perspective and a practical perspective.

We attack it on both fronts.

Thank you.

Okay, and the last lie is that I'm just not the kind of person who follows through.

And you know, in a way, that might be truth right now.

But we also add, I'll never change, so why bother?

And that's what is not true.

Because the truth is, God can change us.

He wants to change us.

But usually that doesn't happen by just saying a quick prayer, God change us.

Usually it's a partnership where we work together.

And in the area of time management, what I've learned, because in a lot of the other areas of my life, like emotions and even overcoming overeating, it was mostly the renewing that changed me.

I just kept renewing my mind.

I kept writing the lies down on paper, writing the truth to it, or using my donut app or my book, Renewing the Mind Project.

And when I was changing my thoughts, that helped me let go of the negative emotion, that helped me let go of the negative emotions, or it helped me break free from overeating.

But with procrastination, that was a little bit different because what I realized with procrastination is I did need to take off those lies and put on the truth because in the very beginning, I could even make myself write for 15 minutes.

And all I did was truth journal to have the desire to write.

And then I was able to write for 15 minutes.

But since then, I've just grown so much in that area of procrastination.

But what I learned is I needed to learn time management systems that work for my personality.

So there's a lot of ideas out there, and I needed to find which one works for me and put some effort into that.

And that's what I really needed to learn to break free from the afternoon struggles.

I think I already mentioned that.

But the truth is, yes, I'm not by nature, maybe, the kind of person who follows through, but God can change me.

He changed others.

He changed me.

If you look in the Bible, he calls people who aren't naturally good at things, and then he equips them to do whatever job he has for them.

So procrastination, overcoming procrastination, it's not just so we can...

You know, do small things, it's.

He quits people to do what he calls them to do.

So overcoming procrastination, you know, is something we need to do to, to walk with God, to live in the fruit of the spirit and to do the things he wants us to do.

So if this is something that you struggle with, whether it's just like struggling to do your daily lists or whether you're you're back like I was back in the old days where really even just doing 15 minutes of writing was just a terrible chore or whether you're actually pretty competent but there's maybe one or two areas of your life you procrastinate if you'd like help with that go to barbraveling.com slash procrastinate and I'd love to see you join my class right now there's early bird pricing until September 22nd.

But if you listen to this podcast after then, the early bird pricing was just $10 off.

So you really didn't miss that much and love to see you do the class and work on overcoming procrastination, experience that feeling of freedom and letting go of feeling like your life is just always overwhelmed.

You can't finish doing your to-do list and experience the joy of feeling like, you know, life is in kind of control again.

Okay, I will talk to you guys next time.

It's been good visiting with you.