Getting to the Other Side of Getting Started

I spent the evening gathering our tax information and documents. Whew! It was several hours of getting things straight and checking boxes. I know there is more to come, but at least I am getting started now. This is one of those tasks not many people enjoy, yet it is a part of living in this country. We pay our fair share and do it willingly. The challenge is trusting in the system that calculates our fair share.

If you are like me you usually procrastinate on the things and tasks you don’t like doing – cleaning, taxes, organizing the attic. Tasks that are a part of being an adult, just not ones we willingly look forward to doing every time they come around. So we put them off somehow hoping to avoid the pain or turmoil of getting it done. And how silly is that because procrastinating only makes it worse. We build it up in our minds until it becomes a task  we not only dread, now we have an emotional or physical reaction to even thinking about it at all. The wait somehow makes it worse than if we just got started somehow and slugged through until it was finished.

So what are you putting off because you hate doing it? Going to the dentist, cleaning out the garage, updating your resume to look for a new job? Maybe you have pushed that dreaded task so far away that you have forgotten why you don’t even want to get started. It’s that thing you know you should do, you simply no longer see the need, or you are so far behind that you don’t know where to start so you have given up all together.

Being on the other side of getting started has made me feel better. I know I am not done, but simply getting things in order has relieved some of the pent up stress my own procrastination has caused. Taking the first step of gathering the pieces will allow me to sleep better tonight. I feel a bit proud of myself for getting over my own fears and doing something, ANYTHING to move this dreaded task along.

Let me encourage you to stop putting ‘it’ off and do one thing to move ‘it’ forward. You will feel better and maybe the task won’t be as awful as you have imagined.