The warrior poet: 5 smart reasons this mindset will defeat procrastination once and for all

You struggle with procrastination, don’t you? You often find yourself taking more breaks than you’d like, unable to get things going and start making some real progress. You can feel the strong grip of inaction’s hold on you, and you struggle to be free from it. Know what? You have a problem …But the question is, “what kind?” Perhaps you’re a perfectionist, and you refuse to take any action because you can’t come up with the perfect plan. Are you an over analyzer, always needing every detail before you can make any decisions? Maybe you’re just afraid of unknown outcomes, too anxious to move forward with your work. But the truth is, it’s all the same. At the end of the day you’ve made up some reason to not take action, and instead procrastinate. So what can do you do about it? I have a solution, but first you need to answer this question: Do you have what it takes to become a warrior? I’m not talking about any old warrior though… … I’m talking about a warrior POET. What’s a warrior poet? Simple. It’s a warrior who has dedicated themselves to strengthening not only their body, but their mind and spirit as well. It’s a warrior with the ability to move forward with unwavering fearlessness and determination. It’s a warrior with the ability to MAKE DECISIONS and TAKE ACTION. …And the best part? We can all be like the warrior poet You see, our battles are different from the warriors of the past. Nowadays our fights are with work, family, relationships, and even ourselves… And in our case, it’s with procrastination. These things can beat us, if we let them. But from this point on, you’re not going to let that happen. Know why? You already have the warrior poet within you Consider this: in what ways are you already like the warrior poet? Do you love to play sports or go to the gym consistently? Then you already develop the body. Are you a personal development enthusiast, ever dedicated to the development of the mind and spirit? The fact that you’ve read this far means you actually care about improving your mind. Do you strive to improve your craft, whether it’s writing, drawing or dancing? If you truly enjoy these activities, then you are improving in body, mind, AND soul. Any combination of these means you’ve got the warrior poet within you. All you need now is a good reason to take it a step further and really take the warrior poet mantle – and luckily for you, I’ve got 5 of them: 1) It creates life balance, with each aspect refreshing the others Procrastination can occur for a variety of reasons, and one of those ways is from burning out on one type of activity. But when we have life balance, each activity we do refreshes every other one. Put simply – it makes activities less boring due to variety. Take the samurai of Japan, they would master calligraphy in addition to their weapons training. If they focused on only one of those, stagnation and boredom would come much faster. And boredom is cause for procrastination. This is where the warrior mindset helps. Purposely making time for other activities in your life keeps things fresh, interesting, and just plain better. There will be times when you must do things that you’d rather not do, but having a balanced life means that when get to that point, it’s not as bad as it could be. Think of it like a compliment sandwich: having something nice before and after makes the middle activity not so bad. 2) It creates a fearless demeanor The warrior poet doesn’t care to win or lose, or do good or bad; they’re only concern is with balanced living and personal growth. Such laser focus leaves little room for fear to rear its ugly head, the secret behind creating fearlessness. Any procrastination based fear you’ve got will be put to an end. How? Easy, it’s all about where you put your focus. When you focus on outcomes, you create anxiety; this only worsens your procrastination. When you focus on process however, you create action. This is because thinking about you are doing makes doing it easier. (It might sound like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many people become overwhelmed when they focus on the outcome. The more work it is, the more overwhelming. This is why a process focus is so crucial). Now the question remains, how do you actually focus on process? An effective method is by using mantras . The goal of a mantra is to drown out any thought of fears or outcomes you may have, and instead replace them with actionable thoughts instead. Once you start implementing it you’ll see that it actually leads to tip #3. 3) Improves overall ability to focus The warrior poet mindset inevitably leads to a more attention based lifestyle. The reason? By generalizing your activities into only three groups, you have an easier time balancing and choosing between them. This creates less “mental spread,” allowing you to really hone in and focus on each one. Naturally, the less you have to choose from the better your overall attention will be for each aspect. This means that you won’t be worrying about what you’ll be doing next week, next month, or next year; instead you just ask yourself “what’s the next step for keeping balance in my life?” This present-based thinking style creates amazing focus and clarity about what you should be doing with yourself. This improves your determination and helps you push through the drudgery of activities that make you want to procrastinate. This focus is the cause behind reason #4. 4) It creates a big picture, more connected understanding of yourself and the world An interesting thing happens to the person who dedicates themselves to balanced development of mind, body, and spirit. Know what? This – you’re able to see the big picture of your own life. Living in balance creates a deeper understanding of the connections that you have in life. “When I exercise it increases my energy, improving my overall productivity. Better productivity leads to me getting more total reading done. More reading done leads to me making smarter, better decisions in life. Better decisions in life leads to me being more satisfied and happier.” Once again, any fear based procrastination you’ve got is minimized because of the understanding you develop. Seeing your life in this light allows you to better predict how your actions will unravel. The beautiful thing about this is that the longer you’ve been at it, the clearer you’ll see how things turn out. And we’ve finally come to the last reason… 5) It leads to everlasting growth The warrior poet mindset creates limitless potential in you. You constantly strive to take small steps everyday, ever vigilant in your personal development. Day by day you push past limits and become a better, smarter, version of yourself. How does this help with procrastination? Your focus changes from “I have to finish this WHOLE thing soon” to “I just need to do one small part of it, then I’ll do it again.” You create a calmer, more rational you, leading to more overall productivity. Now it’s your turn… Do you think adopting the warrior poet mindset can help you in real life? Is there a way to improve it? How? What do you think is a BETTER mindset to follow?