Beat Your Inner ‘Schweinehund’

In German we have a saying ‘to beat your inner Schweinehund’. If you beat your inner ‘Schweinehund’ you get things done and stop procrastination!

Your ‘inner Schweinehund’ – let’s call it ‘’Piggy” – stops you to do the things you really want to do, the things you put off again and again. Then you get frustrated, disillusioned, beat yourself up when really you should beat Piggy :).

So what feeds your inner ‘Schweinehund’?
Well, Piggy becomes very powerful when you feel OVERWHELMED by your task(s). You have 1000 things on your To-Do-List, and nothing gets done because you really don’t know where to start. The famous question: How do you eat an elephant? You eat it bit by bit. It will be a little bit hard to eat it in one chunk (I don’t think anybody’s mouth is big enough). So chunk your project-to-be-finished into little bits and pieces. Start eating the elephant one toe at the time. For example, if you want to clean your paperwork up – instead of doing it 8 hours at a time, allocate 20 minutes every day to do it. Little steps (or toes) are easier. Consistency is the key.

Give yourself a reward each time you done it! When you done your scheduled ‘toe eating’time, you can do go for a spa, go on facebook, read a book, etc. Or make a rule: ‘I can only do X if I have done my 20 minutes of Y’.

Piggy also has you in his grasp when you run the story of ‘perfection’. I will only do something when I am 100 percent sure it will turn out perfect. Give yourself permission to drop perfection. What if you cannot fail? (After all failure doesn’t exist – only feedback). As the famous saying goes: “Just do it”! Imperfectly is better than not at all, and you can learn from it to get better. No Master has started as a Master!

Piggy tries to avoid pain and likes pleasure – just like you. Do you know that putting things off and off will zap more of your energy than actually doing it? The amount of energy and frustration you create NOT doing something is far greater than doing it. Make the pain of No-Action BIG. Get mentally into the state of not doing your task. Magnify the bad feeling. Magnify the annoyance and frustration about not doing it. Really make it big and yuck and irritating.

Finally, get an ‘accountability buddy’ (Piggy doesn’t like that idea…). Find a friend or a family member who will support you in reaching your goal. Create a plan for each day you commit yourself to do an action which takes you to your desired outcome, and share it with your ‘buddy’. This will help you stay on track.

Piggy likes to have it’s way all the time and NOW. Therefore: Kill the ‘instant gratification’ mentality. You have a vision of your outcome/goal. Then the time comes when you have to eat another elephant toe. This is the time when you need to see the vision of having it done. A writer ones wrote: ‘I hate to write but I love to have written’. I had this experience when I did my VCE (High School Certificate) when I was 38. At times it was hard…. But afterwards I loved the feeling of the achievement of my goal!

Let Piggy’s procrastination wash over you and take charge of your mental Control Centre, and have a strategy when procrastination knocks on your door.

In short:

• Eat the elephant one toe at the time (even if you have to start with one toe nail at the time)
• Reward yourself
• Scratch the ‘perfection’ story
• Feel the pain of no action and magnify
• Get an accountability buddy
• Kill ‘instant gratification’

These are just simple steps you can start to apply into your life, and your inner ‘Schweinehund’ has to find a new home. Let Piggy out of its cage and set yourself free!

Have fun and please drop me a line about your experiences. Would love to hear them.

Love in all ways and always
Jutta