Welcome to the Level Up with Katie Bee podcast, where performance meets spirituality and you get all the tools you need to unlock your next level of badassery in life and business. I'm Katie Bee, airline pilot, human design coach, side hustle extraordinaire and crazy cat lady and I know what it's like to have a vision for your life that is so big that it feels bananas. I know what it's like to be busy and still want to live an abundant and fulfilling life and I know that you have everything you need to achieve all of that without burning out.
I know you're going to bring your dreams to reality. How do I know? Because if I can do it, so can you. Each week, I and a series of guests will share human design insights, manifestation secrets, energetics and mindset tools that you can use to start stepping into your power as the conscious creator of your most aligned life.
Buckle in baby, because it's going to be a sweet, sweet ride. Hey, hey, welcome back. I am beyond thrilled to have you here.
So thank you so much for joining me today. I have got the most incredible interview for you. I'm chatting to Tony O'Day, who is a seasoned life coach on a mission to reshape women's perspective and empower them to embrace a balanced and joyful future.
Today, we are diving into the complexities of procrastination, baby. Because hey, have you ever procrastinated before? Yeah, you have. Don't be shy.
We're all human here. And today, Tony is going to give us her incredible professional advice on A, how to stop procrastinating, B, how to know when we're procrastinating and C, the why behind our procrastination habits. It's going to be absolutely incredible.
I cannot wait for you to soak up all this wisdom. And before we dive in, I just want to remind you that I am part of a summit coming up. It's called the New Earth Marketing Strategies for Unprecedented Growth Summit.
It is a dynamic event for visionaries and entrepreneurs. And we're going together to explore innovative approaches to marketing and business growth in alignment with the emerging energies of our time. So you can join me for my workshop, which is Thrive by Design.
It's a deep dive into human design for sustainable success, where we'll dive into practical strategies to harness your human design for sustainable success. You can also, at the summit, there is just an incredible group of amazing coaches, content creators who are sharing their gifts, their wisdom in there. So there is something for everyone.
Take a look through the link in my show notes. You can click there to check out and find out more information about the summit. If you join as a VIP, you actually get access to a whole host of digital products as well.
So that might be something worth considering. All right, my love. I hope to see you at the summit.
It's coming up in a week's time, just over a week's time. Actually, it's less than that now. Exciting.
All right. I hope to see you there. In the meantime, settle in for this amazing episode with Tony.
Welcome, Tony, to the Level Up with Katie Bee podcast. So, so grateful that you've been able to take some time to come and yarn with us today. You're welcome.
You know, when people put these sorts of things out there, I quite often second guess myself going, oh, should I? And then I realized, oh, procrastination. Oh, so well, I'm glad that even when you are an expert in procrastination, you still have to kind of manage it, I guess, or work with it. So that's so, so cool that I'm not alone in that one.
Yeah, it's a funny thing. A lot of people think they can beat it. A lot of people think they can get rid of it.
You just can't. It's, it's actually part of life. Yes.
Oh, well, that's kind of already you've just given me a bit of, I feel like a ton of bricks has just been taken off my shoulders. So tell me, what is your business and how did you get started? Okay, well, I'm a life coach and my business name is Tony O'Day Life Coach. And I really got started almost by accident.
I've been working for a party plan company since I was 23. And I won't tell you how long ago that was, but I was with them for 25 years. So there you go.
But with that party plan company, we had amazing opportunities to, to get personal development and personal growth. And I just took everything. I love learning.
So I was just taking stuff from everywhere. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And then what I was finding over the years was we all knew exactly what to do.
We just weren't doing it. And so I sort of fell down that path. I love all the parts of life coaching that I do and I do lots of other parts.
But I find that women in particular, we label ourselves so many different labels and it all comes down to not getting stuff done. And that's where my passions come from because I just, I think women are capable of so much. We just don't give ourselves credit for all the little things that add up to the big stuff.
When the big stuff comes, we do it. It's the little stuff that we do that we don't give ourselves credit for. So true.
Yeah, I think most women that I meet have got a lot of things on their plate and are actually masters at juggling life, business, parenting, relationships. They've got it all going. It doesn't mean that we're all doing everything perfectly, but I find often we don't really find it that easy to just go like, oh, shit, girl, I just got some stuff done.
My life is being navigated. I am on top of so much stuff, and even the stuff that I'm not on top of, it's not a huge calamity. It's not a disaster, not something that I need to knock myself about for.
But I think having some awareness around that is I think it's a challenge, and I think that a lot of people are starting to recognize that there is a lot of power in recognizing all of that. So what do you think? What are the common signs? How do I know if I'm procrastinating? Well, for me, and I think I can talk for most women, that when our house is spotless, we have been procrastinating quite often. There will be procrastinate cleaning.
There will be procrastinate baking. There will be procrastinate exercising. There will be all these versions of procrastinating.
So if you find yourself having done stuff that you wouldn't normally do, it's probably because you're avoiding doing stuff that you want to do but you don't know wanting how to do it. Yeah, so that's number one. Okay, so why do we do that, though? What are we trying to avoid? Because, to be honest, what you're saying is very relatable for me, but I don't love cleaning.
So, like, that's crazy because I love so much more, you know, I would way rather be spending time on my business, coaching, doing all of the good stuff than cleaning the toilet. So why do I do that? Exactly, and these are the questions we have to ask. And I like to think that there's three parts to, and I'll say overcoming because, as I said, beating, you can't beat it.
You just have to overcome it. You have to work with it. Procrastination isn't something that will go away.
You're always dealing with it every single day. And the three parts are you have to have awareness about what it actually is and how it's happening to you. Then you have to have understanding of why you're doing it and how to get over it.
And then you have to have the aligned action so you actually do something about it because I don't know about you, but someone could just say, say I'm frightened of heights and I'm like I want to get over it, but I just can't get over my fear of heights. And someone will just say, oh, so you're afraid of heights. That's awareness.
Two, well, that's dumb. You know, there's nothing to be scared of. You can talk through all the understanding and all of that.
But if that person then just says, so just go and do it, like when you miss out the understanding part altogether, it won't work. And when you don't, when the action isn't aligned with who you are and where you're at, you won't do it either. So lots of people are aware of what they're doing, and that's where that label comes in.
We just keep using that label of I'm lazy or I'm a procrastinator. Both of those, they're not helpful. No.
At all. Do you know what's interesting actually what you've just said? It reminds me, okay, so it sounds like either fear of something or being potentially out of alignment are two underlying causes maybe of procrastination. I just recently finished up a journaling process myself, and at the start of it 30 days ago, I was uncovering some limiting beliefs that I had about myself, and it came up as dumb, right, like I'm not smart enough, I'm not savvy enough to create whatever it is that I'm working towards.
And then at the end of the 30 days, I realized that actually that was just a really convenient story I was like holding on to to stop me taking the aligned action. Now, it's so weird. Like I went through this very structured process to come out the other side of this, and this is one of the processes that I work with my clients on, and it's part of the reason why I will always be a huge advocate for journaling.
I know that journaling is getting a bit, I think it's becoming a little bit unfashionable, but I will forever love it because I think it helps uncover so, so much about what's going on in your unconscious. But anyway, that's a side note. What I realized is that some of the behaviors that I was doing, such as not maintaining a very structured calendar, not maintaining, not finishing courses that I'd started, behaviors like that were attached to this crazy story that I'm not smart enough, all that sort of shit.
And then I realized that the outcome was me just slowing myself down, holding myself back, and essentially procrastinating on getting some things done that I am 100 million percent capable of doing. So, like, that to me was a revelation. Yeah.
Absolutely. I actually reckon there's four types of procrastination, and you'll know them once I tell them to you. I'm sure you'll go, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
Because, you know, sometimes procrastination is, as I said, procrastinate baking and procrastinate cleaning and stuff like that. But sometimes it'll just even feel like a brain fog when you're just like, I want to do stuff and just can't feel my way through it. It'll also sometimes feel like you'll find yourself going knowledge seeking because you're like, I don't.
And you just mentioned that one, like, I'm not good enough, so I'll go and knowledge seek, which is a form of procrastination. And even the busyness without the progress. So, yeah, you'll see all of these things in the four that I've got for you.
But the first one, you absolutely nailed it, is apprehension. Like being fearful of the outcome, whether it's a successful outcome or a negative outcome, we are fearful for the outcome. And once you're aware of, oh, I'm doing this procrastinating and it's because I'm scared of blah, blah, you know, and for some of us it is we need to go into those stories.
I love narrative coaching where we go into the stories behind why we do what we do because once you can go into those stories and go, oh, I don't think I'm worth more than this particular thing, I'll never get above that particular thing, like you go, oh, now I get it. Now I can undo some of those stories and move forward. Procrastination is simple, but it's really layered.
It's very much an onion. Yeah. Well, I think the most powerful thing about what you just said is that when we illuminate what is actually driving the behaviour, so what it is that you're actually fearful about, then it almost takes the heat out of it, right? It's like, you know, when a kid's scared of the monster in the closet, like as a responsible adult, you go, hey, let's look in the closet, like let's discover, is there actually anything to be scared about, right? And that's the same thing with any of the fears that are holding us back.
But the key is to I think when you notice a behaviour, right, okay, cool, I've actually identified that I'm procrastinating. Why? Because I've got brain fog, I'm doing procrastinate cleaning or procrastinate baking. I'm completely, like, obsessed with finding knowledge but not taking action, all right? So I've noticed that I'm procrastinating.
Now maybe there's something underlying. What could I be potentially apprehensive about? What could I be scared of? And then what? Then what do we do? Well, this is the thing. There are lots of little things you can do and until you get your understanding, you know, it's totally up to you.
But with apprehension I quite often find that exactly what you just said, naming it. So I had a client a little while ago and we found this procrastination that she was doing and actually it was fear based. And I said, well, let's give it a stupid name that every time you say it you can't help but smile.
And she goes, well, you know what I don't like? I don't like mangoes. So she actually called the fear, it's mango. I'm not doing mango today.
And I'm just, I was giggling, she was giggling. So every time this particular fear, this apprehension came up for her, she goes, I'm just not doing mangoes today. And that was the first step in, okay, now what do I do? And then you also have to let yourself know that this is normal.
I am supposed to be working my way through this, like actually nurturing yourself through the feeling. Because I think in trying to become more as women in society, we could talk about that forever, being this sort of let's keep them all down. In our quest to be bigger we are doing that don't worry about my feelings thing and I just push my feelings aside, just barrel on through, when actually that doesn't work.
It might work once but it absolutely pulls you out of alignment and then you might do that thing once, it'll feel bad, you'll never do it again and you end up just sitting in procrastination forever. It's not fun. Yeah.
I love that you've said that it's a normal part of being human. We spend quite a lot of time, well, from my experience, up until the last couple of years, probably three or four years, I've spent quite a lot of time trying to avoid a lot of the things that like thinking, illuminating the things that were slowing me down or any emotions that felt really hard to navigate, like, oh, sweet, I'll just fucking power of positive thinking my way through it. And like you said, that'll work for like a little while until next minute you're burnt out, resentful, the things that you're manifesting in your life are not what you want and you go like, fuck, how did I end up here? Whereas if we actually, you know, name and give some love and attention to these aspects of us which are completely normal parts of being human, call them mango, have a giggle, and you can be like, well, fuck, it's not so shameful, is it? It's not so shameful that I procrastinate.
It's not so shameful that I'm scared of this, that and the other. It's just a part of me that I'm now learning to work with. Like, how cool is that? I actually think it's a big shame if we don't become aware and do something.
It's when we keep going, oh, I'll just push it aside, it's not that we should feel shame, but it is a shame that we feel we need to do that. Yeah. So you mentioned four things.
You said fear is one of the drivers of procrastination. What were the other three? Another one is disinterest. Oh, cool.
Let's talk about that. Which is totally, it's boredom. I don't want to do it.
And, you know, when you're at a job and they say to you, like, I don't like cleaning, I'm exactly like you. If a cleaning fairy would come in and clean and a cooking fairy would come in and cook, I'd be quite happy, as you say, just sitting here having a chat with people on a deep level, helping them get through stuff, and just someone could be out doing that stuff for me. So, you know, I don't like cleaning, but I'll tell you what, I get interested in cleaning when I've got people coming around that I don't want them to see my mess.
It's the same if you work for someone, you know, you have to do certain things and they are boring, but you make a game of them or you say to yourself, if I don't get them done, I'm going to get fired, so I will. You become interested in stuff when you've got stories and reasons behind why to do them. And that's the thing there.
If you're finding it's a boredom type of procrastination, find a way to make it fun or find a way to get someone else to do it. Yeah, that's so true. And so from a human design perspective, do you know what your human design is? Yes, I did do it after listening to some of your stuff.
I am a generating manifester. Yeah, okay, cool. And I'm emotion based.
Emotional authority. Okay, amazing. So for manifesting generators and generators, there is this whole thing about we are designed to be following what lights us up, right? We're supposed to be investing our time and energy in things that really give us the things that you can do for hours without and time just evaporates.
Things that make you feel excited, inspired, delighted, all that sort of jazz, right? Cool. But we also are humans with responsibilities and I don't know about you, but the toilet isn't going to clean itself, and I definitely don't love doing it. But it's really important to me.
Luxury is one of my core values, so it's really important to me that I sit on a toilet that feels luxurious, not like a bloody high school boy's locker room toilet, you know? And so that's how I've kind of started connecting the dots and being like, okay, well, maybe the actual action is not inspiring and delighting me right now, but the end result is, right? But also I tend to, I've started attaching things that I love to fuel my, give me that energy to do things that I don't love. So like if I'm cleaning, I will always have awesome music cranking. I will be booty popping, singing at the top of my lungs, like getting down with the vacuum cleaner, like pretending that I'm 20 again on the dance floor, and it just makes it all go so much easier.
You've nailed make it fun. Yes. And that is the solution to disinterest procrastination is you've got to make it fun because you are not going to do it, no matter how much you write down on your to-do list day after day, I must, whatever that horrible thing is, you're just going to go, oh, I can't evolve with that shit, I'll do it another day, I'll do it another day, I'll do it another day.
And it doesn't, it's not important. If you're not interested in it, it's not important to you. And it's funny, I actually have a little quote that I say to myself all the time, and I say it to other people often as well.
Life is too short to be doing things you don't want to do, and life is too long to be doing things you don't want to do. Like you've got to do, every day has to be full of fun. And if you can't make it full, make it at least half full.
Like you've got to have moments of fun every day, otherwise what's the point? I know, so true. I mean, I've got this weird hyper-awareness about the fragility of life. It's something that I think about quite often.
It's something that I think is part of the reason I do all the things that I do. But I don't think it's a bad thing. I think that it helps me just really enjoy all the little things in life and invite more pleasure and more fun because I'm like, fuck, I don't know how long I'm here for, like there is no guarantee here, so I might as well have a fucking good time.
It keeps you in the now, and that is one of the ones. So the third one of procrastination is dreaming. When you dream too far ahead, you actually, it's too big, it's too far away, and there's no action to take when something's going to happen in 10 years.
There's no action to take when you can't see how this thing would even happen to you. So that dreaming of you've actually got to keep in the now to do a thing now to get you moving forward, there's so many wishes and hopers and dreamers out there who are sitting there going, why isn't it happening for me? Because they're thinking about it, not doing about it. Yeah, and one of my favourite tools to overcome that is like, okay, well, if you want to be this person that, let's just say, has a six-pack of abs and five years' time and blah, blah, blah, but that seems so far away and like I'm not there now, it's too far, I don't even know, what would that person act like today, right? What does that person, what is that person who's fit and strong and healthy, how does she live her life? Because you can at least take one small step to do that today, right? Yeah, absolutely.
And I think I love that question as well. We always used to call it what would Jesus do? And it's very non-PC, but, you know, we're just being humans up here. We're just being humans.
And I've heard myself even, you know, and particularly with the exercise one, it is, you know, when you're thinking, oh, my body's starting to not be the shape I wanted it to be, and that's a very easy wish and dreamer thing and you can sort of sit there going, oh, you know, it's just too far away, I'm just so unfit, I'm this, I'm that and blah, blah, blah. But, yeah, things like, well, what would Beyonce do or what would Cathy Freeman do or what would, you know, whatever it is that you're wanting to do, find someone who's done it and have them in your head. One of my clients the other day sent me a message going, I wasn't going to get started, but then you were in my head going, oh, so what would she do? Yes, and actually I think what's cool as well is finding someone that's actually a little bit closer to where you are.
I mean, I love that whole, like, what would Beyonce do? Like, damn, yes, I definitely am going to use that. But even sometimes if we're finding it really hard to get something off the ground and take aligned action, then what about people in your community that you've seen that are doing, you know, it might be the businesswoman who's, you know, six months in front of you and really starting to gain traction, what would she do? How does she act? How does she show up? And also keeping them in your circle close enough to know that, like, it's possible for you because if she can do it, I can do it, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you don't want to compare yourself.
You only want to compare you to you from yesterday. But because everyone, you know, there's that thing, comparison is the thief of joy. It actually isn't.
It's envy and jealousy is the thief of joy. Comparison is how you know where you need to go. So absolutely.
That's interesting. Isn't it? I've never thought about it that way, and actually I've started thinking, like, envy and jealousy was quite good because it's showing me what I want, you know. Like, if I'm jealous of someone, it's like, oh, fuck, they've got something that I want, and that's kind of a good indicator that that's something that I could work towards if it feels in alignment.
But I think the way that you've said that actually makes a lot more sense. Yeah, that's so cool. Because words have so much weight.
For sure. And when we use the word envy and jealousy, they're like sins, aren't they? Here we go with Jesus again. They're like sins, and we're like, oh, I shouldn't do them, and we feel bad for having them.
But when we compare ourselves, it's like, well, comparison is normal. We're supposed to. We compare our babies, like, you know, is mine walking before yours and is mine talking before yours? And, you know, even walking my dog, I'm forever going, oh, he's such a good boy today.
And I'm watching other people with their dogs doing all crazy things, and I'm like, oh, my Lord, he needs training, that dog. And, you know, that was me three months ago with the crazy dog on the end of the league going, get back here, you stupid. We do compare ourselves, and we need to.
Otherwise we'd all be sitting couch potatoes watching Netflix. Yeah, well, I guess comparison can help us be inspired, right, in the same way that, like, for me that I've started. I think part of the reason I've started relating to envy and jealousy like that is because it was, again, another thing that I was working on.
And I also believe wholeheartedly in the power of words, but I think that we get to decide what they mean, right? And I love shaking shit up and trying to remove stigmas around things that have previously been a little bit taboo or, like you say, sinful, like, fuck that, let's rewrite the script on it. But I think comparison is a really beautiful, like, bridge which can be used. So we've got fear, disinterest, dreaming and.
Overwhelm. Overwhelm. Oh, and I know that there's a lot of people in my community that are feeling overwhelmed, maybe not just now, but certainly in business it seems to come up quite a lot.
It really does. And I think particularly for women because, as we were saying before, we are supposed to be business women, we're supposed to be wives or partners. Some of us are mothers.
We've also got the societal norms of looking a certain way, speaking a certain way. Like, yeah, I mean, five, ten years ago if you heard a woman say fucking or whatever, you would, everyone would be, oh, oh. Whereas now it's just a word, people.
Get over it. We all use it. And I think it can be very powerful.
But, you know, we are supposed to be so many things to so many people now. And if we take that on internally, then you will have brain fog. You will not be able to swim through what is actually important.
And with overwhelm, the solution for that is absolutely prioritising. But before you prioritise, you need to work out what's important. And I've listened to a few of your things and I love that you've gone deep on values.
I love values. If I could help people to work out what their values are and how to put them into their daily life more, we would almost beat procrastination. Because when you know who you are, why you're showing up, and what you want to do, not a lot stops you.
So true. It really is, I think, the key to creating, manifesting the life that you actually want. Not what you think you want, not what society thinks you want, not what your parents think you want, not what your cultural upbringing thinks you should be.
None of that. When you actually take time to get deeply in tune with your core values, you can create the most delicious life that feels good to you, or you, you know. Absolutely.
It is the best chocolate cake you could ever buy. Love that. It's just so, and I love the word delicious.
I use that a lot, actually. I think your life should be delicious. You should be waking up and enjoying the food you're eating.
You should be enjoying everything you partake in. And if you're eating all of the learning, you're consuming all of this stuff, it should be the stuff you want to consume, not what you've been told you should. Because, I mean, I grew up on a dairy farm in a little place down here in the southwest of WA, and I wasn't, it wasn't something that happened.
I just realised not that long ago that I keep quiet. I keep small. I keep conservative.
I keep all these things because in farming you don't gloat because then the universe will come and wipe you out. So it's these little stories were all happening in my mind about keeping small, and it's not until you actually go, hang on, what do I want? Who am I? And it was only just recently that I realised, hang on, I'm not a small, quiet person. I like, I don't need to be in the spotlight, but I do love attention.
I do love being someone that people talk about. I do love, you know, I love all that stuff. And I always thought, oh, no, you can't be that person.
Yeah, I can. Who says I can't? And, you know, that's a little bit of the overwhelm as well and apprehension together, the fear and the overwhelm together. And, look, with the four types of procrastination you may find that you're actually embodying two or three.
You might find it's not just one, and it is really important to go deep on each one separately instead of just going, oh, it's too hard, I'm just going to stay here. Take the time and go into it because it's, as we were just saying, once you really get in there and really start designing your life, you can do stuff that 10 years ago you wouldn't have even dreamed of. Yeah.
Well, you're literally rewriting your stories, aren't you? You're kind of taking control back. And that one question, who am I and what do I want, two questions. Who am I, what do I want, that shit is life-changing.
It really is. But it takes bravery though, right, because in order to actually uncover that you have to be a little bit willing to say goodbye to what you thought. Say goodbye to maybe a way of living that you have embodied for potentially your whole entire life.
So asking those two questions, who am I and what do I actually fucking want, what do I want, that could disrupt your whole life. It does take courage because I think too when you're making changes, you're already making them in your brain before you even start behaving differently. Like I've worked with a few people who are wanting to be healthier.
I don't do weight loss and such, but I do definitely healthier choices. And when I talk with people about that, when they go, yes, I'm going to change my lifestyle for a healthier one, they've been thinking about that for way longer than the five seconds it took them to say, yes, I'm making a change. And when you do make a change and when you start making changes outwardly, you're already primed.
You already know this is what I want. But quite often we've never spoken about it to anyone around us. So when they take it as a surprise, we get upset.
Like, what do you mean? I want this for myself. You should know this. No, we've been talking to ourselves for months and this is the first time our friends and family are hearing of it.
So you do have to have a heap of courage, otherwise you are going to piss a few people off and it's not comfortable. Yeah, and that's it. Hey, I think this is perhaps a bit of a misconception about being brave enough to create your most aligned and fulfilling life, that it's all fucking skipping through daisy fields and, you know, chanting and all the good stuff.
Like, no, you have to have boundaries like a boss. You have to be brave enough to use your voice. You have to go on a journey of self-discovery and healing quite often that takes courage, takes time, takes you putting yourself first, but on the other side of that is, like, incredible levels of reward.
You know what's interesting? You're talking about we've been thinking about it often when we actually do take the action. So we stop procrastinating and take action. We've been thinking about it for a while, but we haven't been speaking about it.
And it reminded me of when I was before I had started learning how to fly, I was a ski instructor and for about three years, and I'd wanted to learn how to fly when I was at high school. I got told I wasn't smart enough, so I kind of put that to bed and then became a ski instructor. And then after a couple of years of ski instructing, the niggle came back, right? I was like, oh, God, I really want to be a pilot.
Like, I really want to fly. And I just started telling people, I started telling people, I'm going to learn how to fly. Honestly, Toni, I didn't believe it myself.
I was just like I was thinking about it so much that I couldn't help but talk about it. Do you know what I mean? And so my boyfriend at the time bought me an altimeter clock, like a bedside clock that was an altimeter, and that's how much I was talking about it because he was just like, oh, you're going to be a pilot. And even then I was like I'd signed up for flying school, but I still didn't really believe that I was going to do it.
But I was talking about it so much. And, you know, it's only through my own personal and professional development journey that I've realised the power in that and that that is the starting point of any manifestation process. Our dreaming and then talking it out loud is giving direction to quantum particles, you know.
I agree with you. I do. The minute you start saying stuff out loud to people, yeah, they're listening, the universe is listening, but we hear it ourselves.
If you've ever done something dumb and you've said inside your head going, you do not say this out loud, but you go, oh, God, that was dumb, like why did I even think that was going to work, blah, blah, blah. And if this stuff just goes around and around and around in our head, good stuff happens like that as well. It's like, oh, I'm going to be really good at this.
I'm going to do this. But the minute we say it out loud, our ears hear things differently. When we're just talking inside our head, it just gets mumbled up with everything else.
When you say it out loud, you listen. So, you know, and it happens both ways. If you're talking negatively about yourself, you are hearing that and you will actually believe it more.
And this is the good thing about saying it out loud though is that if it's good stuff, start saying it out loud, even if you're not telling anyone. Tell the universe. Tell the dog.
Tell your journal. And that's I agree with you. Journaling is good because you're actually getting your stuff out.
What makes it even more is to actually read it out to yourself as well. Okay. I've never tried that.
I'm going to though. It's uncomfortable, let me tell you. It's uncomfortable.
Oh, I believe that. But if it's something you really want to start believing, you've got to start saying it. So good.
And it's almost, you know, I don't like the I am stuff. Like I am strong. Yeah, no, I don't feel it right now.
And so that doesn't feel right. Like there's too much of a gap between how you're feeling and what you're saying. Yes.
So I like a little bridge saying I am becoming strong. That little bridge of becoming makes such a big difference. But, yes, definitely writing, writing, saying it out loud, and actually just, yeah, letting people know that you're changing so that when it happens it's not a surprise and you'll actually find out very quickly who's on your side.
Yes. Yeah, and that's a really interesting journey as well, hey. You know, just recently, I mean, a couple of years ago, my husband and I stopped drinking for nine months, and we were aiming for 12 months.
We made nine months, so that was pretty good. And also it had the main thing was it had the overall positive effect was that it really encouraged us back into better, healthier habits. But when we first stopped drinking, we hadn't told anyone.
We'd just turn up to parties. And it was so uncomfortable for other people, right, like constantly trying to force us to drink. And all I could think was why the fuck do people care so much if I'm drinking or not, you know? Like it didn't make any sense to me.
What was crazy, though, Toni, is after three months of us not drinking, we'd rock up to parties and no one would even mention it, right? It was just a normal part of who we were and what we were doing. Like it literally didn't even come up. And I thought, wow, this is so interesting because it showed me that sometimes you have to fight for your right to live the life that you want, and it's not because you're trying to convince anyone else.
It's just so that you can turn down the noise of that bullshit external influence. So, yeah, that's so interesting. Okay.
Well, congratulations because that's, yeah. It is so easy to listen to what other people say, particularly when it's not a comfortable thing for you. And dieting, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, all those things, they're all uncomfortable.
Yeah. I mean, and quite often we've surrounded ourselves with people that support our behaviours, right? Most of our, a lot of our friendships often develop because we have things in common, whether it be, you know, the way we like to socialise or whatever. And so when you start to change as a person, that can be uncomfortable for other people.
Yeah. And what we need to learn is that that's not our problem. But we also, I truly believe that's why coaches and therapy are so important because it helps us give the courage we need to stand firm in our boundaries and show up in a way that's really supportive of us living our biggest, boldest life, you know.
But it's so cool. Yeah, having someone on your team that's got no skin in your game, like you can't get that anywhere else. Like a coach or a therapist, their job is to help you move on without them.
Like that's actually their job. You're not supposed to be the coach forever. No.
You're supposed to be learning new things and becoming the whole person that you are. Yeah, it's, yeah. So what do you think, why do you think procrastination is such a problem? I feel like it's getting a lot of airtime lately.
Maybe it's just because of the circles that I run in, but it does seem to be prevalent. I do feel like a lot of the people that I see kind of working with procrastination, it is overwhelm and fear. But what's it stopping us from doing? Like why do we need to learn to embrace it and work with it instead of just getting sucked into the vortex? I think society right now, in particular, has a very big love affair with labels.
We absolutely love a good label and we do not like saying that we're bored. We do not like saying that we're afraid of something. We actually don't like admitting that we've taken on too much.
Like we don't like that. So we just go, oh, I'm a procrastinator. And what it does, it allows us to feel good about not talking about the real stuff.
Oh, that's so interesting. I love it. Yeah, okay.
So by giving ourselves that label, it's like, okay, that's okay. I'm doing this unhelpful behaviour, but that's just because I'm a procrastinator, so it is what it is. Yeah, I can't do anything about that.
I'm a procrastinator. And calling yourself a procrastinator is a procrastination technique. Oh, love it, love it.
Okay. So what would you say to me if I said to you, Tony, I'm not doing X, Y and Z today because I'm a procrastinator? What would your first piece of advice be to me? I probably would say to you, do you know that calling yourself a procrastinator is actually procrastination? Yeah. And you would laugh about it and then I'd say something along the lines of, what is it about doing that thing that you want to do? I always love going the positive first.
Yeah. Why do you want to do it? And then you'd say, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'd say, well, what's stopping you? That would be my conversation because it's exactly what we talked about before, when you know what you want to do and why you want to do it. It's very hard to stay stuck when you've got the two railroad tracks and your train is ready to go.
Yeah. Once you've got those two railroad tracks laid down, you can go. It's when you don't have them laid down that you're sitting there going, well, I can't go forward because I will derail.
Yeah. So I feel like a good exercise for anyone who feels like they've got a few things that they're procrastinating on in their life would be to almost sit down and just, like, write out what it is that they're procrastinating on and then for each of them, ask themselves, why do I even care about this? What do I want? What am I going to get if I do do it and what am I afraid of if it's stopping me from doing it? And then you can kind of sift through the shit because it might actually be that some of the stuff you're procrastinating on, you can actually just get rid of it. It's not even important.
And if that's the case, then you've just freed up time, energy, and resources to do shit that actually is in alignment, right? So that's freaking powerful. I saw a number of months back now, but I saw a lady on Facebook and she put, I have just finished a task, and it was something like cleaning out her linen closet that I have been putting off for three months, and I'm like, why was it up to you? Like, she took on this whole, like, for three months, every day, she was saying, I really need to do that, and then didn't do it. So for three months, 90 days, she was making herself feel bad and not doing something, and I'm like, who decided it was your job? And oh, could no one else have done it? I didn't ask.
So this is absolutely, Katie, you've got to come back to, like, why do I want to do it? And if you don't want to do it, is it important for me to do? Like, honestly, if a linen closet isn't, like, the only time you should really clean out your linen closet is when you open the door and the stuff falls on you and it hurts you. Otherwise, shoving it in there and shutting the door is perfectly acceptable. Like, we do, we worry about such little things, and they take up so much of our energy, which could be so much better used on doing good, important stuff, like spending time with our family, like going for a walk in nature.
Like, there's all of these things that other people might feel are time wasters. I love them. I get so much thinking done.
I get so much energy from those sorts of things. So you've got to find out where you get your energy from and don't waste it on stuff. Yeah, it sounds like by looking at, you know, getting really clear on those things that you're procrastinating on, having a good, like, dive into them as actually a form of self-care because you get to really come back to, like, inviting more of what gives you energy and getting rid of things that don't give you energy.
You know, and that whole idea of asking someone else to do stuff as well, outsourcing, right? I mean, I remember just after I launched my first business, my garden turned to shit, right? Like, I've never really been a big gardener. I do love it. I love being in nature and I love when it looks pretty, but it was something I was doing because I had time.
But then when I launched my first business, that time was no longer there and the garden turned to shit. Well, I have a husband that I live with, right, and he wasn't doing it, and it wasn't until I stopped doing it that I realized that I was carrying that all on my own, and I asked him a few times to do it and it didn't happen, and I said to him, well, I'm going to hire a gardener because you're not doing it, I want it to look good, and I'm not doing it. And then that was it, gone.
That problem is gone. But do you know what? I'm saying that like it happened over a space of weeks. It took me like probably the gestation period of a baby to come up with that decision.
I was like, oh, agonizing over it. Because I reckon what you did was you ruminated over it. You were like looking at it, looking at it, going, I really should.
So you had the guilt for a good three months of I should. Then you had another three months of I'm just not going to look at it, I'm going to ignore it, and then you went, well, I could do this, and then you had to get over the what will people think if I get a gardener when I could do this myself and insert gardener with any other person that helps you. Like what will people think? We care so much what other people think, and it kills us.
Yes. Oh, so good. All right.
So one final piece of wisdom that you would give anyone that suspects that procrastination might be negatively impacting their life. If you've gone through exactly what we've said, like get aware of what it is, get some understanding, and then start taking action. If it's still not working, get yourself a bloody coach.
Like people think that only rich people or only business people or only successful people have coaches. No, people who love their life have coaches. I bet you have a coach.
I have a coach. And I have more than one coach, actually. I have a health coach and I have a brain coach.
And then, yeah, and then I have my own coach as well. Like, oh, my God, the stuff I learn. But, yeah, I would say definitely get a coach.
But out of everything, find out what's important to you. That would be my number one thing. Find your values.
Find what's important to you, and then go from there. Amazing. Tony, thank you so much for helping us understand why we procrastinate.
And, yeah, I mean, honestly, I do really feel like taking a bit of time to dive into this is really a beautiful form of self-care, super life-giving and really could probably transform a lot of people's lives if they just take the tools that you've shared with us today and applied them to even just one thing that they might be procrastinating on. Yeah, that's it. I mean, thank you for the opportunity because I think it is one of those things that we just don't talk about.
We say the word and then we move on. So I love talking about it because, yeah, if people can reclaim back what they've lost just through time, yeah, that would be amazing to have people going, oh, I just did this one thing and now I'm doing this. That's my aim is to have more people saying to me, oh, my gosh, thank you.
I've started this because of that one thing. Yeah, it's amazing. Huge positive ripple effect.
So cool. So cool. So where can we find you on the wonderful world of the web? Well, definitely Facebook, even just find my personal profile, Tony O'Day, and I'll accept you and start having a chat.
But there is also my website, www.tonyodaylifecoach.com, and O'Day is spelled O-D-E-A just for fun. I'll link them in the show notes so people can easily follow. Perfect, because, yeah, I've got lots of stuff on there, lots of digital products, mini courses.
You can even join my Reclaim Academy, which is all about reclaiming back the stuff that will mean you'll have that life by design rather than floating along the river. Yeah, amazing. Thanks so much for joining us today, Tony.
Thank you. Hey, well, thank you so much for joining Tony and I today. I genuinely loved this episode so much.
It helped me really gain a new perspective on my own procrastinating, and honestly, how cool is Tony? So much fun to hang out with. I will put all the links that we've mentioned today in the show notes. Don't forget, the summer is coming up, so if you want to come and hang out, if you want to soak up a bunch of beautiful personal development tools, if you want to work on your business, this is the place to be.
So check out the link in the show notes. Thanks for hanging out today. You know I appreciate you.
I do love hanging out here with you, so thank you, thank you, thank you. Until next week, take care, keep milking this shit out of life, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
