Why do we fear starting something new?
An article about why we get specific sensations when we are faced with stressful and unpleasant situations.
Start thinking about your usual activities, how many times have you postponed stressful situations? How many times have you started watching your phone instead of responding to emails or finishing a project? At this point everyone is familiar with the term procrastination, and depending on personal experiences we’ve all passed through it at some moment of our lives.
Procrastination started being used academically and scientifically at the 70s and 80s by psychologists like Joseph Ferrari, Piers Steel or Clarry Lay; it comes from latin procrastinatio, pro meaning foward and crastinus referring to the next day, which all together means leaving something for tomorrow or postpone it to the future.
The next time you catch yourself procrastinating, pause and ask: Is this task really a priority, or is it triggering a deeper fear? Answering this question can help you break the procrastination cycle and move forward with confidence.
-Corey Wilks Psy.D on Psychology Today.
But to solve the issue first we have to understand it, there are three main reasons explaining why we procrastinate, these are:
Fear of failure: This is something normal that happens to most of us, sometimes the own fear of not getting the results you expected in something is what takes from you the oportunity to perform better on it.
Fear of change: Thinking that if you do archieve the thing you want maybe people will start seeing you different or taking you out of your comfort zone, something that your own brain doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
Internalized pressure: Constant perfectionism and the need to prove right the expectations of others (or your own) is another reason that can get way too problematic in your own head in moments of insecurity or uncertainty.
When our brain processes a due date or something necessary to do as stressful your amygdala releases serveral hormones that turn on the sense of panic, which can change the natural functioning of the prefrontal cortex, the responsible for long-term thinking and regulating emotions. It is in this moment when your brain decides to avoid or postpone the task in order to protect it from possible negative feelings such as incompetence or dread.
Fortunately, there have been and are being made multiple scientific studies about this topic and not only do they resolve common doubts but they also give us ways to get the best of ourselves in the next tasks or events.
Scientific studies and research
Is the Association of Procrastination and Age Mediated by Fear of Failure?
-Springer Nature Link: Valerie Danne, Benedikt Gers & Mareike Altgassen.
State Anxiety and Procrastination: The Moderating Role of
-National Library of Medicine, NIH.
Role of Procrastination as a Mediator of Self-Efficacy and Emotional State in Academic Situations
-SciELO Brazil, Julio Cesar Morin-Huapaya.
By reading these studies we can observe correlation between procrastination and fear of failure, the amount of testostorone in our bodies and our own self-efficacy. However, even though we feel like these scientific facts can only worsen our current situation, this is all good news.
Almost everyone procrastinates, me included. I certainly know the feeling of leaving something for later in fear of not reaching expectations, I know the fear of failing because I did postpone the making of this essay just because I can’t be certain of how is it going to be perceived by different readers; but I also know the feeling of hope, the moment when you start writing and suddenly you can’t stop, when you feel invincible.
So don’t think that these new discoveries are something bad, because they do notice the problems but they also give us something better, solutions.
Possible solutions
Some of these are to prioritize meaningfully (focus all your energy into the true important tasks), face your fears (build a better self-efficacy relationship), reframe your thinking (see procrastination from all points of view), divide big tasks (break projects into smaller tasks without removing the special difficult parts), practice failure integration, implement self-compassion pauses (reflect with yourself when perfectionism triggers procrastination) and many others…
Lastly I would like to thank everyone that has read this article. If you have something that is waiting for you, even if it’s an assignment, a personal project or an activity, whatever thing that you are leaving behind just for the fear of the uncertainty of what might happen, try to pick it up and restart, continue or finish, if you are motivated. Don’t let your mind take away your own potential.