A few moments ago, an old Heinz ketchup commercial was playing in my mind.

If you don’t remember it, or weren’t around back then, it went as follows: “Anticipation… an-ti-ci-pay-ya-tion is making me wait.”

As I heard these words in my mind, a new word, procrastination, entered the picture.

I found myself nodding in agreement, saying to myself, “Procrastination… pro-cras-ti-na-aa-tion is making me wait.”

Wait for what?

That is the six-trillion dollar question.

Why on earth do we procrastinate, especially on the things that we know we can get done lickety-split? Why do we avoid doing what we know we could begin doing immediately, and be done with, for the rest of the day?

It’s a bad habit. And yet, this bad habit is nothing more than a mental picture we play in our minds. We see ourselves delaying doing something, instead of focusing on getting what we want done.

One of the keys to eliminating procrastination is taking a minute or two to “clear the mechanism.”

You close your eyes and picture a calculator in your hands with a bunch of digits running across the screen. Then you press “C”  to clear the screen. As soon as you do this, the residue from previous activities evaporates, and you feel a sense of calmness and clarity.

Once the calculator screen is clear, you take another minute to picture yourself doing what you’ve been putting off.

You see yourself fully engaged in the activity you’ve been avoiding. You see yourself being finished, then you get out of your own way and “get ‘er done.”

Give this exercise from Psycho-Cybernetics a whirl today and see where it leads you. I’m betting be amazed.

Matt Furey

Psycho-Cybernetics.com

Note: In the Theatre of the Mind 30-Day Challenge, I walk you through exercises such as the one shown above. I answer all your questions and give you the details that help you “get your goals” and create the life you want. The next 30-Day Challenge is quickly approaching. If you want to enroll in the next one, don’t put it off. Get ‘er done. Click here for more. 

Having a BIG GOAL is similar to being in a tournament with 32 competitors, all of whom want to win – with some desiring it more than others.

You begin with the opening round, which you must win to play another day.

If you win the first round, 16 competitors are left.

If you win the next round, eight people remain. Win again and you’re down to four.

With one more victory, two people are still standing, and one of them will take home the championship.

The competitor who is looking ahead to the championship before the first round, is often upset by someone not as highly skilled.

The one whose primary focus is on the current round is poised and relaxed, able to perform at his or her best. The competitor who looks too far ahead, figuring the current round is a foregone conclusion, often meets with disaster.

And so it goes with having a BIG GOAL of any kind.

If you chunk your goal into bite-sized daily accomplishments, you play the game of life with passion, purpose and power. You allow momentum to build as you focus on the process of getting something done.

Over time, by focusing on the process, the result you seek almost seems to take place of its own accord.

Ultimately, you were the one with the vision, the one who created the reality you’re now living in.

But you did it by looking ahead temporarily, then putting your focus back on the here and now, the step you must take before you get another one.

Champions are masters of taking care of the little stuff that adds up to the big prize. Champions don’t overlook opponents, regardless of their record. They take care of who and what is in front of them today.

Too much focus on the BIG GOAL leads to disappointment and frustration.

You can never focus too much on taking care of the opponent you are facing today.

That tiny pebble in your shoe is only a nuisance when you don’t take the time to remove it.

Daily goals may appear to be a nuisance in comparison to a BIG GOAL, but if you don’t take care of them, they will bite you.

Matt Furey

Author of One Breath at a Time

Today’s Question:

Hello Matt,

Thank you for your welcoming email. I am looking forward to reading your “almost” daily emails.

One thing I would like to find out, and that you could address in the email, is what are the best psycho-cybernetics exercises to increase memory retention, and what can of expectations one could have about developing a better memory.

As I am reading the Psycho-Cybernetics, I have great expectation that I will see positive results as Maxwell Maltz was the genesis of it all.

Sincerely,

Jerome R.

Jerome,
Great question. There are no specific memory techniques that are directly spelled out in Psycho-Cybernetics, but they are in there, written between the lines… once you realize the power of mental imagery.

I say this because your memory and imagination are linked, and this is one of many reasons Dr. Maltz wrote, “If you can remember, worry or tie your shoe…”

Worry is the negative use of the imagination. When you worry you picture something in the future that is negative and this mental picture is accompanied by feelings of anxiety, dread, hopelessness and so on.

As for tying your shoe, if you can remember doing so, you are also picturing it.

What’s this have to do with memory?

Well, when you want to remember something, if you form a mental picture of it, you retain the information far, far faster than if you attempt to remember by rote.

For example, to remember someone’s name, you don’t need to repeat it several times in a conversation, as is commonly taught. If someone tells you his name is Jeff, you make an association with a word that rhymes with it, such as chef, then you imagine that Jeff is wearing a large white chef’s hat. If someone’s name is Sherry, you can imagine that she is eating a bowl of cherries.

As for numbers, you turn all of the numbers you want to remember into famous people and you build an imaginary story around them.

The first ten digits of pi, as an example, are 3.14 15 92 65 35.

Each of these numbers corresponds to a letter in the alphabet, i.e. A=1, B=2, C=3.

So 14 is Adam Dunn, 15 is Albert Einstein, 92 is a bit trickier as you turn 9’s into the letter N (it contains two of them), so Napoleon Bonaparte will do; 65 is Frederic Engels and 35 is Chris Evert.

Now you form a story of Adam Dunn teaching Albert Einstein how to hit a home run; followed by Einstein stabbing Napoleon, followed by Napoleon falling onto Frederic Engels then Chris Evert hitting a tennis ball off his head.

The key, once again is using your imagination… albeit in an exaggerated manner and represents one of the unwritten reasons that getting good at visualization is a great idea. Not only will you remember your goals you’ve set better, but everything else that is important to you as well.

Thank you for the question.

Matt Furey

P.S. I cover this sort of thing and much, much more in my Theatre of the Mind Masters Coaching program.