Poker Chips Everyone has advice about how to avoid procrastination. Search Google for "avoiding procrastination" and you'll get back over 19,000 links. You'll find work sheets from university counseling centers that help you get in touch with the sources of your procrastination. You'll find books and articles. You'll find top 10 lists of reasons why people procrastinate and how to counteract them. You'll find professional life coaches who will (in person or via phone) coach you through this and other life difficulties (for a fee). Feel free to try what appeals to you. In fact, do that right now. I think the most important thing to remember is that procrastination is natural. It comes from fear and self-doubt. We all fear change. We all doubt our ability to succeed. Instead of focusing on your self-doubt, focus on its oppositeyour self-esteem. Self-esteem is like a stack of poker chips. If you are playing poker and you only have a few chips, you can only make small bets. This means you can't win a lot of money. In fact, you'll have to fold more often rather than risk losing your last chip. When you have a lot of chips, you can make big bets that pay off big. You can take risks. You can try things that you wouldn't have tried when you had fewer chips. You can win big! When we have little self-esteem, we are more likely to give up or not even try. Without trying, we are never in the position to succeed. So, we don't. When we have high self-esteem, we're more willing to take risks and put ourselves in a position to have the opportunity to win. Understand why self-esteem is like a big pile of poker chips? Here's the magic: the poker chips of self-esteem only exist in your head, so you can create more! In poker, the chips are real, physical objects. You can't just twinkle your nose and make poker chips appear. On the other hand, in life, you can do any kind of ritual to make more self-esteem chips appear magically. My "Sooner is better than later" mantra gives me the chips I need to overcome procrastination. A hug from someone you love magically makes more chips appear. The quiet support of a friend helping you to sit down and read this book makes even more chips appear. Therapy is all about increasing your chips. If shouting out loud, "Yes, I can!" makes more self-esteem chips, then shout all you want. Pretty neat, eh? Experts agree: buying this book automagically gives you a huge boost to the number of poker chips you have at your disposal. Turn the page and get to work. | 