“I know I need to return this phone call (or something similar), but, before I do...I’ll cruise FaceBook first.”
“I’m feeling a little down today. Let me check my Instagram feed to see how many people liked my recent post.”
“I need to start this project but let me check my Twitter account first.”
“I got so much to do today. I’ll just check Amazon’s daily deals to see if I need anything.”
The internet and social media, in particular, are attractive hangouts. There is no doubt about it. Developers and marketers spend a good deal of time to make sure that apps, blogs, and websites are “sticky”, meaning they attract and keep our attention. It’s the “economics of attention”. The more time spent on their site, the more likely you are to get what they want out of you.
It seems harmless enough. After all, no one is forcing you to buy.
But that’s not all that’s going on…
The attractive stream of content works on your brain like the most addictive drugs. It keeps you happy while you’re on them and creates a desire for more when you are away.
This is especially important if you are procrastinating or trying to avoid some tasks entirely and using the internet/social media as your refuge. It’s all about pleasure-seeking and pain avoidance behaviors that are a natural part of being human. And it’s the biggest timewaster in the modern world.
When you want to do something, but end up doing something else, there is an emotion in play. It’s procrastination, avoidance, delay, and hesitation. You can feel vaguely like your dodging your project or it can be a completely unconscious side-step.
Whatever you call it and no matter the details, we’ve all done it a million times, in a million different scenarios.
“Yesterday I needed to answer emails that have been sitting in my inbox. But when I opened my laptop, my Facebook newsfeed came up first and I scrolled through memes for a while. I lost track of time meme-ing. Then I had to go to a meeting. I never did get emails answered. ☹ I really did want to answer them yesterday and get them off my plate. I made a point of having time to get on the laptop and do it. Then I got derailed! It’s so frustrating!”
The tricky part is that it doesn’t feel like an emotion is in play. We just wanted to do one thing and end up doing something else. No emotion is felt…at least not in the normal sense.
The buried emotion driving procrastination is there, stuck in the body. But the subconscious hasn’t detected a sufficient “environmental stimuli” to trigger the buried emotion to the surface where we can feel it. The emotion is misrepresented from a feeling to a behavior. The desired behavior/task is short-circuited to some new activity and we are otherwise seamlessly engaged with no real notion of how we got there.
How do we work on an emotion that we don’t feel?
The emotion happens in the unconscious moment before the “response behavior”—the misdirected action, like meme-ing on Facebook. The emotion is real. It just has to be accessed properly.
Emotional Resolution has a method to isolate this “unknown emotion” and eliminate it
During their Emotional Resolution session, the procrastinator identifies the moments that led up to the shift to the response behavior (ex: surfing the internet). The Emotional Resolution practitioner guides the session to the hidden emotion and the emotion will be released.
The short-circuit, the connection between the elusive emotion and the subconscious mind’s tricks of misdirection, is broken and the procrastination is snuffed out.
YEAH! Those emails will get answered!
Generally speaking, eliminating procrastination using Emotional Resolution needs the guidance of an Emotional Resolution professional. The process requires a specific technique to trick the subconscious into accessing the hidden emotion. It’s difficult to achieve using Self Emotional Resolution, even if you are a practiced Self-EmRes user.
So if you have things to do, that you genuinely want to do, but can’t seem to get them done, then find an Emotional Resolution professional that can help you get rid of procrastination’s hidden emotion.
Sue Siebens