What Will Be The Pain If I Don't Do It?

“What Will Be The Pain If I Don’t Do It?”

       I recently came across this segment in a YouTube video titled ‘This will drastically change your ENTIRE life’ by YouTuber Alivia D’Andrea. I’m not hating on Alivia, or this video. A lot of the video is actually very good, but I couldn’t get this particular part out of my mind.

       “Procrastination is understandable because you link pain to the school project. You can change your pain and pleasure associations, but we’re gonna try something a little different. Lets review two basic principles; humans will often do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Whatever you focus on becomes your reality. So, when we’re in the moment of whether or not to get started on this project a lot of us ask ourselves ‘what will be the pain if I take action?’ but you need to ask yourself ‘ what will be the pain if I don’t do it?’. Focus and visualize this picture in your head.”

       Following along so far? I’m going to continue to write down what she said to do. When I have the whole segment written down we’re going to dig in deep to what she’s saying and explore the mindset.

       “You may end up pulling an all-nighter the night before the project is due, but then you realize you did the project wrong. You text your friend at midnight for help, but he’s already gone to bed. You try to figure it out at midnight; stressed knowing you have to turn this project in in seven hours. Two hours later you have a better understanding but then you realize you’re missing an important piece to the project, and you have to go to the store. There’s no way you’re getting a good grade on this. Can you imagine what this would do to your grades? You have to have a talk with your not so nice teacher explaining why you did so poorly. Suddenly you mom’s not letting you go out with your friends anymore. Your crush at school finally asks you out to the school dance, but nope. You can’t go because you’re grounded, so he asks another girl. If you’re in high school this could impact your whole grade which could affect your plans for college. Imagine your counsellor saying ‘Well honey, you can definitely try to apply for this college, but this grade in this specific class is gonna hurt your chances of admission into this school’.”

       Phew! Let’s stop there. Can you see what’s wrong with this mindset? At first glance it looks like a good idea doesn't it? It would certainly help with procrastination if you thought about the consequences! But, let’s explore the idea further.

       If you wanted to make this mindset part of your everyday life which is what the Alivia was saying, it is going to become a mental habit. The thing with mental habits is they are pretty hard to shift, it’s not as easy as stopping a physical action.

       How long do you think this is going to be before you turn into an anxious mess with this mindset? If you’re always jumping to the worst possible conclusions. With this mindset in regards to weight loss it could be very dangerous not only to your mental health, but also your physical. ‘If I eat this food I am going to be eating calories, which is going to make me gain weight, and then I’ll get fat and I won’t look pretty.’ Pretty similar way of thinking to what Alivia is saying isn’t it? Let’s find another scenario ‘I have to get these dishes done because if I don’t the whole kitchen is going to be messy and everything is going to stop and I won’t be able to get dinner ready so when my husband is home he’s going to be mad at me which could seriously damage our relationship and could slowly break us apart!’ Sound extreme? Absolutely. But, this is how anxiety works and once it’s developed into your life you’ll start feeling anxious on a more subconscious level, and you mightn’t be able to discern what it is that is actually making you anxious. You might think I’m being too extreme here but if we’re actually following the steps Alivia gave us aren’t I doing exactly what she recommends? I’m thinking of the worst case scenario, which whether you like it or not will become a habit.

       So what’s a healthier alternative to this mindset? Well first, we’ve established that going to the worst case scenario is definitely not what we want to do, so lets go to the opposite side of the scale which would be going to the best case scenario. Thinking back on the original example Alivia gave us in which the project was procrastinated. When you think of the best case scenario I assume you don’t want to even procrastinate it? You probably want it done nice and early, so you can actually put your attention on the activity's you enjoy. So for Alivia an activity she would enjoy is the school dance. Picking the dress, looking up make-up ideas, hair appointments the lot. Wouldn’t she enjoy the experience even more if the project was done? Also, instead of imagining how horrible life would be if you procrastinated, imagine how amazing you would feel getting that project done! 

       Quite often a task looks more daunting than it really is. A task is just a series of steps grouped together. Once we take that initial step, then the next and so on instead of focusing on the mountain ahead it becomes more bearable. I’ll give you a very literal example of my own. I’ve never had great stamina, but one day while hiking with some friends instead of stopping half way I looked at the top and thought about how amazing it would be to get up there. How good it would feel, how amazing the view would be. So, I hopped up on my already tired feet and walked on. It was steep and my legs ached, but I didn’t look up I just took those steps one at a time. I took breaks occasionally, and allowed myself to look up, at first it didn’t seem much closer then slowly it did and then I was on top. It was an amazing feeling, both being on the mountain and the accomplishment. I hadn’t needed to tell myself ‘If you don’t climb this you’re weak and a failure’ I just took each step. And did my legs hurt for days afterwards oh heck yeah, but I remembered the view and the feeling that came with it, and it was alllll worth it.

       Maybe my last story was a slight bunny trail there. But, I think it got my point across. We don’t need to have a negative mindset to achieve things. We don’t need to panic ourselves into completing tasks. We just need to find a positive counter to procrastination. I’m by no means a master at this, but it’s not my goal to make you think I’m great. My goal was to hopefully inform people of a potentially harmful mindset. Also, I wanted to restate I'm not hating on Alivia, nor am I saying her video is bad. I just disagree with this portion of her video.

       So, lemme know what you guys think! Feel free to leave a comment, message me on Instagram or on Twitter! (Yes, I’m years behind, but I've finally set one up.) And with that I’ll see you guys in my next post! Bye-bye!