What you’ve got + What you need = What you want .... Right? Well... maybe or maybe not. We often strive to fill that gap between what we’ve got and what we want focusing our attention on weaknesses. In fact, I often have suggested this strategy myself in coaching sessions. Yet recently I have been investigating another point of view. Are we spending so much time and energy trying to get up to speed where we are lacking that we miss opportunity to leverage and maximize strengths, talents, and resources that we already have?

Even our brain seems to develop to our strengths and talents. In Now, Discover Your Strengths, a book based on Gallup study of over 2 million people, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. authors explain how brain’s threads are woven. To summarize, they say that your “synapses create your talents”. The synapse is a connection between your brain cells, called neurons. Your brain grows quickly and by age 3 you have about a hundred billion neurons with fifteen thousand synaptic connections. The odd part is by your 16th birthday you have lost 1/2 of your connections. Don’t be concerned though, authors explain “your smartness and your effectiveness depend on how well you capitalize on your strongest connections. Nature forces you to shut down billions of connections precisely so that you can be freed up to exploit ones remaining.”

Procrastination...putting off what you can do today until tomorrow...7 years, 5 months, and 2 days later you’re wondering why you never started that book. It would have been done by now and you would be reaping rewards. Writing would be your full-time pleasure now. You can see yourself sitting on garden patio of your dream home surrounded by towering palm trees and luxurious flowers. You look across Pacific as ocean air gently blows across your face. The phone rings. Your latest book made Best Seller List. Funny how in regret vision is always bright and sunny, and in procrastination its doom and gloom. You say to yourself, ”No one will ever want to read my book. No one will ever publish my book”. What if you could switch that picture so you are pulled towards vision like it was a magnet. The vision will be there. Why not create it sooner rather than later. Procrastination results in stress, poor health, and regrets that last a lifetime. Taking action leads to fulfillment, life experience, and wisdom. So read on to discover how to break through procrastination, take action, and make things happen.

Step 1- Where in your life are you procrastinating? Is it appropriate decision to delay or irrational postponement? Choose one project that you want to stop procrastinating on.

Step 2- Discover source in order to create a solution. Consider when your car doesn’t start. You look for source of problem. When you find source it is easy to take action to make repair. Look behind procrastination to find what is stopping you. It may be an unpleasant task, lack of interest, someone else’s goal, a large overwhelming project, fear, poor time management, or indecision. When you discover source you are one step closer to making a change. Congratulations!