Your root fear: what are you avoiding?

One of the questions I encourage others to ask of themselves most often as a Life Coach is “WHY am I doing what I am doing?“. With procrastination, asking this question allows us to uncover the root fear.

We go through life, often as breakneck speed, moving from one task to another, switching roles and changing hats as we go. Sometimes we can feel like an air traffic controller landing planes – land this one, then get the next one down and all the while there is a sky-high column of planes circling above us. It never ends. We collapse at the end of the day in a heap, sleep, and then do it all again the next day. 

Familiar at all?

Crucially, how often within that process do we stop, step away from ourselves to actually notice what we are doing – and more fundamentally – WHY.

In our musings on procrastination, which began last week, this becomes the key question:

WHY am I procrastinating?

To put this another way, the question we are considering this week, [originally posed by David Lawson] is 

When I procrastinate, I am avoiding or afraid of……”

To do ourselves justice in combating procrastination, we need to commit a little time and honest self analysis to answer this question. 

Imagine you are avoiding writing an essay for your degree (a familiar scenario to many!). This is the situation:

I’m procrastinating today because I am avoiding writing this degree essay.”

 So much, so obvious. But apply a simple technique called Root Cause Analysis to this and it allows us to get to a potential underlying fear. It is only when we uncover this that we can uproot that fear and deal with procrastination effectively. 

For our made-up-but-quite-close-to-the-bone example, it might go something like this:

Why am I avoiding writing the essay?

…..Because I don’t know where to start.

Why am I afraid of this?

…..Because the topic is too big/complex/unfamiliar.

Why am I afraid of that?

…..Because I think I don’t have the same background knowledge as the rest of the class.

Why does that scare me?

…..Because I feel inferior and incapable compared to them.

Why?

…..Because I am a failure.

In working through the simple process of root cause analysis with clients, what starts off as a surface level issue of avoidance is exposed as a much deeper root fear, often in the shape of a negative belief. 

When we start to notice our procrastination habits or patterns, we can then use that as a trigger to identify what is REALLY going on under the surface.

Now sometimes we procrastinate because we are avoiding a task that is likely to be boring, unpleasant or mundane. In those circumstances we need to take a different approach and look at what we gain by completing the task. This is the topic of future blog musings. 

But when we uncover a deep seated fear at the root of our procrastination….

…fear we won’t succeed/fear of failure

   …fear of not being good enough

      …fear of being in financial problems

         …fear of being exposed as a fraud

             …fear it won’t be perfect

….we are then in a position to directly address that fear. 

Pain is often something we uncover as we keep asking why. But pain is rarely the root. The pain is protective of something we fear being exposed – insecurity, lack of confidence, lack of self belief.

This is tricky territory. But there is a process we can use when we identify a deep seated negative belief that is at the root of our procrastination. Sign up here for you FREE email series to enable you to break free of the power of negative mindsets.

So this week, when you find yourself procrastinating, ask a deeper and braver question:

What am I avoiding or afraid of here?

Keep asking why, until you get to the root fear. Note down what you observe, and look for patterns. Then think through what the next steps would be in addressing that. 

As always, get in touch for your FREE taster session to talk it through and see what we can uncover together.