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7. LOVE YOURSELF
More than you love your drama.
CHAPTER 18:
PROCRASTINATION, PERFECTION, AND A
POLISH BEER GARDEN
In order to kick ass you must first lift up your foot.
—Jen Sincero; author, coach, self-quoter
One of my first jobs out of college was production coordinator for the Ethnic
Folk Arts Festival, which was put on by a little nonprofit group in New York
City. I heard about the position opening up from a friend, and decided I had to
have the job even though I’d never produced a thing in my life and find folk
art to be fairly yawnable. It looked like fun anyway—they worked out of a
funky loft in Tribeca, knew a lot about music, brought their dogs to work, and
the festival I’d be working on gathered musicians, dancers, and artists from
around the globe and brought them together in a Polish beer garden in Queens
for a big fat party. Which meant men in skirts and free sausage and beer.
So I put together a résumé that listed such achievements as: produced plays
in college (demanded my friends show up to watch my boyfriend act); started
several organizations in high school (started a sledding team that had no
competition and only one meeting where we spent most of our time figuring
out how to score some beer); worked at my college radio station (hung around
while my friend DJed). Then I got all dressed up in some business casuals that
I borrowed from my mom that didn’t fit and marched off to my interview. A
couple of hours later, me and my big mouth had a new job.
That night I laid awake in wide-eyed horror. My God, what have I done?
I’m a monster! These sweet, big-hearted, sandal-wearing people just handed
me a coffee can full of money that they spent an entire year collecting for this
festival, and I’m the lying fathead who’s gonna blow it.
I thought about turning myself in, but, unwilling to turn down a good party,
went for it instead and wound up working harder for them than I had ever
worked in my life. I decided that I’d rise to the occasion, that I would do
whatever it took to make this the best damn festival that that Polish beer
garden had ever seen, and I pulled if off with flying colors if I do say so
myself.
I got all twenty-seven of my unemployed friends to hand out fliers and take
tickets in exchange for the aforementioned free sausage and beer, herded the
unruly polka dancers into their places on time, got the latke vendors set up, and
saw to it that the bagpipe parade went off without a hitch.
If there’s something you really want, I’m not (necessarily) saying you
should lie to get it, but I am saying you’re probably lying to yourself if you’re
not going after it.
Because so often when we say we’re unqualified for
something, what we’re really saying is that we’re
too scared to try it, not that we can’t do it.
Most of the time it’s not lack of experience that’s holding us back, but rather
the lack of determination to do what we need to do to be successful.
We put so much energy into coming up with excuses why we can’t be, do,
or have the things we want, and designing the perfect distractions to keep us
from our dreams—imagine how far we’d get if we just shut up and used all
that energy to go for it instead?
Here’s the good news:
1. We all know way more than we give ourselves credit for knowing.
2. We are drawn to things we’re naturally good at (which counts more
than having a graduate degree in the subject, BTW).
3. There’s no better teacher than necessity.
4. Passion trumps fear.
In hindsight, I realized that I was more qualified for that job than I thought.
I’m a big sister, which means I’m naturally bossy. I love throwing parties, and
I can talk to anyone, even seventy-six-year-old Russian men who don’t speak
English and are freaking out because they can’t find their tights.
I went on to do many more things that I was “unqualified” for, but I also
wasted plenty of time pretending I wasn’t ready to do some other things I
really wanted to do. And, shockingly, the times I jumped in and went for it
were way more fun than the than the times I spent sitting around “getting
ready,” and doing nothing, instead.
Whether it’s an online dating profile you’re not ready to post or a trip you
want to take after you lose ten pounds or a business you want to start as soon
as you save enough money . . . just start. Now. Do whatever it takes. You could
get run over by the ice-cream man tomorrow.
One time I spent an entire month preparing my office to write a book. I got
just the right chair, put the desk in the perfect place by the window, organized
all the materials I needed and then reorganized them—three times—cleaned
the place until you could perform surgery on the floor, and then proceeded to
write the entire thing at my kitchen table.
Procrastination is one of the most popular forms of
self-sabotage because it’s really easy.
There are so many fun things you can do in order to procrastinate, and
there’s no lack of other people who are totally psyched to procrastinate with
you.
And while it can be super fun in the moment, eventually the naughtiness
buzz wears off and you’re sitting there a few years later, feeling like a loser,
wondering why the hell you still haven’t gotten your act together. And why
other people you know are getting big fat promotions at their jobs or taking
trips around the world or talking about the latest orphanage they’ve opened in
Cambodia on NPR.
If you’re serious about changing your life, you’ll
find a way. If you’re not, you’ll find an excuse.
In the interest of getting you where you want to go in this lifetime, here are
some tried-and-true tips to help you stop procrastinating:
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