Don’t listen to Your Inner Voice When It’s Trying to Help

It’s 4:45 pm, you’ve got 15 minutes before you finish work for the day, and that report you needed to complete by the end-of-the-day, is still sitting in your ‘in-tray’.

 

Don’t listen to your inner voice

You know you need to do it. You kept looking over at it all day… but you just haven’t had the time to get to it.

You had all those emails to check. You had that reservation to book for next week and you had to make sure the new girl in the office had the full tour of the building. There just wasn’t the time!

Believe it or not, failing to complete that report was because you decided to listen to your inner voice, when it thought it was helping you.

Your self-confidence is low. And you’re worried, that when you submit the report, it won’t be good enough.

Maybe you’ll miss something, or maybe you ignored a vital piece of the information?

Either way, the results will be devastating. The stress of making a mistake is causing you untold stress and anxiety.

Your mind says… “Don’t worry about it. If you don’t submit it, you won’t have any mistakes to admit to… problem solved!”

 

“Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision.”

~ Harry A. Hopf

 

 

Often, when you listen to your inner voice, it causes you more problems than it solves.

While it’s true you won’t have to admit any mistakes, the ramifications for not doing it at all, will probably be much worse.

But, we believe in our inner voice. We tend not to question it and do whatever it suggests.

After all, we wouldn’t lie to ourselves would we?

 

Our inner voice is impulsive

Unfortunately, we do lie to ourselves all the time.

Our minds will always try to solve the most pressing problem.

In that previous situation, the most important thing is not having to face-up to any mistakes. that’s the problem your mind takes on.

It gives you a valid recommendation… if you don’t do it, there’s no mistakes to answer. But it gives no thought to what happens after that. That part isn’t its problem… YET.

When you don’t hand the report in, you’ll get questioned on that. At that point, if you listen to your inner voice, it’ll give you an excuse for that too.

But, that’ll likely throw up another problem, then another, etc.

 

Question your inner voice

So, today’s quick tip is to question everything when you find yourself putting things off.

Ask yourself, ‘What am I trying to achieve by doing/not doing this?’

Then write down the answers.

I know it can be difficult. You might have to be more honest with yourself than you’re used to; but do it anyway – your answers may surprise you.

Once you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re in a much better position to find ways to address the problem, and stop procrastinating. 😉

 

Conclusion

When we listen to our inner voice without question, we can give ourselves bigger problems in the end.

Our minds will always try to solve our most relevant, immediate problem. It doesn’t worry about consequences. Consequences are not its problem… until they are!

So, when you find yourself putting things off, ask yourself why, then address the actual issue.

Using the previous example again, nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes. A mistake at some point is unavoidable, not producing the report is totally avoidable.