SELF-HATRED

What I will share today is very confrontational, it will look at us in the face, determined to bring about transformation in us. I urge you not to leave the piece halfway or read through with a predetermined stubbornness, who knows, it just may save/change your life. This may not cover everything on the topic under discourse, but hopefully, I pray that this challenge you wherever you are found wanting. 

I want us to act a simple play on the stage of our imaginations, all of us are major characters in this play, please actively engage your thinking faculty and get the best out of it. So here we go. For the last three months, you have been wanting to do something, you had planned for it, written it down, you have even informed your close friends about what you want to do, but once you are face to face with it, the rubber is about to hit the road, you will tell yourself to relax, you still have time, and you can always do it later or next time. Then you intentionally put it off, delay it until next time. Does this sound familiar to you? Does it sound like you have been a major character in these concurrent human episodes?

Today is March 28th, 2021, run down your life backwards from January 1st to date and write down just five things out of the many you honestly wanted to do but you have been procrastinating. There you have it, I let the cat out of the bag - procrastination. Of all the soft vices that hinder and cheat humanity, none appears innocent but harmful as procrastination, the feeling, thinking and the lie that we can always do it later or another time. 

Just like the OLT (One Last Time) Syndrome, I shared some weeks back, I am guilty, you are guilty, we all are guilty in one way or the other when it comes to procrastination. The essence of this piece is not to knit pick on anyone but to reawaken us to the ills of this seemingly innocent yet detrimental habit. Honestly, procrastination has no gains.

As each day breaks, you have things you have lined up to do, tasks to work on and goals to achieve. Procrastination is that monster that stares you in the face at the end of each day reminding "you should have done this and that but you couldn't, anyway, relax, take it easy on yourself, you can always do it tomorrow, next week or time". Procrastination is the barrier between your beautifully crafted plans and the implementation of the same. Procrastination constantly tells you it is better to have the grandest of plans than the smallest execution.

It was Robin Sharma who said that procrastination is an act of self-hatred. Hence, for every time you delay or put off doing something you are supposed to have done at a given time to a later time, you are just hating yourself. Every time you procrastinate, you lose something that you can hardly regain or recover. This is confirmed by what Seneca once said: "While we waste our time hesitating and postponing, life is slipping away."

Permit me to ask you this question please, have you been indulging in self-hatred by procrastinating? Has your life/time been slipping away slice by slice while you are busy putting off doing things you should have done at the moment? If you are a master procrastinator, the chance is that you are suffering from one or all of these three: lack of self-discipline, don't have value for time and decision paralysis. These three have messed up a lot of people's plans in life, don't let them get the best of you.

I believe at the end of it all, you will regret the things you failed to do because of procrastination than those that you failed at doing (at least you learned when you failed). For it is better to fail at doing something than succeed at doing nothing at all. 

I challenge you this day to be proactive and intentional with your life, knowing fully well that you will only live once. Don't be a chief procrastinator. Again, write down the things you have failed to do this year because of procrastination, resolve to start doing them one after the other and hold yourself accountable. Stop hating and cheating yourself and make the best out of this short flirting borrowed time we have called life. 

Thank you for reading

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