Are you postponing and procrastinating the things you want to do?

Louise Lie von Linstow is a recognised therapist, mentor, and leader of the “INTUITIVE COUNSELOR” education. Louise gives lectures on sub-consciousness, symbols, and the power of creating personal alters and rituals in everyday-life. Meet Louise (at www.louiselievonlinstow.dk) who´s right now working on an English version of her website and international courses in alters and symbols.

Do you postpone things you would like to do, or know you have to do? Learn how to break the code for your inner resistance by realising what it´s really about. Newsflash: It´s not because you´re lazy!

If you think you´re the only one to postpone what you´ve wanted to do, and you feel shame in not following up on your dreams or start up projects you don´t see through – Then think again!

As a mentor and therapist with a specialty in breaking destructive patterns, I often meet this one particular problem in my consultation. It is an incredibly ordinary theme for quite a lot of people, but also taboo for many of them.

✽More from the english edition - Fear, the ego and self-sabotage

I´m a woman that likes to act on my ideas and visions. I´m the passionate type who can fall so madly in love with my project, that I´m willing to work on it day and night. I usually start working on it 2 minutes after I’ve gotten the idea, and I don´t stop until my work is done. 

With time, I´ve taught myself to have a more balanced approach towards my way of working and doing projects, because it´s very hard to unite late nights in the life of a mom and therapist, while having clients during the day.

Once I fall in love with an idea about a seminar I´d like to offer, a book I´d like to write, or a blogpost I´d like to do, then it´s really hard for me to postpone it. It has to be done while the inspiration is there. Working with what I feel is the purpose of my life gives me an indescribable satisfaction and joy. I feel connected with eternal freedom and wisdom when I create.

The other day though, my ex-husband reminded me that once there was another reality in my life (what else are ex-husbands there for, other than reminding you of who you once were!). There was a time when I was in my early twenties, when doing the things I wanted was connected to great resistance and pain. I was a postponer! Most of my days went by in predictable cycles: I decided on doing an assignment, and after 5 minuts I got distracted and started procrastinating. After a couple of hours I convinced myself that I should go back and do the things I knew I had to. After hours of struggling with myself, I would leave it with a guilty conscience and tears of frustration piling up inside, take time off, and convince myself that I was both incompetent and lazy. At the time, I worked as a recognised interior stylist and journalist on TV and in the magazine business, and in spite of the fact that I loved my job, I would often find myself in situations where I told myself, I was untalented and should give up, just because it gave me the freedom to stop the inner struggle that went on inside me. Even the most unimportant things would be put on hold indefinitely because “I just didn´t do them”.

It was a time in my life where doing things, whether I wanted to or had to, sometimes was almost impossible. I delayed it, postponed it, and was resistant towards myself or the demands of others.

It caused me more problems than joy, and at times, it would destroy my self-worth. At the time, to write a book was like walking in a desert. It was a daily struggle; fight between the efficient part of me, and the part that wanted to postpone until tomorrow. Even if I loved writing.

I mistakenly thought something was totally wrong with me, until I broke the code and found out, what delay and procrastination was all about.

✽More from the english edition - “Don’t wish it was easier. Wish you were better.” English edition

In my work with clients, I often meet delay and postponement. It could be clients having trouble taking action on what they in fact know is good for them, for example; the health-diet/ jumping into the dream-career that they´ve prepared for and are ready for / getting something done that their partner is asking of them / finishing their dream-studies / getting their thesis done / getting their blogpost done / or even saying goodbye to the half-dead relationship they’re in…….Anything!

Even when we want it, day in and day out, we´re able to procrastinate if we suffer from delay and unhealthy postponement. I, myself too, feel the obvious pain they feel, because I recognise it from my own life in my early twenties.

“Am I lazy? What´s wrong with me? I don´t doubt that it has to be done, I just don´t know why I don´t get around to doing it?” These are typical thought-patterns for people who delay their dreams and daily activities, and they can lead us to even more destructive thoughts about ourselves that do not serve us.

But the reason for it is often not what we think. If you suffer from unhealthy postponement and delay, then know that you are NOT lazy, and nothing is wrong with you. 

The reason can be found in childhood. It is stored in your sub-conscious mind like an old program having to be replaced.

It is all about freedom and control.

To be able to understand what the pattern is all about, you must know, that one of the basic mechanisms which lie in human nature, is the search for freedom. Inside us, we have a natural drive to always seek to create freedom in our lives. It is natural and healthy to aspire for self-determination and creation of physical, psychological and mental freedom throughout life. It is one of the basic mechanisms of human beings.

If we´ve experienced being inappropriately controlled by outer authorities as kids (whether it is unhealthily controlling parents, older siblings, or an outer circumstance which has taken control of our life), then we quickly learn how to “cheat our way to freedom”. We cut school, say that we´ve done our homework when we really haven´t, steal candy from the kitchen-cabinet when we know we´re not allowed and so on. Throughout life, we carry this mechanism with us. 

The feeling of being unhealthily controlled can be so painful that we would do anything (even sabotaging ourselves) to get rid of it. It can force us to offer resistance every time we have to do something.

✽More from the english edition - Good Feng Shui is everything that makes you happy

We experience it as an inner battle towards the part of us that wants to do what it´s planned to, and the part that wants to cheat its way to freedom to avoid the feeling of being controlled.

In order to work with this subject, it´s a really good thing to consult an expert in these matters, and I recommend that you contact me through Skype to look deeper into the causes and how to break the pattern.

But for now, I´ll offer you a small tool-kit to get started working on the postponement-pattern.

When you work on the subject always remember the following:

The postponing part of you is a little child who has a memory of being controlled, and who experiences it as being terribly unpleasant and overwhelming.

How to approach situations where the postponement-pattern tries to manipulate you:

Stop trying to control that part of you, speak softly to it, and immediately let go when you feel the urge to postpone. There´s probably nothing to do about it once the little child has taken over. 

Allow the inner child in you, to postpone for a while and acknowledge that part of you.

Take notes of what it is you´ve experienced earlier in your life, that´s the main reason of why you struggle between control and freedom.

Ask your higher-self (that part of you who wants the very best for you), what the best thing would be to do right now. Would you feel better having done what you promised yourself? What kind of amazing results would you end up with, when you´ve allowed yourself to do what you really want, or know you have to?

Remember always, as long as you have an inner war between control and freedom, there is no development. Be willing to use your higher-self as an inner peacemaker. What would your higher-self express to this inner battle between freedom and control?

✽More from the english edition - Umahro’s 10 Dietary Commandments Anno 2015

Many years ago, I myself, learned to solve this inner conflict, and as you have read in the beginning of this article, there was a radical change and actively engaging me was hidden behind the pattern. To really know oneself and not just your patterns is a huge gift which I deeply appreciate. It gives you so much freedom to know both your patterns and yourself, because you´re able to separate one from the other.

I know that if you struggle with this particular pattern, numerous gifts of freedom, insight, and love await you when you give yourself the opportunity to learn to handle the dynamics. And I have a series of very important key question to ask yourself in the situations, when the inner need for postponement, keeps you from creating the life you want:

Is someone or something really controlling you ? Or is it “just “ a feeling of being controlled? And if so, aren't you really free to feel something else, whenever you are ready to let go of the inner battle?

Turn to the next page to learn more of Louises tools to self development through the sacred power of alters.

I wish you all the best.

Are you tired of feeling blocked? Are you ready to realise your potential? 1:1 sessions and mentoring (also on Skype overseas) are booked via mail: louiselievonlinstow(at)gmail.com

✽More from the english edition - Love is not a game for sissies

Did you like the article, please share it with your network