Podcast Episode 40 - The Energetics of Procrastination

I want to be discussing why you aren't doing the things you say you want to be doing, and why you're not doing the things you say you want to be doing or think you want to be doing. We're talking about procrastination and energy and motivation. Procrastination is not about laziness. I think that lazy is a conditioned identity and name that our capitalistic society has given us, because in capitalism we feel like we have to be working all the time, and if you're not doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, you're failing and you're falling behind. It's a collective belief that being lazy is bad and that resting is bad, and that if you're not doing and working and hustling and being productive, that somehow your time is not being spent valuably. That is a lie. That's a huge, huge, huge, huge lie. 

I actually want to look at motor centers and motivation. I have all four motor centers defined in my human design body graph. The motor centers are the root center, the sacral center, the emotional center, and the ego center. All four of these centers provide a different form of energetic motivation. The root center works in this on/off motion. It is stressed; it is not stressed. I feel like since the root center is associated with adrenaline and the adrenals, it's also associated with this fight or flight response, with the autonomic nervous system, which contains the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system.

With the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, we have this rest and digest or fight or flight stage. I associate this with the root center. The root center has this on/off. It works in pulses of go or don't go. It's very much this switch between rest and digest and fight or flight. 

If you have a defined root center, there's going to be a pretty consistent pattern of pressure. With my defined root center, there are things that I want done because I want it done now. I am feeling pressure to get this done soon. I am feeling that pressure.

With the undefined root center, you feel the pressure from the world outside of you. The pressure is, "Ooh, I have to get this done for other people. My professor set the deadline. Or, I told a client I would get this done by a certain time.” There's a pressure that's external versus the internal pressure of "I want to finish a full bottle of water before I have a cup of coffee in the morning, and I want to have a certain number of episodes recorded before a certain time." I set my deadlines and it works well for me because I have that internal sense of pressure around this needs to get done, this doesn't need to get done.

As I am getting this done a day later than I'm supposed to have it available, my editor is going to recognize that because I am fixed in my root center pressure and my root center evolution, even though I set the deadline, that external form of pressure isn't going to motivate me. If my energy or my body is not on, it's not on, and I can't turn it on. It's fixed. It has a very specific way of creating that root center pressure. 

When you have an undefined root center, that pressure will be from the outside world. When you have a defined root center, you create that internal pressure to get things done at a specific time, in a specific way.

Then we have the emotional center. The emotional center deals with emotions. Emotions are energy in motion. We take action based on how we feel. The job and the purpose of emotions is to initiate and charge and give us a specific action to take. It's motivating us, and it's giving us energy to take action. 

If you have a defined emotional center, you can call on certain emotions and pull them through at any moment. If I wanted to cry right now, I could think of a sad memory, and I could make myself cry. If I wanted to create the sensation of overwhelming joy and gratitude, I can create that emotion inside of my body by just creating it. I can just think about it, and then tap into that memory or experience, and then my emotions come out. There's emotional motivation. It's like, "I want this for a very specific reason. I want it because it makes me feel a certain way."

The undefined emotional center can look for emotions outside of itself. You might want money because it's going to make you feel a certain way. You might want to feel all of the excitement that you think that you will feel when you get the money, or you might be running away from pain. You might be running away from a bad emotion or running away from confrontation. 

I feel like the undefined emotional center, the emotions are about other people. You want other people to feel good. You want other people to feel good all of the time, and if they're not feeling good all of the time, you don't feel good. There's motivation in the undefined emotional center to make other people feel better, and then there's motivation in the defined emotional center to feel better individually. Of course, that's a very generalized description. 

Then moving on to the ego center, and here we have desire, willpower, control, and heart energy. When I want something to get done, I can get it done. There are certain tasks that I am just sick of looking at on my task list, so I'm like, "Okay, I want this done. I am going to utilize my willpower to control the situation and get it done right now. I want it done. I want it done. I want it done. I want it done." There's this desire to get it done, and there's this willpower that is expressed through that center. With the undefined ego center, it can be other people want this, other people want this from me, and so there can be this like I am delivering to other people essence and that can be the form of motivation. 

Moving to the sacral center, the sacral center is this battery of life force energy. It's quite literally, "Oh yeah, I have energy to put towards that. I do not have energy to put towards that." If you have a defined sacral center, there's this pleasure motivation. You are motivated by enjoying the experience. This doesn't necessarily mean that everything you do that's in alignment with a defined sacral is going to be fun. It does mean that it will be satisfying. 

Hard things are satisfying. Generators and mani gens like doing hard things. I like doing hard things. I like that sense of I challenged myself, and I was frustrated, and it was hard, but I worked through it and I accomplished it. That makes me feel powerful. We have that energy there, and then with the undefined sacral center, sometimes you have energy to do it, sometimes you don't, sometimes you want to kind of plug into other people, so that you can get that creative energy and the energy to pour life force energy into something and that pleasure in doing the hard thing. 

All of those are different sources of motivation. When you say that something is important, your body is going to give you extra motivation to get it done. As somebody who has four motor centers defined, I have the energy to do the things. Identity-wise, when I'm looking at wanting to get something done, but I'm not doing it, it's never a lack of energy or lack of motivation. 

I do not procrastinate things because I am unmotivated to get things done. It's not that I am unmotivated. Oftentimes, if I have something I want to do, if there's something I'm procrastinating, I want it done. I can't stop thinking about it. I want it off of my list. I feel pressured to get it done. I feel guilt for not getting it done. At that moment, I have an overwhelming amount of emotion and motivation to get the things done. 

Let's think about procrastinating something. Let's go super, super simple and talk about the dishes. Raise your hand if you've ever procrastinated the dishes. I know I have. If you procrastinate doing the dishes, and you're sitting there like you're on the couch and think, "Oh, I gotta do the dishes." There's motivation to do the dishes. There's this sensation of, "I should do the dishes." There's pressure. There's a pressure of timeline energy too, of, "Okay, well I should be doing it now. I shouldn't be resting. I should be in an on state. I should feel the pressure to get it done now." We're motivating ourselves with root center pressure of it should be faster, it should be soon, I should get it done now. 

We feel this pressure of needing to get it done now, so you're trying to set a deadline on it. Your body is trying to use time to pressure you to get it done. On top of that, there's probably guilt for not having it done already, and guilt is a subset of anger. Anger is wishing things went differently. “I don't like how things went; I wish it went differently.” 

You have this anger at yourself for not doing the thing yet. You're angry at yourself for not having done the dishes yet, and so that's another form of motivation that your body is giving you. Your body goes into feeling, "The dishes are obviously really important. You keep thinking about them, in your conscious mind. So, I'm going to create sensations that are then going to support you and give you motivation to get it done." 

It's going to give you some pressure. You get this pressure from your body like, "Ooh, I really should get this done." Then, you have that emotional response where you have that guilt for not getting it done, and oftentimes that guilt is associated with you have a tab open in your brain of that one time where you didn't get the dishes done when you were a child and your mom asked you to, and then she got mad at you. There's this part of you, there's this tab open, that says if you do not do the dishes, someone is going to get mad at you. That's an emotional attachment and an emotional response. 

Then you can have that ego center of: I want it. “I want it. I want it, but why can't I do it? I want it. I want it. I want it. Why can't I force myself to do it? Why can't I control myself to do it? Why can't I force, force, force?” That's just compounding the anger. On top of that, you have sacral energy. The sacral energy is trying to give energy and can be exciting or frustrating. The dishes may not be exciting, and if the dishes aren't exciting, you’ll go into thinking that you wish they were exciting, and you wish you had the motivation to get them done.

Wherever the centers are coming from, wherever the information is coming from, it doesn't really matter. We don't have to get too technical in the human design stuff here, but really the point that I'm making is when you are procrastinating, it's almost never you being lazy. It's actually that it is something so important to you that your body has provided you with so much motivation that you are stuck processing all the fallout from that motivation because it's overwhelming your system. 

When we have defined energy, we have to process it. Root center pressure, I have to move through that root center pressure cycle. I process it in a fixed way. I have to do something with that energy, or it's just going to build up inside my body. It's going to make me uncomfortable, and it's going to make everyone with an undefined root center in my life also uncomfortable. 

So, I take personal responsibility for my defined energy. You maintain the energy there. You do the things there. If I'm feeling allowed to something, it means that I've got to process that before I can do anything. If I am feeling shame and guilt and anger, those are emotions, and those are things that are going to cloud my judgment. Those are things that are going to get in the way of me being able to do the dishes.

When we have this resentment and anger of feeling like you should already have done something, those are intense emotions. Emotions are more intense if they're negative, if they're related to survival, especially if we're putting ourselves into a fight or flight state. If it's related to survival, it's serious. If it's related to survival, it's going to give us a high amount of adrenaline. It's going to keep us alive. But not doing the dishes is not a life or death situation, and you do not need life or death emotions over the dishes.

Because our bodies are primitive, our bodies are animal, they are designed for survival. They're designed to keep us alive in this human form. They're doing a great job of that. Congratulations on surviving literally everything that life has thrown your way up until this point; 100% survival rate. You're crushing it! Your body is doing amazing at surviving this experience, and it doesn't need life or death emotions on top of that. It doesn't need additional motivation on top of that. 

If you are consciously thinking the dishes are important to you, you want to get them done, I like to come back to the space of if something is important enough to elicit a major emotional response, if I'm procrastinating the dishes, and that is making me feel guilt, anger, stressed, I'm making myself do so much more work. I am mentally doing the dishes. I'm thinking about, "This is what time it is. I have dishes from last night that are sitting in the sink. I need to do the dishes. There's probably dishes in the dishwasher, so I'm going to have to unload the dishwasher." I'm literally mentally going through all the tasks, and then emotionally, because mentally, I'm not getting myself to take the action. 

This is why the mind is not the authority. This is why we don't make mental decisions, because mentally you're just going to go through the actions and then not do anything. Your mind can't make your body do things. Your body takes action. With that conscious mind, it's going to come in, and it's going to say something like, "You've got to do the dishes. It's really important." You're paying attention to it. The dishes are important to you, but then your body's giving you all of this motivation to get it done, and then you're overwhelmed. You've processed it mentally. You've processed it emotionally, and your body won't be able to take action until it's done the things, and it has gotten itself out of this freeze response that you've caused by being really attached and by taking the dishes super seriously. 

When we take dishes super seriously, we put pressure on it, we add emotion to it, and we make it so that it's not just 'I am doing the dishes,' it is 'I am doing the dishes, but the dishes are something that I struggle with.’ It's literally the story and this identity where you’ll think that you are bad at doing dishes because one time when you were a child you got yelled at for not doing the dishes on time, and then every single time since then you shame spiral so much where you have a hard time motivating yourself to do the dishes. At this point, as an adult, 20 years later, I have created this identity and let this pattern go on for so long because of the feeling and sensation, and because I keep thinking that it's important. 

But because you're trying to make yourself do it, who is you in that situation? If I am trying to make myself do something, who is I? Who is I, and who is myself? Why are we acting like there are two different versions of us? Why are we acting like there are two different beings inside of us? We are cohesive. 

The reason why it's hard to mentally motivate ourselves to start taking action and do the dishes is because that's not how it works. Our conscious mind is attention. Our conscious mind is focus. Our conscious mind is what you're paying attention to. It's not necessarily action. Your body takes action. Your body knows how to do dishes. The last time you did dishes, did you have to mentally walk through, okay, I have to put the soap here, and I have to scrub here, and I have to do this? No, you just pick up the dishes and you start doing it, while your mind wanders somewhere else. 

If it's a physical action, it's going to be difficult to mentally make yourself make that decision to do it, and you're separating yourself. If you're in this, 'I have to make myself do it,' you're in your head, and if you're in your head, your body's not going to be able to take action because you've separated yourself. Your body's processing all the feelings. Your body's processing the guilt. It's taking the chemicals from the neurotransmitters that you've put out, and it's taking that and processing. It's like, "Ooh, this is toxic. This is a lot. We've got a lot of movement here." It's working. It's responding to what you gave it, but you have to trust your body, not just your mind. 

This is why things like the five second rule works really well, or Atomic Habits, where we want to get into a space where you’re almost in an active meditation. “I kind of want to think about something. What can I do while I'm thinking about it? Oh, there are dishes that need to be done. Let me just do the dishes, physically, while I'm mentally contemplating and thinking about this thing that I want to contemplate.”

That's how I tidy. I might have a podcast I want to listen to. Or, mentally, I might be craving something. So I ask myself, what is something that you are excited about? Then, how can you do the thing that needs to get done while giving yourself the action?

So, if you're not doing the things that you want to be doing, it's probably not a lack of motivation, because you're saying you want to do it. This is where you get to discern if it's actually something for you, and if it is for you, how can we move through the resistance that you have and the conditioning that you have? First, is this for me, or is this not for me? 

If it comes to business, what was the original motivation for doing that thing? What was the original motivation for making that course, taking that action, structuring that the original way? What was the original source of inspiration? Where did you find that? Where did that concept come into your world? Because chances are, if it's genuinely not for you, it will be a should. It will feel like I should do it this way because I was told that this is how I'm going to be successful. I was told that I have to do it this way, or that this is the best way to do it, or I have to do this because this is what works.

It's the story of I am doing it differently, but the way that is successful is the way that everyone else is doing, and I have to conform and get with a program and do it the same way as everyone else, because that's the only way that I'll be successful. That? That's a should. Or if it's like, "Oh, that one coach who makes billions of dollars a day told me that this is what I have to be doing and this is how she does that, and since I want the money that she is making, I'm going to do the same thing that she does because I think that it's going to get me the money," that's an agenda. You don't actually want to do the thing. You want the thing on the other side, and you think that this is the only way that you're going to get that. 

Chances are that if you're procrastinating, let's say, a live video every single day or something like that, if you don't want to do it, you may not have to. The first thing I do when I'm tapping into this procrastination, unless it's house chores, I feel like they are a little bit different, and that's what I'll play with what can I mentally do while I'm physically doing that? But if it's something in business, if I'm procrastinating it, I will look at, do I have to do it? Could I just not? What would happen if I canceled it? What would happen if I never did it? What would happen? 

I will look at that possibility. If I decided to, let's say, not record my podcast episodes today, I could record it tomorrow. I could record it the next day. If it's a business thing, look at, do you actually have to get it done? Because possibly it's something that you could completely run your business, you could completely live your life and nothing would change if you never did it. If nothing would change if you never did it, then look at why you want to do it. Do you think it will create change? If you do think it will create change, if you do think it will create different results for you, are you open to a different possibility to creating those results?

Let's say that the one coach that you follow says that you have to do live video every single day in order to make millions of dollars. If you don't want to do live video but you want to make the money, if the motivation for wanting to do this live video is wanting to make lots of money, do you think it's possible and can you see it as possible that there's a way for you to get the money and to make the money without doing it that way? Without selling every day, or without doing a live video every day? Yes, there are possibilities. 

That's where you get to let go of the story that that one coach told you that's not serving you in this present moment. It is causing you to procrastinate. It's causing you shame. It's causing you guilt. It's causing all of this emotional reaction because you're trying to do something that you do not actually want to do. 

Let's go through this again, chances are if you're procrastinating, you may not want to do it. It may not be for you. It may be a should. It may be something in your undefined centers telling you you have to do it. The big thing for me is I would feel like I have to do things if I said that I would do it already. I used to think that was an ego thing. This was “I am out of alignment if I can't keep my promises because I'm a defined ego, and I'm supposed to be able to keep my promises.” But then what I realized was that when I was making those promises, I was making them out of who I wanted to be at that moment for people, and it was based on an identity thing. The only reason I wanted to do certain activities, or the only reason I wanted to do certain things in my business was because when I decided to do those things and when I declared that I would do those things, I was out of alignment, and I was allowing my G center to say, "Ooh, this is the direction that I think that we're going to go in forever," and I didn't remember that I don't always know where I'm going to go, and sometimes that direction is going to change, and that's perfectly fine. 

We want to look at those undefined centers. Is there motivation to do the thing in the undefined centers? Is it that you're trying to prove yourself? Is it that you're trying to feel a certain way? You're trying to get away from a certain kind of pressure? You're trying to keep up? You're trying to feel safe? You're trying to be certain? You're trying to get attention? You're searching for inspiration? Whatever it is, that is something that you can let go of.

If the motivation is something in your non-self, in those undefined centers, let it go. You don't have to be that person. You don't have to be consistent in that area. You have nothing to prove. You don't have to search for answers. Like existing exactly the way that you do. There is some identity work that you can change there to let go of that.

If it is something that is genuinely for you, if you've worked through your non-self, you've acknowledged the patterns, you've acknowledged the non-self themes, and you genuinely know that this is a major part of your purpose, that's what we want to look at maybe some of the defined energy, but we also want to look at your stories around why don't you feel like you can do the thing that you really want to do. Whose voice, whose story is telling you that you are not good enough, or that it's not going to go well? This is going to just be some identity work and deconditioning.

Let's say that there's a course that you want to create, but you are procrastinating it and you're just pushing it off, pushing it off, pushing it off, but it keeps coming back. It's this thing that is calling your soul, and you know that it's for you. You know it, know it, know it, know it, know it. If that's the situation, but you're still not taking action on it, it's possible that it feels overwhelming. It's possible that it feels too big, and you're not looking at it in accordance with your design, your alignment. You're looking at the big picture and in your head.

If you're mentally trying to figure out how you are going to do all of the things that are involved in this program, and you're coming up with a perfect plan and step-by-step instructions, you might be restricting yourself. If you're somebody like me, if you're a generator, if you're a manifesting generator, if you're a splenic authority, if you're a sacral authority, if you're like most people, the only authorities that don't have momentary clarity of what I want right now are emotional authorities, sounding board authorities, lunar authorities. So, reflectors, mental projectors, and emotional authorities, but everyone else is designed to have information in the moment, and clarity in the moment. You know what's going on in the moment. You have discernment in the present moment. 

If you're trying to come up with this big whole plan of how you're going to launch this program, chances are it feels overwhelming, and you're trying to figure out what the next step is, you're not surrendering to your design. You want to let go of those emotions and any big feelings that you are feeling that are overloading your system. Remember that even without the shame, guilt, pressure, and stress, you would still think that that was an important thing to do. You would still think that the program is something that you want to do. You would still desire to do it. You'd still be motivated to do it, even without the pressure, stress, guilt, or shame. 

It's still possible. It's possible to be motivated by the pleasure of “I really love this program, and it's going to change lives.” That's a motivating factor that you can play with. That is a positive motivation that you can work with. 

Let's say you're launching a program and it is for you, chances are if you still don't know where to start, it's because you're trying to do the whole thing and you haven't broken it up into your next step. You're not looking at, what can I do today? You're thinking about one day you’re going to create an entire program, but you have no idea what that even means, what that even looks like, so you need to look at what would be the first step? What's the first step that you can do today that will eventually lead you there, but can you break it down even more?

Let's recap a little bit. Procrastination. You are not lazy. That's not real. That's not a thing. Chances are you either have too much motivation, or it's the wrong thing for you. It's either not for you, or you're overloaded with motivation, or you just don't have enough clarity on the exact next step. You're focusing too big a picture and not specifically what's next for you. 

You can let go of the emotions. Acknowledge that you know that this is something important to you. Move through any feelings that you're having. Let go of that stress. Trust that you will get things done on time. Just let go of anything that's not serving you. Hold onto the things that are. Connect with that identity of who you are and where you're going, or if you don't know where you're going, just look at the next step. Trust that everything that you need to get done will get done exactly when it needs to.

I will just add a little note here. If you are a generator or a manifesting generator, and this conversation really triggered you or it really sparked something in you, really lit you up, I invite you to check out Big Sacral Energy. We are starting January 21, 2023, and it's going to be absolutely incredible. We're spending 28 days together working through a whole bunch of emotionality. We're working through a whole bunch of deconditioning. There are going to be daily podcast episodes. There are going to be group calls. It's an experiment to really redefine sacral energy and find that motivation to really live a sacrally led life.

That is Big Sacral Energy. I've been talking about it on my Instagram for a while, but this conversation is a really big theme that we are working with and the discernment of how do you go through those non-self centers and how do you recognize if it's a sacral yes, and discerning of like, is this serving me in this moment, or is it not serving me in the moment? More specifics into the stories, more specifics into the examples, all of that. 

So if you like this sort of conversation, and you want more that is very specific to your design, and you want daily experiments and to hang out with me a couple of times, Big Sacral Energy is for you!