I once had something I wanted to do, but I didn’t do it. I put it off until later, much later. I began to put other things off and not deal with them. I didn’t feel good about it, but I also didn’t want to make myself do things. I learned how to procrastinate.
When others noticed that I was procrastinating and not getting things done, they told me so. I felt even worse about myself than before!
Then I discovered I could blame others for my procrastination. This thinking allowed me to take myself off the hook. It wasn’t my fault! It was someone else’s fault. After a while I began to feel like a victim. After all, it’s not my fault, it is someone else’s fault. What could I do about it when it wasn’t my fault?
This thinking worked for a while but then it stopped working. In fact, it made me feel even worse. No one wanted me to be on their team in school, work or sports. Why did I not just do the things I was supposed to do?
I became stuck in this merry-go-round of procrastination, blame and victim thinking. I felt badly about myself, and I wanted to get off. But how could I get off?
I began to think about how I got into this mess in the first place. What did I do wrong?
Could I try to fix it? Did I even want to try to fix it? I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to fix it, and I wasn’t sure if I could fix it even if I did want to. The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.
Finally I realized that to get off this merry-go-round I needed to stop blaming others for my failures and start blaming myself. I needed to take responsibility for my actions and my inactions. I needed to start doing things when I needed to do them.
Where did I begin to learn to develop this personal responsibility?
I asked a friend of mine and she told me that I had to start with thinking differently about myself.
She said,” If you believe you can do something, then you can, and if you think you can’t, you won’t.” I had to start telling myself that I could do it. And you know what? It took a while, but each time I took personal responsibility for my actions, it got easier. And I felt better about myself, too. People noticed. I learned that I could grow and accomplish things, and I did not have to blame other people for my mistakes. I stopped the procrastination-blame-victim thinking and developed a growth mindset.
A growth mindset is a belief that you can learn how to successfully set and achieve goals. It is a belief in yourself.
Learn more about changing your thinking with Conover Company’s Growth Mindset program. There you will learn the basics of changing your thinking to change your life.
