Confidence: The Ultimate Procrastination-Buster

I get it, for so many of us (myself included!), low self-esteem and procrastination are kind of an endless cycle. We avoid challenging things because we don’t feel capable, which then reinforces those crummy self-doubting feelings when we fall short. Talk about a vicious loop, am I right? It can really do a number on our mental health over time. But here’s the thing – cultivating authentic confidence is one of the most powerful antidotes to chronic procrastination. Knowing your worth and believing in your abilities to problem-solve removes so much of that initial hesitation around tackling tough tasks. You start seeing possibilities instead of roadblocks.

And it’s not just about feeling good, although that’s certainly part of it! Confidence also gives you the freedom to not take things so dang seriously all the time. You don’t have to be the best or smartest. You can embrace all the ups, downs, and messy middles of being human without it demolishing your self-esteem. So how do we start building up this ultra-effective procrastination kryptonite? I’m glad you asked! Here are three hot tips:

• Stop the blame game: When self-doubt creeps in, it’s tempting to point fingers at others or your inner critic when challenges arise. However, by refusing to place blame, you release yourself to concentrate on finding solutions. Embrace responsibility for the aspects within your control, and witness how rapidly you transform into an unstoppable force.
• Adopt an “I can!” attitude: Whoa there, feisty one! That negative self-talk trying to convince you something’s too hard? Give it a lil’ hair tousle and say “Pfft, I’ve got this!” Choosing to approach everything with a can-do spirit stretches you in the best ways. You’ll amaze yourself with what’s possible.
• Rack up some wins: Nothing boosts confidence like checking things off the trusty to-do list, am I right? Make a point of following through on tasks to completion instead of leaving a zillion half-done things lying around. Wake up that unstoppable feeling by showing yourself what you’re capable of, one accomplishment at a time!

Self-confidence is such a gamechanger, my friends. Keep chipping away at those self-doubts by taking care of your self-esteem, and that nasty procrastination habit won’t stand a chance. Who’s ready to feel unstoppable?

Finding Your Inner Disciplinarian

You know what they say – discipline is a powerful thing! And I’m not just blowing motivational smoke here. Building true self-discipline is low-key one of the most transformative forces you can unleash in your life. Think about it – discipline is what allows you to push through challenges and resistance. To make wise choices that serve your greater goals instead of impulsive ones that derail you. To resist the endless temptations and cheap distractions that try to lure you off course. Without discipline, all the self-awareness and goal-setting in the world won’t amount to much. You might start svelte and motivated…only to watch those dreams slowly fizzle as your commitment wanes. Ugh, been there, am I right?

Building discipline is really about changing your habits – those subconscious behavioral patterns that can either undermine you or propel you forward with ease. By establishing new routines, setting up reminders and accountability systems, and celebrating small wins along the way, you’re essentially updating your brain’s programming. Over time, self-discipline starts feeling more natural, more hard-wired into your psyche. And those lingering inertia demons that used to stop you in your tracks get quieter and less powerful.

That’s why I challenge you to pick just ONE area of your life where you’d love to be more disciplined right now. Is it waking up earlier? Sticking to a workout regimen? Spending quality time on a personal passion project? Whatever it is, don’t aim for a massive overhaul just yet. Just a simple new habit, maybe something you can realistically pull off 2-3 times a week. Then watch what happens! Maybe you set a phone reminder to lace up for a walk after dinner. Or you make a checklist to follow each morning before heading to work. Or you use a habit tracking app to get satisfying burst of accomplishment every time you show up for yourself. Take those small, consistent wins and let them build momentum.

Another useful tool is journaling. The path to self-discipline is rarely linear, which is why journaling can be such a powerful ally. By taking a few minutes each day to reflect, celebrate small wins, and course-correct when you veer off-track, you’re actively reinforcing those new habits. Your journal becomes an accountability partner, a sacred space to work through resistance and realign with your “why.” Don’t underestimate the power of putting pen to paper, either. There’s something about physically writing out your thoughts, feelings, and commitments that encodes them deeper into your psyche. It’s a ritual, a practice in showing up for yourself consistently. Wondering how journaling can help beat procrastination?

The Pen(cil) is Mightier Than the Procrastination Monster

I know, I know – for some of you, that suggestion might elicit major flashbacks of being forced to keep a dear diary as a tween. Allow me to reframe this potent personal growth tool for you! Journaling is like having a totally judgment-free bestie to lean on whenever you need to vent, dream, or simply get your beautiful brainwaves untangled. It provides an outlet for processing all the thoughts and emotions that can so easily lead to stuckness and procrastination if left unattended.

But beyond that cathartic magic, journaling is also an A+ companion for mapping out your goals, breaking down overwhelming projects into smaller chunks, and celebrating every milestone along the way. It’s like a trusty trail guide leading you out of the procrastination canyon! Whether you use it to braindump your inner monologue, doodle your worries away, or meticulously bullet out your master plans, journaling empowers you to stay centered, intentional, and motivated as you forge your proactive path.

Maybe your journal becomes a sacred space to reiterate your deepest “why” whenever you feel willpower waning. Or maybe writing out a gratitude list reminds you of how far you’ve already come. However, you decide to leverage it, journaling is an incredibly powerful tool for both unearthing the roadblocks to your productivity and charting the way forward. Still don’t know where to start? Grab my  Monthly Planning Journal which is packed with prompts, goal-trackers, and creative exercises, it’s designed to be the ultimate self-reflection and productivity tool. With the self-awareness from journaling combined with the steadfast discipline we’re building, that proactive lifestyle is finally going to feel unshakeable!

The Proactive Pathway

Whew, what a journey we’ve been on this month, my Flourishing Fiercely readers! From debunking those pesky procrastination excuses to leaning into discomfort, building rock-solid discipline, and unlocking the power of self-confidence, we’ve covered serious ground. But now, as we approach the finish line of our “Procrastination” series, I hope one thing has become glaringly clear: embracing a proactive lifestyle isn’t just some lofty aspiration reserved for a select few high-achievers. Nope, this is a mindset, a way of being that’s available to every single one of us.

It starts with having the courage and self-assurance to stare down those fears and doubts that so often fuel our procrastination. To silence the inner critic whispering “you’re not good enough” and replace it with an unwavering belief that you’ve got this. From there, it’s about taking that self-confidence and channeling it into sustainable habits and routines that become your productive default. Not just white-knuckling it through sheer force of will, but systematizing discipline into your daily existence. Setting reminders, celebrating small wins, and showing up for yourself consistently.

And let’s not forget one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal for manifesting that transformation: the humble journal. By taking a few minutes each day to reflect, realign, and capture our commitments in writing, we’re actively reinforcing those new habits and growth mindsets. Your journal becomes an accountability partner, a sacred space to work through resistance and celebrate your small wins. It’s where the “Future You” takes shape through intentional reflection and goal-setting. Where the path to a more positive, productive lifestyle gets inked out, one day at a time. So, keep that journaling practice top of mind as we transition into our next monthly theme…because surprise! We’re going to be diving deep into the art of journaling itself. From practical tips to creative prompts, we’ll be exploring all the ways this simple ritual can level-up our self-awareness, mindfulness, and overall wellbeing. Show up as your best self, day after day. All that’s left is to walk through, with your head held high and journal in hand. Are you with me?

Picking up from last week’s theme, I wanted to share some additional tips for making discipline a habit.  Some of these may be familiar concepts to my regular readers–for example, accountability.  Accountability with a trusted friend, colleague, or family member can help with developing discipline.  Many people think self-discipline means doing it all on your own, but it does not mean that at all. In fact, having a coach, or a group, or an accountability partner can really help you to develop more discipline.  An example would be when someone puts off housework until they know someone is coming over, and they race around to get the house all tidy before their visitor arrives. It is far easier to give in and be less disciplined when you just have yourself in the picture. When you have a person or people hold you accountable, though, you are far more likely to make sure it happens.    

An accountability partner is someone you set up a contract with to hold each other accountable for reaching goals. This is a mutual pact and is probably the easiest to set up. The goals do not have to be the same ones, the point is to connect on a regular basis, often once a week, and share with each other how much you have accomplished.  The best way to do this is to break up the task into daily chunks and do each one each day so that you are not trying to finish up the project the night before you meet with your accountability partner.  (For more on accountability, check out this blog post from April 2023.)

Using Challenges to Develop More Discipline

One way you can develop more discipline is to use challenges. This makes it more like a game and less like a chore. Also there can be the element of friendly competition with others and having others help hold you accountable which improves your odds of success.  Challenges are very popular and you can find them in many places across the internet and social media. Or you can make up your own and share it with a group of people. However, you end up doing it is up to you.

When looking to see if a challenge will be useful to you, there are some factors to look for, so you can best benefit. Is the challenge realistic? You want to stretch yourself, but not to the point where it might be too difficult to succeed. For example you could challenge yourself to cook all your meals at home for the next 30 days in order to save money on take-out or restaurant food, but that might be challenging if, for instance, you have travel planned away from your home during that time, or if you have an especially busy few days with work, kids’ activities, or other family obligations on deck. You also want the challenge to not be too easy. You need to see if you have the time to devote to it. Be sure to include time for learning new things, for example if you challenge yourself to build a new blogging website in 30 days, remember that if you have never done one before, you will have to learn some things and that will be extra time above just writing the blog posts.  (Having launched this blog earlier this year, I am all too aware from personal experience the time it can take to learn new website-building systems! )  

If the challenge is a large one over a longer period of time, are there clear-cut milestones along the way to help you have a sense of accomplishment? If your challenge, for example, is to find a new job or change careers entirely, you may want to build in smaller steps and milestones along the way–such as making a list (written or mental) of what you’re looking for in your new career, writing or revamping your resume, researching job leads, networking informally or through informational interviews with people in the field you have your eye on, and so forth. 

When you do a group challenge, you have some added benefits. There is a sense of camaraderie when working together on a goal that you don’t get when just “competing” with yourself. Other people can give you ideas, too. For example, if you are in a group challenge focused on cooking more or eating out less, the group members can share recipes and support.

Organization Is a Major Tool in Developing Discipline

If you want to develop more self-discipline, it helps to get organized. Organization helps you feel less overwhelmed and makes it easier to get things done. You also can focus easier on your goals if you have a structure to both your day and your work environment.

For example, say you have a goal of writing a book. Lots of people want to write books, but many never end up finishing one–why? Because a monumental goal like that requires discipline and organization, and especially if there isn’t a fixed deadline imposed by someone else, it’s easy for our goals to fall to the back burner as day-to-day obligations get in the way. You cannot successfully write a book if you only write when you feel like it. You also are less likely to get much writing done if you are not organized. If your research for your book consists of pages that you have to search through every time you need something, or worse yet, find the notes buried in a pile of paperwork, you will find you spend more time on finding things instead of actually writing.

Scheduling your day is another way of organizing that will help you develop discipline. This is more than just having a to do list. You need to look at when you get up, when you go to bed, and block out times like work hours that cannot be used for accomplishing your goals. Then you need to take a look at the time left over and figure out how to best use it. One of the ways a lot of people add more time in their day is to get up an hour earlier and devote that time to their goals. Some people go to bed an hour later and use that time. Be realistic about how much time it takes to do the steps needed to accomplish your goal.

Organizing your workspace and your files on your computer are also ways to help you with developing discipline. By making sure you cut down on the time it takes for related tasks to accomplish your goals, you allow more time to actually do the work of the goal itself. To go back to the example of writing a book, if your research is well organized either in your workplace or in well-marked files on your computer, you will spend less time looking stuff up and more time actually writing. This will lead to faster writing as well since you are not interrupting the flow to spend time searching for something.   You will then be far more likely to actually finish writing that book. 

This is another example that really resonates with me from personal experience. In 2022 I was invited to contribute a chapter to The Entrepreneurs’ Toolkit for Success and I got a taste of the organization and discipline that writing required–and that was for a single chapter, not even a whole book!  Some of the tips and techniques that I described above really helped me stay on track, and I definitely plan to use them when I tackle my next writing goal of writing and publishing an entire book someday!  How have discipline and organization helped you get closer to achieving your goals?   

This week and next, I’m focusing on the topic of discipline: how we can develop it and how we can use it to our advantage in our learning and development journey.  Many of us might have an initial gut reaction to the term “discipline” that isn’t the most positive: perhaps we had childhood experiences that cause us to associate discipline with punishment; or even if we think of discipline as being more along the lines of self-discipline, it’s also common to think that self-discipline revolves around rule-following, working, or denying yourself treats or other indulgences. But productive, meaningful discipline shouldn’t be punitive, and it doesn’t have to be a chore. Instead, we can harness the power of discipline for our learning and development.     

Benefits of Self-Discipline

When you develop self-discipline, you have many beneficial results. These include a sense of accomplishment, more self-respect, and a better understanding of what you can do.  Discipline is not always easy, but it is well worth it. When you set goals and work on them every day until you accomplish the goal, you feel proud of yourself. Not only because you accomplished the goal, but because you did not quit. You stuck with your goals and made them happen. Think back to when you had a goal and worked on it every day until it was done. How did you feel?

When you discipline yourself to accomplish a goal, you also increase your self-respect. Think of the people you have the most respect for, and why you respect them. Chances are one of those reasons is that they have self-discipline. They set out to do something and they accomplish it. By doing the same for yourself, you can have more respect for who you are as a person.  You learn more of what you can do. When you set goals and challenge yourself to meet them, you will find out that you can overcome obstacles that you might have thought were too difficult. You learn more about who you are and what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it.

Many times, we put limitations on ourselves that aren’t really accurate.  In the coaching world, we sometimes call this phenomenon “limiting beliefs” and they can pertain to topics large or small, specific or wide-ranging.  “I’m not athletic, I could never run a 5K race (or a half-marathon, marathon, etc)”; “I’m too old (or too young) to do ____”; “I’m not creative enough to be an entrepreneur”; “I’ll never get ahead in life” are all examples of limiting beliefs that can hold us back. These beliefs can be shaped by a whole host of deep-seated factors, sometimes going as far back as our childhood.  Many of us have limiting beliefs that were influenced by the habits, mindset, or circumstances of our parents or our extended community–perhaps without us even being consciously aware of it at the time. Or negative experiences in school or the workplace might have shaken our confidence and caused self-doubt to take root in our minds. Limiting beliefs can be powerful, pervasive, and persistent.  

Think about something you think is not possible. Is it really impossible or are you setting a limitation that is artificial? One way to find out is to set a goal and make it happen. Obviously, some goals won’t happen overnight. Progress might be slow and gradual, depending on your starting point, the magnitude of your goal, and the distance between those start and finish lines. (If you’re really feeling bogged down by your limiting beliefs and need some extra support, a skilled coach can be a great resource for helping you get “unstuck” and chart a new path forward.)

You can use this mindset to practice embracing some of the benefits of discipline. Figure out a goal that you want to do and set up milestones along the way. Then each day do something to make those milestones happen. It doesn’t have to be anything major, just one more small step on the way to your final goal. When you reach that final goal, take stock of how you feel about yourself and what you are capable of doing. (For much more on goal setting, see my April 2023 blog series.)

Discipline in Bite Sized Steps

But what are some ways to begin practicing self-discipline that are manageable, achievable and don’t reinforce those negative perceptions of discipline as being too limiting and deprivation-focused?  One of the ways that people struggle with developing self-discipline, is trying to make too many changes at once–not just by doing more than one goal at a time, but by making those goals way too large. Either of these approaches can lead to us feeling deprived, discouraged, and ultimately demotivated.

An example of too many goals at once might be someone choosing to quit smoking, improve their eating habits, exercise regularly, build a successful business, and get out of debt, all at the same time. All of these goals are common things that many people strive to achieve and that can be beneficial for our longer-term health, wealth, and quality of life.  But if you try to do them all at once, though, you will probably find it to be too much and quit. This is one of the reasons why some of those big, bold New Year’s resolutions that we make every January 1 tend to fizzle out as the year goes on. Instead, focus on one or two of your goals for the first several months, to give yourself time to make new habits, notch some small “wins” to celebrate, and use that momentum to move on to other goals. 

For example, if your most urgent goal is to quit smoking because you’re concerned about the long-term health effects and the day-to-day impact on your budget, you might start by focusing just on that goal. You could spend a couple of months getting rid of the cigarettes and using aids like the nicotine patch to help. Then once you feel that you’ve reached a place of stability and confidence in meeting that goal, you can move on to tackle others.

You may find changing your diet and exercising more to be really overwhelming goals because they are huge ones–and so generic that it can be difficult to pinpoint where to start. So, another tactic to help you with discipline is to break them down into smaller goals. If you look across your food and drink consumption and decide that you want to focus on cutting out soda, for example, maybe you break it down into this week you cut your soda intake in half, then week two you cut it out completely. If you do this week by week making one small change, you may find it easier to stay in control.

Another way you can break it down is by intensity. So, say you want to exercise more, but you have not exercised in years. If you start with something like a full workout, you may give up or get injured and then be unable to exercise at all. So instead of going full tilt, you can start by doing mini workouts at a lower intensity for a few days, and over time add more minutes to your workout until you reach at least 20 to 30 minutes of activity. You can also over time increase the intensity of your workout as you get stronger and in better shape. By breaking down the goals into bite-sized steps, you can make it easier to develop the discipline you need to accomplish them. You will also improve the chances of success in changing your habits.

Self-discipline doesn’t have to be a practice that we dread or fear! When we start to see discipline not as something that’s imposed on us but as a tool that we are in control of, we can use it to further our personal and professional development goals.  Next week, I’ll share more tips about how to practice discipline in a healthy and effective way, and in the meantime, feel free to share any examples of a time when you broke discipline down into some bite-sized steps!