Why Can’t I Sit Down To Write? best essay writing service reddit

We have made our writing into a big monster that we do battle with on a daily basis.”I didn’t always enjoy sitting down to write. It was a constant, inner struggle to begin with, but I loved how great I felt after I had written.’There are things in our past that we would be wise to hold on to, others that we would be wise to let go of. If we have always believed that we are failures, that we couldn’t possibly do this or that, then it will be difficult to change our belief system, though this does not make it impossible. Just because things always turned out a certain way in the past does not mean that they will in the future. Past experiences, whether good or bad, are lessons for our growth. Our failures are stepping stones to our successes. They do not determine our future other than to help us to grow and evolve ever upward, ever forward.

HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU PROCRASTINATE?

Do you feel lazy? Unmotivated? Do you envy those who finish the things they start, the ‘lucky’ people who have careers they enjoy? Do you believe that this is how you will always be? The reason you feel this way is because you reinforce this belief on a regular, daily basis. You believe this because this is your inner chatter, the words you say to yourself each time you acknowledge that hours, days, maybe weeks have gone by and you are still waiting for the inspiration, some spark that will motivate you to sit down and write. I will tell you right now before we go any further that this isn’t going to happen. If your writing depends on a spark of inspiration, a brilliant light bulb idea that will send you rushing to your desk, or bed in my case, as that is where the majority of my writing gets written, you are waiting in vain.’Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.’

~ Chuck Close.

Every time that voice in your head reminds you that you never finish anything, you reinforce this belief. If this is the nature of your inner dialogue, no amount of affirmations to the contrary will convince your subconscious otherwise and it is the subconscious that we need to convince.How can you change this ongoing cycle and move forward with your goals? Negative, limiting beliefs and feelings of failure and inadequacy have to be replaced with positive beliefs, a new dialogue best essay writing service reddit nature abhors a vacuum. This is true in every area of life. You cannot get rid of a thought, a habit, an addiction, if you have nothing with which to fill its place. If you attempt to change a habit, kick an addiction, banish a tiresome thought, without replacing it with another, you will find that in no time at all the old thought/addiction will return with a vengeance and you will be worse off than you were before as you will have reinforced the belief that this is who or how you are.

The vacuum that is left has to be filled with something that will make you feel a little better about yourself. It does not have to be anything drastic. Something simple, that you can realistically believe and accept will do. It would be foolish to tell yourself that you will publish three full length novels in the course of the next two years. It may happen, it does happen, but you don’t really believe that, as you wouldn’t be reading this now if you did. So, how do we go about changing our belief system? We start by finding ways to feel better about our track record. We cannot believe something unless we feel it to be true.

IS THERE A WAY TO FEEL BETTER?

‘No matter what I think, say, or choose to believe, the answer will always be ‘Yes.’There definitely is! Take a few minutes now and think of three things that you have finished, anything that you have seen through to the end. Is there something in your past that you never thought you would ever manage to do, yet somehow you did it? Probably, in hindsight, you no longer think that it was anything major, nothing to boast about, but I would wage that before you saw it through to the end it seemed insurmountable. The fact remains that you did it. You did what you had to do and saw it through to the end. You did not procrastinate.Some things we naturally give priority to; the basic, everyday necessities. We eat, we bathe, we go to work, we make sure the children arrive at school on time and we chauffer them to their extra curriculum activities. We fetch the shopping and pay our utility bills before we are disconnected. Doesn’t all this prove that we are not procrastinators? We don’t dilly dally with the important stuff. We may hit the snooze button a couple of times in the morning but we get up and do what we have to do. Does this mean, however, that we only move our butts if something is at stake? Does this mean that we need to have an incentive to get anything done?

I believe so. I was forever putting off sitting down to write. The idea of it weighed on my mind until what had started off as something I felt passionately about, in time became a chore, something I felt I had to do. It was a constant struggle to log out of the internet and get that first sentence or two written down, but once I did the rest was a synch. An hour or so later when I saved my work or put down my pencil, I felt great and the buzz I got from having written kept me on a high for many hours.Shouldn’t this have been incentive enough for me? It should have been but it wasn’t. I was reminded of the high I get from shopping for a new handbag or a pair of expensive, leather shoes, only it was an upside down back to front high that came at the end of the experience rather than at the beginning. With retail therapy the high comes with the anticipation of finding the perfect item, of trying it on and purchasing it. It may last until we get the shoes or handbag home and place them in the wardrobe and then it evaporates, or worse still, we start to feel guilty, as we know we didn’t really need another handbag and we couldn’t really afford it. The high from achieving a goal however, in my case from having written, lasts much longer and has the added benefit of building self esteem and helping to change those old negative beliefs and thought patterns.

Every time we find a way to take that step or two nearer to our goal, whatever that goal may be, the easier it will be the next time. The problem lies in finding a way to make the taking of that step, the starting of the work, pleasurable, a thing to look forward to in anticipation. We need to find a way to get our high at the beginning, as with the joyous anticipation of finding the new handbag. How can we do this?What if we could feel that the journey towards the goal was just another part of our daily routine rather than a chore? I began by changing the way I felt about sitting down to write. I use writing as an example but it could be anything from going to the gym three times a week to redecorating the spare room, or getting on with important course work. I began to stop myself each time I found that I was starting to feel dread at the thought of getting a little writing done. Instead of letting the thought, “Sheesh, I wish I had the inclination to write a couple of pages” take root, I stopped it in its tracks and changed it to, ” I have an hour to spare now so I’ll just read through what I wrote last.”

This slight change in my thought process may not seem like a big deal, but it took the pressure off and put the act of writing in the same category as anything else I might do during the day. I managed to do this for a few days in a row and the outcome was a finished chapter of my first draft.I’m not saying that it was always easy, but I managed to bring the act of writing down to a comfortable level. If I had told myself that I had to write a couple of pages or a whole chapter of brilliant prose I would not have begun. One thing leads to another. Reading through my work led me to changing a word here, another there, adding a sentence, deleting a paragraph and before I knew it I was immersed in the writing process. It always rests on the first step, on that first word, on the act of beginning.