Uurghh, I’ve found myself falling into an old old pattern this week; assuming a future version of myself will prefer to do a task rather than the present version of me!
“I’ll have more time for it tomorrow”, or “I don’t feel like it just now, but I’m sure I will tonight”.
The when ‘tonight’ or ‘tomorrow’ comes, the present version of Rachel is fuming; “why didn’t I just get it done yesterday, I had much more time then. Now I can’t do x,y and z either!!”
Yesterday’s procrastination has a domino effect, and what’s worse, the original task is looking more and more unpleasant.
So, I think I’ll try something new.
I’m going to use some of my strengths – helpfulness, thoughtfulness and compassion.
When facing something I don’t want to do, but don’t want the consequences of not doing it even more, instead of just putting it off by passing the buck to ‘future Rachel’, I’m going to think empathetically and compassionately about poor Future Rachel and all she has to deal with, and think about what I could do to help her.
I immediately feel a change, because I see how doing that task now will free up future Rachel; how much I’m enabling her by getting this small point of pain out of the way.
Short term, small discomfort, rather than longer term pain for her.
By thinking about Future Rachel as someone else, I want to help her, because I’m so much better at helping other people than helping myself!!
I’ll let you know how I get on, but I’d better cut this blog post short now, because there’s something I really want to get done in order to help out a friend…!
