Hey friends!

When I was at a ladies event recently, I had a woman come up to me and ask me this question. She said, “do you think procrastination is a spiritual problem or do you think it’s a mental roadblock? What do you think procrastination is and how do we get over it?” And so I’m going to endeavor to answer that question today because I think it’s something that so many of us have asked at different points in our life.

There’s a pastor that my husband Shaun and I know who had told us about his grandma. He said that his grandma had a problem all of her life with chewing tobacco. She was this sweet southern lady, but she loved to chew tobacco. It was this one hangup she had that she wanted to get rid of, but just never could. And for years, our friend’s grandpa would say, “would you please quit chewing? You know that’s just not a good habit to have.”

And she would say, “I want to!”

Her husband had even offered her a large sum of money if she would quit chewing. She tried and she said, “I just can’t! I just can’t.” And so she kept chewing tobacco until an older age.

Her husband eventually passed on and sometime later she met this other man who was, I believe, significantly younger than her, like say 10 years younger. This guy was good looking, and she became really interested in him (and he was a good catch). She started to think, “oh, my goodness! He’s going to find out that I chew snuff and he might not want to marry me!” And she was just determined to marry this guy. She really liked him. Because she so wanted to marry this younger man that was showing interest in her, she actually chose to quit and completely gave it up. Our friend was just saying how funny it is that she had tried so hard to quit, and even for a large sum of money she wouldn’t, but all of a sudden when she found a “why” that really motivated her she stopped procrastinating and got over the habit of chewing snuff.

I want to bring that thought before you today.

What is the thing that could be your “why” that gets you to stop procrastinating?

The first step is deciding what we most want to stop procrastinating at. So is it an addiction you want to get over? Or is it some project that you want to tackle? What is it for you? What’s your number one thing? Focus on this one thing. It may be small, medium, or big. What is that one thing?

And then your second step is to decide your “why“. We typically will not stop procrastinating until we have a big enough “why“, so what is your “why“? Really think about it. Why do you want to have that certain thing done or accomplished in your life, or that certain thing defeated that you’re overcoming? What is your biggest “why?” Think about that “why” and get it deep in your heart. Take time to process that and meditate it. Why does this really motivate you to want to stop procrastinating with a certain thing?

Third, I want to encourage you, especially if it’s a big project, to think of it like this: Years ago, I read some books by Mary Kay Ash, who is the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. And Mary Kay made the comment, “how do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time.” That was a classic saying of hers.

That is so true in life. When you have a huge project in front of you, you do it one bite at a time. But the truth is many people don’t get started with that first bite because they just look at this big thing and they think, “oh, it’s so overwhelming. I’m not even going to start.” So I want you to think about it in a little different way.

If you’ve never read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he basically talks about creating a new identity, and that if we want to start new habits we need to have a new identity in our life and then basically go at those things, not trying to do just this huge project by changing a whole bunch of habits, but just go at small things bit by bit. And so when you think about eating an elephant one bite at a time to change your identity and go at those things bit by bit, your “why” becomes your new identity. So that second step that I mentioned was decide what your “why” is. What will really drive you to change? And then start thinking about that “why” daily because that becomes part of your new mindset and your new mental shift and your new identity.

And then, as you might recall, the third thing was focusing on one bite at a time. As an example here’s a thing that I had been procrastinating on. I have this one closet in my house (and I’m speaking from reality right now. I’m sharing my mail with you here). It’s kind of a work/storage closet, and I have things in there from work like papers and other things that I need to file, but I also have some home personal storage things in there. I have been avoiding that closet for a while.

In fact, my assistant Liah could tell you that I’ve even had her over to help me with that closet some, but I don’t have it quite where I want it to be. So I have actually been praying on this topic myself like, “Lord, how do I stop procrastinating on cleaning out that closet?” I’ve been in pursuit of gaining knowledge on it this very week, so it’s funny that someone came up and asked me about procrastination this week as well.

One of the things that’s really become a revelation to me in this week is that oftentimes we look at social media and we see people posting pictures of their perfect closet with their perfect bins, and everything’s marked so beautifully and color-coded. And, you know, for those of us who have children or spouses that like to go in those bins, they’re probably not going to put things back as neatly as we had them in there (let’s just be real about it). So instead of trying to organize things perfectly, I am going to work at decluttering it. And there’s a big difference between organizing and decluttering. I’ve been discovering in my research this week that even if you organize things perfectly, your family’s probably going to go in there and disorganize them anyway, and it’s going to be just as messy in three to six weeks.

Instead I can approach my closet with the purpose of decluttering. I used to empty out the whole closet and then try to put everything back in organized. Instead of doing that this time, I’ve decided that I am actually going to just start pulling out one box at a time and I’ll trash what I can trash and donate what I can donate.

And after I’ve trashed or donated everything I can from each specific box in that closet, if I find something I want to keep I’m just going to ask myself, “where would be the best place to keep this?” I’m going to purpose to get rid of more because we all have a certain capacity, you could say, of how much clutter we will allow in our lives.

Shaun and I actually downsized a few years ago with our house and got a house that’s a little bit smaller. I’ve had to work on getting rid of some things just because we wanted a smaller house that just felt more manageable for us in this season. In the bigger space we felt like we were just getting too much stuff in our life. And so we worked on decluttering as we moved into this house. We had gotten to a really good point when we moved into it, but more and more things have been coming in randomly over the last few years making me feel like, “ooh, I have not been decluttering enough.”

So instead of focusing on organizing, I’m going to focus on decluttering because if I declutter well, I won’t have that much to organize. You know what I’m saying? With that closet, I’ve decided to focus on decluttering it and I’m not going to empty it all out at once because that’s just too overwhelming. So I’m going to focus on like 7 to 10 minute time slots. I’m going to make my goal each day to go down there for 7 to 10 minutes, or if I have up to 30 minutes I can schedule, woohoo, then that’s great! I will do that. But even if it’s just 7 to 10 minutes, that’s okay as long as I don’t take a big mess out and make a big pile. As long as I just take a little bit and just work on it within the closet.

Eventually, if I keep being consistent with that, those little bites each day are going to add up to the whole elephant, so to speak, so that is my challenge for you as well!

I think procrastination is a mindset, more than anything. And sometimes I think we either don’t have a good “why” (maybe we do have a good why, but we don’t take time to really meditate on that “why” to drive us to do it), or we’re seeing it as too big of a project and we aren’t breaking it into bite-sized pieces.

Now I want to throw out one more example of this. Maybe your big project is something like weight-loss. If that’s the case, I would just focus at going at one specific thing in two steps. Number one, change your mindset for why you want to do this, and then number two, think of just one thing you could do to make a positive step towards that goal. Like maybe it’s drinking half your body weight in water each day. Maybe it’s exercising and going for a walk three times a week. Maybe it’s that you’re going to limit your sugar. Maybe you have like 10 sweets a day and you’re going to cut it back to two. Or maybe you have like three to five sweets a day and you’re going to cut it back to one.

What are some small positive changes you can make? Because you’re more likely to stick with something if you go at it taking small steps, baby steps. Then with each step you take you gain more momentum. And momentum is your friend. As you’re gaining that momentum you will eventually get the whole thing done!

So that is my encouragement for you today. I so hope this helps you! If it does, please pass this along to a friend who might also need help with dealing with procrastination. I want to thank you so much for being with me today, and I want to encourage you to make sure you take some time to replenish this week. Enjoy the relationships in your life and make sure that you remember every single day when you get out of bed and when you go to sleep at night that God loves you, and He has an amazing plan for your life.

Have a great day!