How to overcome laziness and procrastination, a house taught me
Home I live in at the moment does not stop to teach me great lessons. I want to share one with you now. As I mentioned previously, in our article about Feng Shui Bedroom design, it is a quite weird house. Built by Germans around 100 years ago, it has a basement, two floors and an attic. Ten families live here, and nearly noone visits the attic. Something happened here yesterday, and continued today, that I want to share with you. It got me thinking, also how to overcome laziness and procrastination.
The location, where it all begins
The house is placed in a small town, close to the mountains. I visit the attic regularly, as I have books there, and some clothes, photographs. When I was in the attic in late August, I noticed that a part of a wall close to the roof fell apart as if it were sugar or sand. Small parts of bricks also fell. Moreover, there was a damp place on the floor, caused by drops dripping from the roof structure.
It is small, it does not need to be done now
Major house renovation is planned. However… as nearly noone visits the highest place under the roof, the other inhabitants ignored the falling pieces of bricks. Moreover, there was moisture on large areas of the walls in the attic. When asked to add the work on the upper part of the building, the response was: “we do not see it, it does not need to be done“, also: “it can be done in the future, someday, but not now“, “we need to do the stairs, the walls on the first and second floor, not some attic“.
how to overcome laziness and procrastination
I listened to the responses, and I somehow knew, that people did not want to pay for the parts of the house that do not touch their flats. “It is there, somewhere, we do not see it, it is not our neighbouring wall“. However, if the upper areas are not repaired within the coming months, fungus may appear on the wall. Moreover, moisture will reach the lower floors because it is the result of the chimney elements getting wet, and more and more parts of the chimney are becoming affected. It is a pure procrastination in action, and the question here would be: how to overcome laziness and procrastination to do what needs to be done together with others?
We ignore what we do not see
The challenge here is that things that need to be done will not simply repair themselves. Yes, now it sounds serious. But, people do not want to repair the roof, because they don’t go to the attic and as a result do not see the damage happening there already. “If I do not see it, it does not exist.” However, it is there. Renovation done someday in the future, will cost much much more than done today, when the level of neglect is still low.
It got me thinking … how to overcome laziness and procrastination? I used to procrastinate as well in my life in the past. I don’t any more, so… how did I stop procrastinating?
Procrastination in our lives
Isn’t it similar in our lives, where we may neglect an important area, like doing exercises, drinking water, having a good night’s sleep, and expect it to have no result on our health and energy during a day? When such behaviours accumulate, the effect shows up as a “surprisng illness”, but in fact it was a result of “insignificant” things we repeat daily. Like the proverbial water drops that can break a rock. One drop after another, day by day.
Procrastination happens when we continue with the rituals, habits that do not serve us. We may have poor sleep habits, live in contaminated environments. What’s more, eat unhealthy food, use conventional fabrics, that contain toxic substances. We do such things, because most of the people do that. Often we think, that everything is alright, because on the surface of our skin things still look the same as a year before. Just like in the house. The roof looks good from the outside.
Hidden truths
But the damage keeps accumulating on the inside, invisible to the naked eye. This is what we often do not what to repair in our lives, becase we do not see it immediately. But just look on the photo, and ask yourself: If you lived in such a house, and knew that such damage exist somewhere close to the roof, would you ignore it and leave it to be done someday in the future? I doubt it, I feel you would do it straight away.
How to stop procrastinating, SEE THE REAL TRUTH
This is what happens if you don’t sleep well
Even one sleepless night, causes damage that can accumulate in your body. It is just one night, but the effects last for days, bringing us an experience of lower life quality. Dave Asprey in his book “Super Human”, mentions several results of lack of sleep during just one night. (Read more about the phenomenon of sleep here)
“A small study on twenty human participants showed that losing just one night of sleep causes an increase in amyloid proteins in the brain” (Dave Asprey, “Super Human“, page 65).
Amyloid proteins /plaque is a building block for the Alzheimers disease, one of the most serious health problems of our time. Moreover, when you sleep well, just one night filled with restful sleep improves your ability to learn by 20%. When it compounds, periods of great sleep help you improve your problem solving by 50%. It is truly amazing. This is how simple steps taken daily in a correct way impact your entire organism and how incorrect actions lead to illness.
One night after another on a path to Alzheimer’s
The researchers think that Alzheimer’s is a result of chronic inflammation in the brain, that kills or damages neurons in it. That inflammation starts when microglial cells that are in the brain (to control its inflammatory and immune response) attack pathogens in it. They do it by creating inflammatory cytokines. But, if it happens often, a chronic inflammation occurs which brings memory loss among other things.
Sleep and plastics
Sleep is an obvious example here, as it shows the consequences immediately. We simple feel terrible after a night of poor sleep. But, what about a substance, that in a long-term is equally dangerous to our health but as invisible to the eye as the attic of my house? This substances are plastics and toxic substances in our surroundings, in the fabrics, furniture, carpets, plastic containers etc.
“The disposable plastic items that we utilize in general require more than 400 years to bio- degrade.”
Tiny particles that are highly toxic, invisible but harmful
“Long term exposure of synthetic materials to air, water and sunlight cause the release of profoundly toxic pollutants that can drain into water supplies. In addition, after some time these plastics oxidize and give out toxic copper salt that pollute the land and enter the food chain. These toxins are cancer-causing that can cause serious damage to the metabolism of living organisms after they are absorbed. Their consumption can even prove to be fatal for an enormous number of species including Homo sapiens. Steady exposure of plastics to heat melts those resulting in the emission of gases into the environment in a process known as outgassing. Incinerating plastic makes toxic exhaust be released into the atmosphere. Inhaling this polluted air causes various sorts of illnesses like tuberculosis and different types of respiratory tract infections.”
(The Effects of Non Biodegradable Plastics on the Environment. Author: Simon Sampson.
Department of Environmental, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Santa Catarina, Brazil. 03.12.2021)
Daily accumulation. Conventional vs organic
The plastics and conventional fabrics, like conventional cotton that we have in our environment, contaminate the air that we breathe, and enter our blood stream through our skin when we touch them. It happens by tiny tiny particles of toxins but they accumulate day by day. That is why we always encourage making informed choices when buying products. Minimalism might be the path for the future, or choosing only the best value, even if we need to save money towards buying that which is pure, organic. This is also why we created our products, organic buckwheat mattresses and pillows, as they are pure, without any toxic substances.
How to overcome laziness and procrastination?
I did that in my life. It is not only the situation related to the house I live in. Also in other smaller cases, that appear to be details, but in fact are as important as the “big things”. One of such situations is washing the dishes daily, in the evening, to make sure that the sink is clean when I wake up (I hated washing the dishes, and often left them in the sink for the morning). Or sweeping the doorstep of the apartment every morning, sweeping the kitchen every day.
How to overcome laziness and procrastination
How did I do that?
I will not give you any sexy looking strategies and tactics, as I do not usually follow them and do not like them. There are three things that work in my life:
- 66 days habit formation. The first time I heard about it from Robin Sharma, on his podcast, which I recommend to everyone. Also, he talks about it in his book “5 am club”. It is simple: you repeat something daily, at a similar time each day, for 66 days. After that time, a habit is formed in you. This is what I did, when I hated doing the dishes. I lived in Szklarska Poręba, Poland at that time, a few years ago. It worked. Now, I wash the dishes several times a day, and I love it, I love the feelings of cleanliness.
- Observe the results of your past actions. Do not fake them, by accepting help from other people. Being able to receive help is a great behaviour, but will hide the true situation in your life. Once you know where you stand, and how your behaviours, actions influence your results, you can open for support from the outside. This is what I did. Hardship, challenges showed me the results of my way of being in the past. Not working enough, working late at night, not eating well, avoiding people. As nobody helped me, the consequences arrived and they hit me. I realized, that if I continued doing what I had done, I would probably end being depressed and lost everything. The stuation was so tought, that I changed. It was a lesson learned the hard way, but I stopped procrastinating completly.
- There is one more thing. Dreams and plans. Do you have things that you would like to manifest in your life? Simply imagine how it feels when they happen. See the situations, feel them in your heart. As if they were real. How great it feels when you do, experience, have something that you truly want. Now, see your current situation. Is what you are doing, going to take you to your dreams? If you are procrastinating, probably not. I started reading a list of my plans every day, as there are things I want to experience. A crucial part here is: self love. If you love yourself, you will want to give yourself the best of any experience.
Listen to yourself
This is what I do. And what I suggest, because it is simple and it worked in my life. Now, the house I described in this post, showed with clarity what happens if we do not tend to what is necessary. But, I encourage you to follow your own path and to test what works for you. If you like to learn from others, and doing what they suggest, by all means, do it. How to overcome laziness and procrastination? See the real truth, truth is a wake up call.
References
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