I've always liked to think of myself as a 'do it now' sort of person. But I've realized that actually I sometimes use 'busy-ness' as an excuse not to do the things I know I really should. Not the little things (like cleaning out my kitchen drawers), but the bigger things… like putting together proposals, writing my next book, or launching a courage coaching workshop -- stuff that will require more time, more commitment, and involve a bigger risk of failure.

So it got me thinking about this whole subject of procrastination. In a quick mini-survey, I realized that I am among good company. Perhaps even yours! In fact, I think it's something everyone does from time to time. Sometimes it's mundane stuff like filing taxes. But more often, it's the bigger stuff, like ending a relationship that's dragging us down, beginning the process of pursuing a more rewarding career path, getting back into shape, or pursuing a long-held dream.

Philosopher William James once wrote, "Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an unfulfilled goal." Of course, people come up with all sorts of creative reasons why now just isn't the right time. Too busy. Too broke. Too stressed. Economy too unstable. Too risky. Too inexperienced. Too old. Too young. Too disruptive. Sometimes those reasons are valid. But more often, they are simply excuses for avoiding the discomfort inherent in creating change in our lives, even change for the better, and confronting our fear of failing in the process.

While on the surface procrastination often looks like laziness, at the heart of it lies fear. Fear of failing, fear of success, fear of rejection or fear of our inability to have what we truly want. And so our fears drive us to hang on to the hope that if we procrastinate long enough, our misgivings about our ability to achieve what we want will magically evaporate -- replaced with a newfound sense of clarity about the steps we need to take, courage to take them, and confidence in our ability to overcome any obstacles we may meet along the way.

Unfortunately, the reverse is generally true. As the days roll steadily by, our fears grow larger, not smaller, until they eventually lead to a burial ground for unfulfilled dreams and untapped potential. All the time, the knowledge that we are whiling away our precious life waiting for the planets to perfectly align before we take our first step forward pulls more heavily on our hearts and minds. We are loath to admit it, but in putting off until tomorrow what we can do today (the word "procrastinate" comes from the Latin pro, meaning ‘forward,’ and cras, meaning ‘tomorrow’), we are selling out ourselves and all that we can be. And one way or another, it is costing us. Not only can it cost us in our finances, careers, relationships and physical health, but it costs us our peace of mind and the opportunity to experience a far deeper sense of personal fulfillment.

Life rewards action. Nothing great has ever been accomplished without it. Nothing ever will be. So if you are tired of procrastinating, make the decision to choose at least one of the seven strategies below (the more the better!) to help you step forward in action. Make tomorrow even more rewarding than today. Delay is increasingly expensive!

Seven Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination

Before you go further, first determine whether what you are procrastinating about is something that is actually aligned with your most important values.

If you decide it's actually not that important to you (i.e., the consequences of failing to do it are low), then do yourself a favor and take it off your list. If you decide that the activity is important to you, read on:

1. Write down your goal, and how you will feel when you achieve it. Visualize yourself having achieved it. Try to imagine the emotions you will feel once you have achieved it.

2. Set a deadline. A goal without a deadline can be put off indefinitely. 'Someday' is not a day of the week.

3. Write down how you will feel a year from now if you continue to procrastinate. Get really present to the cost of continued inaction. Remember, if nothing changes, nothing changes!

4. Break the goal into small pieces. If the whole seems too big to tackle, break it into manageable, bite-size pieces. Remember that you don't have to know every step of the journey; you just need to take the next few steps immediately ahead.

5. Set up a reward system. Make it commensurate with the task. An afternoon cleaning out your office or signing up for a fitness program may be worth dinner out, while writing a business plan or running a 5K might warrant an entire weekend away!

6. Create accountability. Enlist a support team, an accountability partner or just a plain old 'nag-buddy.' Ask them to check in on you every week to make sure you're staying on track (and to give you a hard time if you have veered off the rails).

7. Take the first step forward today. Yes, do something as soon as you can (before you come up with another excuse!) The longer you delay, the harder it will be to step into action. A Chinese proverb: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." So just take it… forward momentum is everything!

Now off to clean out those kitchen drawers!

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Margie Warrell; thought leader in human potential, master life coach, international speaker, media contributor and best-selling author of Find Your Courage. 

Take the Courage Quiz, watch Margie’s TV interviews (TODAY show, Fox, CNBC)  and sign up for her free LIVE BOLDLY! newsletter. Then order your personally autographed Amazon best-seller book Find Your Courage.

Trust lies at the core of all our relationships. And yet, if you ask 100 people exactly what trust is, you will likely get 100 different answers. The reason is that the concept of trust is not so easy to comprehend when it comes to relationships. So, can you build more trust? That depends.  

I'm a pretty trusting person. And by and large I've found that it's served me well to assume that most people are honest, well-meaning and trust-worthy. That said, I've also learned from some less than pleasant experiences that there are times when I need to hold back placing trust in someone or be more discerning in where I place my trust. Example: In my penny pinching university days,I foolishly trusted a roommate-novice hairdresser to put highlights in my hair. I wound up looking like a leopard!

Trust lies at the core of all our relationships. But, while we are often clear about who we trust (and don’t trust), we're often much less clear about why. 

When working with clients on trust, many of whom have leadership roles in organizations and are faced with issues of trust (or lack thereof) daily, understanding the three key elements of trust can be helpful. My guess is they will also be helpful to you -- first in enabling you to better distinguish specifically why you don't trust someone and, second, in helping you become more effective in building trust yourself (or repairing it when damaged). After all, your ability to develop trusting relationships is pivotal to not only your personal relationships but also to your effectiveness at work at every turn.

The Three Elements of Trust

The three core elements of trust are interrelated. Whenever a person is perceived to act in a way that undermines trust in any of these areas, trust overall is diminished.

Competence: The element of competence is what I call "domain specific" in that it depends on what area of expertise or skill you are assessing someone to be trustworthy in. For instance, you might trust me to cook you a roast dinner or to coach you to achieve a goal, but you wouldn't trust me to give you a root canal (for good reason!). Likewise, I trust my kids to put their bikes away after they've ridden them, but I would not trust them to cook me a roast dinner. Not yet anyway. More training is required! So the question to ask here is, "Does this person have the ability, knowledge, relevant experience and resources to perform this specific task in this domain of expertise?"

Reliability: Reliability is about whether you can count on someone to manage and honor their commitments. Or put another way, to do what they say they'll do when they say they’ll do it. So you may trust someone to be competent at a particular task and sincere in their intention to do it, but their track record of unreliability, whether it be tardiness or sloppy work, keeps you from trusting them completely. The question to ask, "Can I count on this person to keep their promises and get the task done properly and by the agreed upon time frame?"

Sincerity: Sincerity relates directly to our assessment of someone's character. Of all three elements of trust, sincerity is the hardest to build, and the most pivotal in deciding whether to place our trust in someone.  It's what we want, need and expect from those who are in positions of formal leadership – from our President to our company CEO.  Of course, you may not necessarily care much whether the person cutting your hair is cheating on their tax return (or their spouse), but you may well care a lot if it was your local senator or boss.

Sincerity is also the most difficult element to repair when damaged, which explains why infidelity has a far greater impact on a marriage than a spouse who simply forgets an anniversary. Or,why discovering that a colleague has derided you behind your back does more damage than if they were just habitually running late for meetings.  So the question to ask here is, "Is this person genuine and someone who means what they say with a strong sense of integrity?"

So, armed with new knowledge (and new competence!) in trust, how might you apply it in your relationships at work, with family members or friends? Of course, that's not to say that you aren't trustworthy right now, but take time to look at where you may have either inadvertently allowed trust to flat line through neglect or damaged it by your behavior. How might you build or restore trust if you were to:

*  Develop skills to grow your competence in a particular area?

*  Improve your punctuality?

*  Share how you genuinely feel about an issue?

*  Manage your commitments more effectively so that you get things done properly and on time?

*  Apologize for offending someone (even unintentionally)?

*  Attempt to make amends for a wrongdoing that damaged trust? 

Distrust is Very Expensive

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "distrust is very expensive." The fact is, without trust, influence wanes, intimacy erodes, relationships crumble, careers derail, organizations fail to prosper (and ultimately, also crumble) and, in short, nothing much works. Wherever trust is missing, opportunity is lost -- opportunity to prosper, to exert influence, to deepen intimacy, to enjoy harmony, to collaborate, to foster understanding, to succeed at the very things that matter to you.

You cannot force others to become more trustworthy, but you can become more worthy of trust yourself. By raising your own bar, through your words and actions, and being the change you want to see in others, you can ultimately create a more trusting environment. So no matter how full the trust accounts are in your relationships, it's never too late to work at building trust, and you can never work too hard at maintaining it.

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

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Margie Warrell; thought leader in human potential, master life coach, international speaker, media contributor and best-selling author of Find Your Courage.

Take the Courage Quiz, watch Margie’s TV interviews (TODAY show, Fox, CNBC)  and sign up for her free LIVE BOLDLY! newsletter. Then order your personally autographed Amazon best-seller book Find Your Courage.

photo: skorks.com

SUMMARY:  Accomplished historical figures were not born with some super human like resilience that shielded them from disappointment, self-doubt or misgivings. Each had to wage their own inner battles with fear as they worked to overcome the obstacles that lined their path to success. What they ultimately learned was that your setbacks & cynics don't define you. Your responses do.

In December, 1903, a New York Times editorial questioned the intelligence of the Wright Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air, that could fly. "It simply defies the laws of physics," they wrote. One week later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight

If you study history, you will find that all stories of great success are also stories of great triumph over adversity. But often we overlook the setbacks and only see the end success. We think the person got lucky: "He or she must have been at the right place at the right time." Or maybe they were just really smart. Or talented. Or well connected. But that’s all bunk. While it may have been a little bit of each, what ultimately led to their success was their refusal to allow their setbacks and failures to define them.

Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. You could say he had a slower start than many of his childhood peers. But I'm sure you'd agree that he eventually caught up pretty well. Today the name Albert Einstein is synonymous with genius.

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced countless rejections from newspaper editors. He "lacked natural talent" they said. One day a minister from a local church took pity on the young cartoonist and hired him to do some cartoons in a small mouse infested shed behind the church. After seeing a small mouse, he became inspired to draw it. And so, Mickey Mouse was born.

One day a partially deaf four-year-old-kid came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn. We cannot have him at our school." His mother decided to teach him herself. Partially deaf and with only three months of formal schooling, Tommy grew up to be Thomas. Thomas Edison went on to fail approximately 10,000 times before he succeeded in inventing the light bulb.

And even Oprah Winfrey, had her fair share of struggles, sorrows and setbacks. Oprah did not become one of the most influential women in the world by allowing others to define her, giving into her self-doubts, or throwing in the towel when the going got tough. After enduring a rough and often abusive childhood in rural Mississippi, Oprah was fired from one of her first jobs as a television reporter, being told she was "unfit for TV." She now has her O.W.N. network!

Of course, you may feel like you have little in common with Oprah or Disney, Edison or Einstein. But that isn't true. You do. They were not born with some super human like resilience that shielded them from disappointment, self-doubt or misgivings. They each had to wage their own inner battles with fear of failure as they worked hard to overcome the external obstacles that lined their path to success. What distinguishes these people is that they did not become a victim to their failures. When they fell down, they got back up. And when people told them it couldn't be done, they refused to buy into their lack of belief.

There are things that you and only you can do, things that will never be done if you do not do them. But any worthwhile accomplishment is going to call on you to trust in yourself more fully, to risk making mistakes and forgive yourself when you do, to press on when the going gets tough, and to refuse to allow your setbacks to define you (know the cynics in your life).

How you choose to interpret your failures will either move you forward in life or hold you back. Every failure can be turned into a stepping stone to success. Every mistake is a lesson in what not to do. Every setback is an opportunity to dig deeper into yourself, to access resources you didn't know you have and to acquire wisdom you could gain no other way.

Every story of success is also a story of triumph over adversity. What story are you writing?

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Margie Warrell is an accredited executive life coach, speaker, syndicated columnist and best selling author of Find Your Courage. She is recognized internationally as an expert on living and leading with courage.

Summary:  Fear can trap us in lives of quiet desperation that leaves us thirsty for purpose, hungry for depth and disconnected from the unique potential that lies within us. New studies in brain plasticity have proven that by doing what scares us, we can build our 'courage muscles' and take our careers, relationships and lives to new levels of success. It ultimately comes down to making a courageous choice.

Two weeks ago I said yes to a morning at trapeze school. Naively as it turned out. It was absolutely terrifying! But I jumped anyway. Five times in all. And while I wouldn't race back to do it again, I'm glad I did it. Because hanging upside down 23 feet above the net (though if felt like 1,000 feet!), I knew I was well and truly alive. To me that is what life is ultimately all about - being willing to step (in this case jump) outside our comfort zone, push the envelope of possibility and live in such a way that we know we are "well and truly alive". 

Many people I meet don't feel "well and truly alive" in at least one area of their life. We human beings are really much more 'human becomings' than anything else... always in the process of becoming all that we really want to be - whether in our relationships, our career or business, to stay fit and eat well, to gain mastery of a skill, or to be as productive, generous or influential as we would like.

Earlier this week I asked my Facebook Courage Community what they believ is the number one factor holding people back in work, love or life.  Most replies reflected what we generally know to be true, but are often loathe to admit:  that the biggest obstacle to our success and happiness is ourselves. And while it may present itself in different ways - laziness, procrastination, cynicism, arrogance, recklessness, apathy, despair - at its core is the primal emotion of fear. Fear of failure or looking foolish; fear of rejection and disapproval; fear of not measuring up, of being inadequate, alone or unloved.

While our fears can serve a positive role, they can also trap us in jobs, relationships, habits, and lives of quiet desperation that leave us thirsty for purpose, hungry for depth and disconnected from the unique potential that lies within us. A billion dollar industry of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs speaks for itself. Indeed, countless people live their entire lives trapped in false beliefs, shrouded under a cloud of fear so pervasive that they are not even aware they are trapped... in their own life. Fear has become the new normal.

As someone who is intimately acquainted with the life-sucking force that fear can wield, I am convinced that creating success, however you choose to define it, requires confronting our fears straight on. Fears that keep us from taking chances and making changes; from challenging the status quo; speaking up about that which weighs us down and daring to stand out from the crowd. To quote Amelia Earhart: "Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace."

Neuro-scientific research into "brain plasticity" has now proven that when you choose to think new thoughts, repeatedly, and take new actions, repeatedly, those thoughts and actions gradually build new neural pathways in your brain that over time become your default.  And so, with persistence, you can gradually build up your "courage muscles" and with it, your self-confidence to do things you would previously have cowered from: your ability to lead, to influence, and to produce amazing results in your life.  Over time the action that you would once have cowered from no longer terrifies you and the path of courage becomes easier to take -- even if not "easy". That said, I am not going to jump off the trapeze again. Never ever ever!

With the exception of trapeze school, the best things I've ever done in my life have also been the scariest. Time and time again I’ve learned that often the thing we must do more than anything else is that thing that scares us more than anything else. (Oh, one other exception: marrying my husband Andrew – it was one of the best things I’ve done but not scary at all!

Of course the fears you face are yours alone, as is what inspires you and how you define success. This isn't about comparisons. It's simply about being willing to challenge the stories, excuses and beliefs that may be getting in the way of your 'success' in whatever area of your life you feel is lacking. And it's about having the courage to step right through the middle of your fears and into whatever actions are calling you forward. 

Only by daring to dive deeply into life can we soar to the heights of success we aspire to. As Helen Keller said, "Life is a daring adventure or nothing." Where could you embrace a spirit of adventure that calls you to step out of your comfort zone and step into your life more fully?

Fortune favors the bold! Where is your life waiting on you to bolden up?

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks! 

Margie Warrell is an accredited executive life coach, speaker, syndicated columnist and best selling author of Find Your Courage. She is recognized internationally as an expert on living and leading with courage.