Summary
Today I want to share with you how to stop procrastination, and a simple 3 step method you can use right now. See there’s a simple reason we procrastinate:
In life, we are either running away from something, or running towards something else. This brings me to the concept of “pain & pleasure”; we always run away from the former, and towards the latter.
The issue that arises (and how this leads to procrastination) is that 50% or more of the focus is on avoiding pain for most people. We are always looking to avoid pain, and we think that the actions we want to take are going to cause us more pain.
Eg let’s say you want to start up a business, and you’ve been thinking about it for a while. Every time you almost want to get started, you get overwhelmed with the million things you must learn, what could go wrong and any other thing that ends up deterring you from getting started. This is the focus on pain and the “downsides” of a particular action.
This is the leading cause of procrastination, which makes you leave a task till the last minute or when the pain of NOT doing it becomes greater than the pain of actually doing it.
Obviously this is a gross generalization, but in the video we get deeper.
Here’s what I discuss:
- Procrastination and why it happens (pain & pleasure)
- The core principle that allows you to overcome it
- Intellectual and emotional alignment: why you intellectually know you need to do something, but not emotionally
- How your identity becomes a ceiling and how to overcome it
- Why I was stuck in growing my business and how I overcame it
- Results, process & identity: a real case study for business owners
Hope this video was helpful, leave me a comment with your thoughts.
Transcript
quazi here and in this video i’m going
to show you ways in which you
procrastinate that you
don’t even know about and really learn
how to
overcome procrastination by shifting
your identity
this video is going to show you how to
grow your business
you know or even start your business and
if you find that you’ve been
procrastinating on this for a very very
long time
how to identify behaviors and patterns
and what actually
makes you procrastinate and overcome
those through what we call
shifting your identity changing your
self-image
okay i want you to stick around to the
very end of this video because i’m going
to share with you stuff that we use from
our
clients in the paid program the reality
mastery program and they give you
three keys that you can implement right
now to immediately destroy
procrastination
before i begin this video i want to
announce that spots have opened up for
the free one-to-one consult with me and
my team for the reality mastery program
just wait till the end of the video for
the announcement on how to sign up for
that
and with that let’s get started so today
i want to talk to you about overcoming
procrastination and now we’re going to
do this with a way that
you’ve probably never heard before maybe
you’ve seen me talk about in this
channel which is
basically shifting your identity why i
talk about identity shifting so much and
changing yourself
your whole self-concept so much is
because i found this to be the most
effective way to
inducing any sort of permanent lasting
change and
the biggest problem i’ve seen is that
people can change but it’s always a
temporary change that they’re seeing
because
they’ve started to identify with certain
actions habits
you know patterns and they’ve been
living by those patterns for their whole
lives
and because of that a quick gimmick a
quick shift
helps them for a couple of days but it
doesn’t really drive in the necessary
changes at that core level
that’s why it never really lasts and
that’s why i always talk about identity
shifting and
i’ve personally seen in my life in every
single area of my life and
helping me grow a business from absolute
zero to doing 150k a month
in helping me become more attractive in
helping me work out be healthier
and helping me even heal my body you
know all these things were a result of
me
shifting my identity so i’m going to
explain to you why you can
use this to overcome procrastination and
how you can use this to overcome that
now i want you to understand that the
core principle of
procrastination of not being able to do
the work
is misalignment i’m going to explain to
you what that means in a second
but misalignment
essentially is you want to do something
right you
intellectually know that you need to do
this in order to get x y z result but
you just can’t do it
emotionally you haven’t gotten there yet
emotionally that realization hasn’t
happened that wait a second this is
actually good for me
so this is what i mean by misalignment
intellectual and emotional
congruence
so if you intellectually know that you
need to do something and emotionally
you’re like wait a second yeah
that’s the right thing to do i feel it
that’s the right thing to do you’re
going to go ahead and do it right now
there is no doubt about that the biggest
reason people procrastinate
is because they want to do something
but they can’t derive any sort of
benefit from it they don’t feel good
they don’t feel that dopamine rush from
it
so to give you an example bad habits
get ingrained into people because they
kind of get a reward from bad habits
right habits that don’t serve you like
playing video games let’s say you’ve had
a long work day and at the end of the
work day you reward yourself with video
games
that gives your brain a dopamine spike
and it tells you
long work days are good because video
games will be played afterwards the
reward you’re gonna get
is video games just keep doing this
that’s why if you want to start up a
business you can’t do it
and then your brain also connects
working long work days working hard
40 hours a week is good because you get
a paycheck that paycheck
becomes your dopamine spike whenever
that money hits your bank account every
two weeks
you get a dopamine spike so now your
cycle of getting this dopamine hit
becomes two weeks
and then when you try to start up a
business and when in two weeks you don’t
get results you’re like ah this
doesn’t work i didn’t get paid i tried
it for two weeks
and i didn’t get paid dude it took me a
year to get my first like
money online so there’s
you know a long wait before you figure
out the things that you need to do in
order to
make that money probably won’t take you
as long but i was stubborn
so the core principle is misalignment
intellectually and emotionally you can’t
derive any sort of benefits from the
behavior you’re trying to
ingrain that’s why you don’t do it you
just give up on it you chase the next
shiny object and the next thing that you
think is going to help
because you’re like oh maybe that’s it
maybe that’s it the grass always looks
greener on the other side but it isn’t
and there are two stages of
procrastination the first stage is at
the beginner stage for
entrepreneurs okay and what happens is
they’re like
i want to grow my i want to start my
business i want to quit my nine to five
get financial freedom okay let’s start
an amazon fba business
you know let’s try this let’s do this
and then they try that they don’t get
results within a couple of weeks they’re
like
it doesn’t work i pump so much
money into ads it doesn’t work they just
give up
it’s not that it didn’t work they just
didn’t try hard enough and
make the necessary iterations so then
they gave up
instead of making a pivot they just
completely ditch that idea instead of
understanding and learning the lessons
it’s like you invest all of this money
but you don’t
use the lessons that you learn from that
failure right
so that’s why you keep repeating those
mistakes over and over again with a new
opportunity so that’s what’s happened
this is what happens to beginner
entrepreneurs they want to go out there
and
start a business and you know they know
they need to do the work but they just
jump from one thing to the next one
thing to the next one thing to the next
this is a form of procrastination
jumping from one thing to the next is a
form of procrastination because you
don’t want to go in depth
you want to you know always hover the
surface level of every single
opportunity this is why their businesses
don’t succeed
and then what happens is they always ask
well
i’ve tried so many things now what’s the
point
the main idea here is there’s always a
focus on
the downsides what’s the point
their brains become so ingrained in
failure that it’s like oh what’s the
point in doing this
why on earth would i do this and this is
why they procrastinate
they kind of know that oh you know i got
to do this and i got to do that but
they’re like
what’s the point the same thing happens
by the way to advanced business owners
who are already doing 20 30 40 50k a
month
happens to me even and when i look at it
it’s like oh i’m already doing so well
why on earth would i want to go and hire
someone why on earth would i want to
spend this much money on advertising
why on earth would i want to spend 30
grand on another another mastermind even
though it might not get me any results
so what happens is it i was
procrastinating on hiring someone to
take the calls because i was spending 12
hours a day
doing these enrollment calls for our
program and i was like oh
you know i’m burning out every single
day 12 hours a day i’m on the phone
i can’t work on serving our clients but
i can’t work on
making the product better i can just be
on the phone doing sales
so i was thinking about i was like okay
maybe i should hire someone
and then i was like ah but then i would
have to pay this person and train this
person
oh if i train this person that would
mean for a month i might not make
anything because they might not do well
so then i was focusing on these
downsides again right like
what’s the point it will fail so when
you focus when you think about a
decision
and you look at the downsides
immediately and you keep focusing on the
downsides
that’s what makes you procrastinate
right you’re always focused on the
downside so you keep putting it off so i
kept putting off the hiring decision as
long as i could
i was on the phones for like eight out
eight months
uh 12 hours a day six days a week right
that’s what i was just doing
so at the second stage of even advanced
business owner
you have the same problem carrying on it
this is because of the lack of
self-awareness
and the predominant focus on what could
go wrong and the downsides
oh i don’t want to lose what’s already
good for me so people who are
wanting to start up a business they’re
like oh you know the job pays me well
i get a paycheck every couple of weeks
why do a business why do that
oh you know i’m already doing 100 grand
a month you know on my own and i’m
making a ton of profits you know
it’s 90 profit margin
why on earth would i want to hire
someone and actually pay them that was
my thinking
so then once i realized wait a second
the upsides actually outweigh the
downsides there’s actually bigger gains
then what i’m what i have to lose that’s
when i made the decision
just like with the business you know i
was looking at why i started a business
right when i got first started i was
like why start a business
well i don’t want to be here in this
toxic environment for the next 60 years
and retire from this wanting to stick my
arms in one of the machines and kill
myself
no i would rather do something that i’m
actually passionate about oh god i do
not want to live like this
so it’s always it always begins with
like pain right you always look at what
you want to get away from
the impetus always arises from wait a
second i want to get away from this
but forward movement never happens until
you focus on the pleasure
okay until you focus on what you
actually want to move towards
this brings me to the motivation what
actually over
helps you overcome this which is pain
and pleasure
now most people don’t know how to use
pain and pleasure and this took me a
long time to figure out
what pain is supposed to do is deter you
from
behaviors that don’t support the goal
what pleasure is supposed to do is
incentivize you to do more things that
actually support the goal
so to give you an example you know i’ll
feel
pain if i don’t work on the business and
i’ll feel pleasure if i do
work on the business and do activities
that are serving the business right
so what most people do is they use pain
to punish themselves
even when they’re succeeding and they’re
doing well you know they’ll like do a
20k a month and then they’ll feel pain
they’re like oh i should have
gotten those two extra clients that’s
what was happening to me
i was looking at oh i could have
done better now what this does is it
decent
incentivizes you from doing the work and
getting clients and it puts you in a
negative feedback loop
every time you get a client you punish
yourself you’re like i could have done
better i could have charged more
you’re always it keeps you in a habit of
looking at the downsides
this is why this cycle of
procrastination keeps
going on and on and on because you just
keep focusing on the downside
you keep becoming downsides oriented as
opposed to upsides oriented
okay i hope this is making sense pain
never gives you direction it just deters
you and tells you what you shouldn’t do
pleasure is what actually gives you a
direction you’re like i’m pursuing that
what do i want instead
okay i know what i don’t want and what
isn’t serving me what do i want instead
when you’re starting up pain is going to
be very very helpful when you’re a
beginner entrepreneur and you look at
behaviors that aren’t serving you and
you kind of like
don’t take action pain is going to be
very very crucial
it’s going to be your best friend but
then once you get to a certain stage
then you’ve got to be more about vision
and pleasure you can’t think about
vision and pleasure when you have no
money in your bank account
you really can’t it’s difficult there’s
got to be a certain element of it a
certain balance of it
but the balance is more tipped towards
pain than towards pleasure
i learned a lot of my lessons through
pain than from pleasure you learn more
lessons from pain
that’s very very true right
now let’s talk about why we keep staying
stuck in that downside focus
what happens is if you keep experiencing
the same things and the same rewards the
same
cycle of paychecks you craft this
identity okay and this identity becomes
consolidated
so this is a consolidated identity you
feel comfortable
at this position when you feel
comfortable with what you have you’re
never going to want to move towards what
you want
if i were comfortable with the paycheck
i was getting and i were comfortable
with the environment i was working in i
would
never have made the decision to go and
start up my own business
do you see that because i was
uncomfortable because i hated that
environment
i was looking for other things okay
pain didn’t give me a direction it just
told me what i didn’t want
it deterred me from that and then i
looked for pleasure i was like financial
freedom that’s what i want i want to
live life in my own terms
and do things that i love to do okay
what do i want that’s what spurred me
onto the exploration
looking for what i actually wanted so
you’ve got to find the right balance of
pain and pleasure
and you’ve got to understand that your
identity is becoming too rigid because
of what you’re experiencing day by day
you identify as someone who is just an
employee
you don’t identify as someone who is a
business owner and an entrepreneur
so now let’s talk about the three
solutions that you can use right now to
overcome this pattern
once and for all solution key number one
setting a results-based goal okay
so always begin with what it is that you
want we do this in that we do all of
this in the reality mastery program by
the way
this is straight from the program itself
this is straight from the program where
people have gotten results like going
from 5k a month to 100k a month in their
business
people who’ve you know been searching
for financial freedom
and they haven’t found within a couple
of months they’ve come in and done a 5k
month in a brand new business venture
how did this happen because they focus
on this internal transformation and not
just that shiny object
and the grass is green on the other side
and procrastinating on what the real
issue is
which is you right so always focus
first on what do i want define a goal
okay let’s say you are
wanting to start up a business and you
know maybe you have to go out there and
you know do xyz let’s say you want to be
an agency owner let’s say you want to be
a coach or a consultant
and you found an online business
opportunity right and
now you define your niche etc and now
you’re like okay well
the result i want is by the end of this
month i want three clients
okay let’s say you want three clients or
let’s say you want to
and i’ll make 5k a month
okay that’s your results goal 5k a month
5k a month in my own business
now that’s step one you kind of define
what you want okay what does life look
like when i hit that 5k a month in my
own business ah
it looks like this i’m enjoying daily
communicating with my clients
they’re getting results they’re doing
well or maybe
you want to sell products on amazon
right
maybe you want to make profits in your
trading maybe you want to get clients in
real estate
whatever it is what does life look like
once this goal has been cheated after
this goal has been achieved
and you use that as a basis of
visualizing and now what will happen is
the process will sort of come to you
because you already probably know what
you need to do
as a next step to help you in a step
closer to that 5k a month goal that’s
all you need right now
what do i need to do the next step is a
process goal
okay look at okay how do i get there
how can i get to that 5k a month what do
i know now what is that first thing i
know now
let’s say you are an agency owner or a
coach and you’re like i need to do
outreach
i need to do organic outreach and reach
out to 10 people and strike up 10
conversations a day
10 conversations but you see that you’re
procrastinating on this right
10 conversations a day and you do it
you do it first day second day third day
fourth day fifth day
ten conversations but you don’t see
anything coming from that you’re not
getting forward to getting those
appointments you’re not getting forward
to
you know scheduling those calls so now
you’re like ah you know what maybe it’s
not working
and now what’s happening is you’re
reaching your threshold
for that dopamine spike because you’re
waiting for a dopamine spike you’re like
how can i get that feeling that i got in
my job or i got paid
after working you know x hours a day at
the end of the week i got
paid but i haven’t gotten paid yet i
haven’t seen any results yet
so now you’re like oh it’s not
working instead of learning from your
mistakes you start to
you know you’re like oh this opportunity
isn’t working you know maybe i need to
try something
maybe i need to you know try a new shiny
object and
try like facebook groups or try youtube
videos so then you start doing all of
those instead of focusing on the main
thing
what happened is how do you know on day
seven you’re not gonna actually
get a call or get a client you’re not
giving it enough time that it needs to
in order for someone to you know kind of
schedule a call with you get ingrained
and indoctrinated in your business and
understand
and develop trust with you right
so because you’re not doing that and you
just completely abandoned this you’ve
just made some progress and now you’ve
just
completely cut out on that this is why
procrastination
always leads to you never getting
results
so that’s your process goal you say
you’re gonna do 10 conversations a day
stick to it
now let’s talk about how you can stick
to that process
how can you do this and this is where
this identity comes in
going from that previous identity of i’m
someone who used to get results within
five days or ten days
two so this is identity goal
who do i need to become to get to that
5k a month
okay who do i need to become in order to
be worthy of that 5k a month
i need to become someone who’s resilient
in doing whatever it takes
how many ever outreaches it takes to get
to that 5k a month
i’m someone who doesn’t give up
i’m someone who continues this 10
outreaches until i get results
and if after 30 days i haven’t gotten
results
then i will alter my strategy or 40 days
or 50 days or two months whatever it is
that’s needed in the kind of business
that you’re in
right so your identity goal is
who so
you can switch up the process of three
and two that’s what we usually do in the
program but i’m just listing it to you
right now i’ve forgot to switch it
around
but this usually comes first like you’ve
got to be clear on who it is you need to
become before you focus on the how
okay so this is the how
this is the what this is the how this is
the who right
so result goal process go identity goal
who is the kind of business owner that
does 5k a month this is the one that
gives up
before you even make a new decision
you’ve got to ask yourself this before
you go
on the how you’ve got to ask yourself
this who does this
who do i want to become who am i
becoming
this is so effective that
if you want to even lose weight
right and you ask like would the healthy
person who weighs
my ideal goal weight do this activity
would this healthy person
who’s in my ideal goal weight eat this
food
no easy simple decision before you make
a decision before you make an action
just in the morning remind yourself
who am i being who am i becoming today
who is it that does this is it this
ideal self
or is it this self that again falls into
that same pattern
just make that a trigger before you act
in any way
just have a sort of mindfulness about
who it is you’re embodying
is this the 5k a month successful
business owner making this decision
or is this you know this employee
mindset who’s just waiting for a quick
result and a quick dopamine hit
that’s what you’ve got to get clear on
once you get clear on that you’ll see a
lot of your procrastination just goes
away
because what happened to me when i was
stuck in that hiring process was
okay who makes this decision about
hiring and
having this temporary drawback you know
even if i do hire someone and maybe
temporarily i don’t make as much money
can i be okay with that in favor of in
doubling down
on who it is i’m becoming that 300k a
month version of myself
because i know there’s no way i can get
to 300k a month on my own i need an
awesome team to support me
right and there is no i in getting to
300k a month
it’s got to be we now it can’t be i
anymore
so i had to go from that individual
let’s let me do everything
to let’s delegate let’s trust the an
employee
let’s let go of my control a little bit
more and it was uncomfortable at first
because i wasn’t used to it
my identity was that of oh i control
everything
you know direct feedback if a client
doesn’t join i know what i’m going wrong
you know i trust myself to trusting
someone else completely
right that was very very difficult for
me to do but the only way i could do
that was
by getting clear on who i needed to
become okay
so i hope that’s of a benefit to you and
with that i conclude this video
let’s really recap and see what we
talked about today
and how you can use this to overcome
procrastination obviously we talked
about procrastination today and the
biggest reason you procrastinate
it’s because you can’t find some benefit
to the activity you’re intending to do
intellectually you know emotionally you
don’t realize
okay so there’s an there’s a
misalignment an incongruence
within you intellectually and
emotionally so now you ask what’s the
point what’s the point of doing this
and the sole reason this happens at
every single stage is you’re always
looking at the downsides you’re really
really comfortable with what you have
so you hold on to it you hold on to this
100 grand a month or 10k a month that
you’re doing in your business
or you hold on to this nine to five that
you have it’s comfortable it’s
supporting your family
so now what’s going to happen is
unfortunately you’ve got to feel pain
you’ve got to know what to do
when to use what right so that’s what
brings us to pain and pleasure
pain always deters you from behaviors
that aren’t serving you
pleasure gives you a direction for those
behaviors and gives you a north star to
move towards
okay and the biggest problem is that
consolidated identity
at every single stage you become too
comfortable because i am an employee
i am the kind of person who does hundred
grand a month in my business
the three solutions to this are to just
define and have a goal for each and
every one of these
every single day your goal should be
that identity goal that’s what you just
hold in mind forget about the results
just define the results
you define the results to give yourself
a direction you can’t
don’t craft an identity that’s attached
to the results
craft an identity that’s attached and
determined by the process
okay so the results help you derive both
of these
but then you forget them so the first
step is what do i want
5k a month own business process
how how am i going to get that what’s
the first thing i know that’ll help me
get there
oh i can just do this don’t worry about
the whole
shebang and plotting out a whole map
because you don’t know that yet you’re
just gonna
overthink this right now there are
different advices
there’s different advice to people at
different stages in their business right
for people who are just starting off you
need to act
for people who want to make a big
decision you’ve got to think about it
so it depends on what stage you are
you’ve got to be mindful of that
and then define your identity goal
understand that you know
the way i’m acting is directly
corresponding to who i view myself as
what my self-image is
because i view myself as someone who
gets a result within five days of
starting up a new venture
or doing some sort of job i’m expecting
results now
you’ve got to change that because
intellectually you know
this is how you get that emotional by
the way the emotional realization comes
once you
develop a clear picture of who you are
and who you’re not
it’s why people also easily quit
drugs and others don’t because they
identify as
you know people say oh i’m a smoker
that’s trying to quit
versus i’m a non-smoker if you’re
smoking and you’re trying to quit and
you identify as a smoker who’s trying to
quit you’re always going to relapse
but if you identify someone wait i just
don’t do this you know i don’t do this
anymore
i’m not this anymore i’m a non-smoker if
you identify as that it’s gonna be much
easier to get rid of those bad habits
okay so with that i conclude this video
thank you so much for watching i
sincerely hope this was helpful please
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help them level up their lives
and level up their businesses and what
they’re seeing is they don’t have a
business tactic or strategic problem
and even if they do they’re seeing that
this tactical strategic problem is
stemming
from their own personal limitations they
find that they
are afraid every single day wake up with
crippling fear and this fear is
preventing them from seeing the
opportunities that are right under their
nose
they’re focusing on the downsides
they’re focusing on the wrong things
they procrastinate they have these
limiting beliefs
and they’ve had these beliefs and the
same pattern has been going on for a
very long time
which is directly translating them into
keeping stock
at a certain revenue level or just being
inconsistent with their business
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Cultivate the Internal World of a Successful Entrepreneur
How to overcome the revenue barrier and scale your business to 7 figures by shifting your identity
Free TrainingSearch
Stop Judging Yourself & Own Your Dark Side (What They Won’t Tell You)
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How Mike Went From Burnt Out At $4k/m To Crushing $26k/m With Ease By Shifting His Identity
In today's interview we have Mike Morelli, cofounder of…
The One Quality You Must Have In Order To Master Reality
In today's video I share with you one fundamental…
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Cultivate the Internal World of a Successful Entrepreneur
How to overcome the revenue barrier and scale your business to 7 figures by shifting your identity
Free Training