Exploring and resolving the root of procrastination
with flower essences.
procrastinate
- to defer action; delay
- to put off until another day or time
- to defer making a decision, sometimes until the opportunity is lost
Procrastination is a tricky thing. It can leave us feeling ineffective, or it can be a relief when we aren’t sure of what we want. How can we master or overcome the tendency to procrastinate? Is it always a bad thing, or can it sometimes be good?
What Is Procrastination Telling You?
Sometimes we think we want to do something, yet we don’t act to make it happen. Often this is a good thing, as it keeps us from charging off into new projects before we are really ready for them. In a society that measures so much by what we do, learning to discern whether or not action is in our best interest is a tricky thing. This kind of procrastination is helpful, especially if we are among those who have an abundance of intention and a lack of will. Sometimes what we label as procrastination is our inner guidance keeping us from going off in an inappropriate direction, or helping us with the timing that would suit our purpose best.
How can we tell the difference between the procrastination that is helpful and detrimental? Paying attention to whether our mind and our heart are in alignment can be a key. Procrastinating because our heart is not in it can be a clue that our intention and our will are not in alignment. By spending time contemplating the source of disharmony between our heart and our mind, we can understand when procrastination is a benefit or a detriment.
Intention and Will
Intention and will are key aspects in consciously creating our lives. Intention is defining what we want the outcome or goal to be. It is singling out a specific desirable outcome among all others: the one that is dear to our heart. The word has its roots in intense. It is the intensification of a wish or purpose channeled into a specific and determined direction. It is being “in tension”, or having a fixed stare on the end result or goal. Intention is required to activate our mind to be part of a project, action, or idea. We need intention as the foundation to enable us to put an idea into logical segments of possibility.
Will is the power to choose what we want and the determination to follow through with the required actions to achieve our intention. Will is the faculty of conscious and deliberate action. It is the power that marries our feeling nature with our mind in activating and carrying out a desire. Will is also the process or act of asserting our choice.
Our will is directly connected with our feeling nature. Haven’t you ever thought about how great it would be to do a particular thing, only to discover that you didn’t really have the will to put it into action? Simply liking an idea is not enough to put it into action. We must also have the feeling that something is right. If we take action without having the feeling that it is right for us, the action often lacks power, creativity, or effectiveness. When our will is firmly behind an idea, the idea is fully energized and easily magnetizes support.
Are You Unclear About Your Intention?
Cliff Rose is for those who are always meaning to manifest something but never quite get around to doing so. The fact that you are unclear and unfocused about your intention causes procrastination.
When you have an idea and you want to bring it into manifested form, it is essential to define your intention. Energy cannot move without intention. Cliff Rose helps us define or clarify our intention. This essence also activates the energy of movement behind our intentions. It helps us unite our intention with our will so that our actions have a guided path to follow.
Summoning Your Will
Sometimes we procrastinate out of fear, especially the fear of not being able to achieve our goal. Spanish Bayonet Yucca flower essence helps us to summon our will. Fear or an inability to summon our will is at the root of the procrastination.
When our courage, intention and personal will are all in alignment, we find deep inner support that creates steadfastness. Our decisions come from the depths of our soul. We find ourselves in equipoise with a sense of rightness that supports our actions. Spanish Bayonet Yucca helps us find exactly this unity with ourselves. In situations requiring decision, action, or perseverance it is like a warrior’s sword, cutting through indecisiveness. It brings us to onepointed focus and movement.
What Is Standing In Your Way?
When you cannot define what is standing in the way of your desire to go after something, Desert Broom is the essence to use. It is helpful when all parts of your being – your mind, heart, intention, will, etc. – are not lined up behind your desire. Resolution is the key word for this essence. At the root of the procrastination is irresolution and infirmity of purpose.
Sometimes we see all the possibilities but not one strong way. At other times we may see one strong way and not all the possibilities. Desert Broom helps us find an inner unifying force, a centered purpose, and the feeling of being gathered together. It brings us clarity and a feeling of pure resolution.
Putting Off Making a Decision
Procrastination can assume the form of an unwillingness to make a decision. In this case, procrastination usually results in a limiting of possibilities as the window of opportunity closes. By not deciding, we allow others, or the situation, to make the decision for us. Procrastination can become a habit for those of us who struggle in making decisions. Yet this strategy can leave us feeling like victims of circumstance, rather than conscious co-creators in our lives.
Often at the root of procrastination is confusion about whose desire or intention is the foundation for your action. Are you procrastinating because it is someone else who wants you to take the action but you really don’t? It may be necessary to clearly discern what actions spring from your own desire and what ones actually belong to someone else.
Birdcage Evening Primrose is the essence to use to help sort out which actions are in alignment with your own soul purpose and which ones are what others think you should do. At the root of this type of procrastination is the belief that others know better than you what is best for you to do.
The Perfectionism Trap
Another source difficulty is when we procrastinate because of an overly perfectionist nature. We may not start a project or an action because we are not positive that our action can match an impossibly high standard of perfection. It is a form of inner sabotage of our creative impulse because we doubt that our finished product will be good enough.
Foothills Paloverde is the essence for self-judgment, for when we sabotage a desire to do something because we think we will not measure up to the task or that our efforts will not be good enough. Foothills Paloverde and Indian Root work with the self-sabotage that becomes expressed as procrastination.
If you procrastinate because you tend to make things seem more complex than they really are, Indian Root is the essence to use. At the root of this kind of procrastination is a need to make things so difficult and so hard that you feel that they are impossible to achieve.
Spineless Prickly Pear Cactus essence is for when we procrastinate because we feel that we don’t have everything we need to accomplish what we want. We tell ourselves: “Since I don’t have (or don’t deserve) all I need, why bother?”
Often when this essence is indicated we feel as if we don’t deserve something after all. We want something but we feel that we won’t be able to have it. Our disappointment covers up procrastination. The real problem is in our motivation. We are not really motivated to go all out for what we want because we fear that we don’t really deserve it. When we are challenged, we yield too easily to the difficulty of the challenge and give up. It is a convenient way of proving ourselves right; we really don’t deserve to have what we want. This is the essence of choice for procrastination.
The cause of the procrastination is the feeling that you lack something essential.
The Comfort Zone
Mountain Mahogany is an essence for those who have gone through great transformational experiences and have reached a plateau in their development where they are more or less comfortable. Mountain Mahogany gives a gentle but firm push to get on with something, even if it takes us out of our comfortable complacency. At the root of the procrastination is the desire to stay with what is comfortable and familiar.
Excuse for Drama and Adrenaline
Sometimes procrastination is a way of creating situations in which a high level of adrenaline is required. You may put things off so that you are down to the wire and finally forced to take action. You have ensured that the amount of time left is practically impossible to accomplish the task, which puts you in a high stress state in which lots of that lovely drug called adrenaline is required.
Drama and stress are ways of feeling that you are really alive, interested, and living on the edge. When you become used to this state of being, you may procrastinate so that accomplishing tasks are always filled with the excitement that abundant adrenaline brings. Yet drama and stress also take a toll on you physically, mentally and emotionally. It can create an unconscious addiction to adrenaline and the difficult situations that provoke it.
Two flower essences can help with this pattern. Indian Root is an excellent way of releasing the cellular effects of adrenaline in the body. I have found that it can lessen and eventually release the feeling of need for adrenaline.
Camphorweed flower essence can help address the patterns, or the habit, of creating stress or drama in order to get things done. Using Camphorweed flower essence can help you find a gentle way to bring things into manifestation without needing to get into the knock-down-drag-out intensity to which you may have become used. This flower essence supports you in gentling down your energy, keeping you in touch with your mental, emotional and physical state of being. It supports the awareness that old patterns of drama and struggle are actually a distraction and pull you away from your real purpose. It brings a sense of groundedness and allows blocks and limitations to dissolve. Camphorweed helps you recognize your own gentle nature and how potent and powerful it can be in manifesting what you want.
Selecting the Most Appropriate Flower Essences
Not every flower essence mentioned above will be appropriate for every person’s specific needs. Different people have different issues around their procrastinating. The process itself of exploring and contemplating your relationship to procrastination is important. It is the foundation for successfully selecting the most beneficial flower essences. Usually, careful self-examination can clearly show you which of the above flower essences are most appropriate for the root of your issue with procrastination.
Though you can use more than one flower essence together, you probably will not need to use all of the ones mentioned here. After contemplating your relationship to this issue, select the flower essences that apply for you, or use an intuitive method to select among them. (For more information on how to do this, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.) A general guideline is to use four drops at a time, four times a day, in water. However, it is fine to follow your intuition and use them as often as you like. Most people find that they tend to use them more often in the beginning and less often towards the end of the cycle. Unless otherwise indicated, a cycle is usually two to four weeks. [more]
For information on how to clearly evaluate the effects of the essences you have used, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.