The Neurotic Perfectionist
Neurotic perfectionists are very critical and very judgmental of other people—but they are especially critical of themselves. These people can’t start something until it’s absolutely perfect. Neurotic perfectionists tend to have an all-or-nothing type of personality.
Neurotic perfectionists want to be flawless—so flawless that they become paralyzed. This person is usually extremely meticulous in their style and mannerisms. They’re very neat; they’re very controlled. They tend to wear dark colors—dark gray, black, navy. They often wear glasses. They are very intelligent. Their desire to be flawless makes them very anxious. Of all the procrastinator types, they usually have the most anxiety, and they are the most prone to depression.
Becoming Practically Excellent
It’s time to be realistic. Let go of any entitlement issues—just because you’ve been successful in one area doesn’t mean you’re entitled to be successful in a new vocation, a new modality, a new way of living, or a new way of healing. Success requires practicality, objectivity, and, most of all, the courage to be you.
You can’t be a superstar overnight. This requires patience. Progress is only created by what you do daily. One thing is for sure—you won’t get there by procrastinating. You’ll get there by producing. Instead of being a neurotic perfectionist who accomplishes nothing, your goal is to become a practical perfectionist who produces results.
So let go of the word perfection and substitute the word excellence. You can also explore using the words good, great, realistic, or objective. These words allow you to release the pressure you put on yourself from your logical, practical, egotistical mind. Success is about being realistic. Success is methodical. Success is a system. Success is a science.
The Big-Deal Chaser
Big-deal chasers have lots of energy and good people skills, but they apply those positive qualities only to the kind of enterprise that will reward them. Big hat/no cattle procrastinators usually have good intentions, above-average skills, and poor habits. They have low self-esteem, which they mask with high confidence. Being articulate promoters, they are often able to persuade others to buy into their idealistic dreams. However, the dreams they dream are so big that the idea of achieving them creates paralysis and procrastination. Their capacity to dream turns into a liability rather than an asset.
Big-deal chasers are idealistic. They live in their vision and their dreams, but they have difficulty developing the habits and skills required to actualize either. In other words, they have entitlement issues. They embrace huge causes. They have big real estate projects. They’re going to change the world. When it comes to their emotional style, they’re often vague. They have big dreams, but they usually don’t have a plan or a system to achieve those dreams. Big-deal chasers think that fate will intervene and eliminate the required effort for them to become successful.
Channel Your Energy
The movie Wall Street was all about big-deal chasing. The character of Buddy in Wall Street was a classic big-deal chaser. That movie had a great ending: Buddy wised up—he let go of being a big-deal chaser.
Do you spend too much time dreaming? Do you spend too much time romancing how it’s going to be in the future? There’s a big difference between creative visualization and chasing big deals, between idealistic big dreaming and realistic big dreaming, between daydreaming and actual visualization. And that’s the kind of separation that you must begin teaching yourself to create.
If you’re a big-deal chaser, don’t despair, because you have a lot of talent. You have a lot of charisma. You have a lot of energy. But it is your responsibility to learn how to channel that energy into production. This is not about forcing yourself. This is not about willing yourself to change. Changing is about being ready to become realistic, become objective, and realize that anything worth achieving is worth going through the process.
The Chronic Worrier
Chronic worriers are easy to spot: they’re fidgety. Their energy is somewhat frantic. Their eyes dart around; they don’t look you in the eye. They sometimes bite their fingernails, tap their pen, compulsively jiggle their foot, check the time, or choose any multitude of ways to express their nervous energy.
Chronic worriers have trouble changing, deciding, and committing. When you ask chronic worriers a question, you’ll hear a lot of “um,” “ah,” “well,” and “okay.” This type of vocabulary comes out of their mouth because they’re very concerned about saying the right thing. They don’t want to make a mistake. They don’t want to offend anyone. They’re afraid to get out of their comfort zone. They tend to have challenges getting started, especially in sales and marketing.
Chronic worriers have to process everything. These are the types of people who live in their head. Chronic worriers gets locked into an identity, and then they agonize about relationships. It’s a challenge to connect with others. They tend to be commitment-phobic. In relationships, they are so anxious about choosing the wrong person that they don’t choose anyone.
Letting Go of Chronic Worry
Any type of transformation requires awareness; if you don’t understand why you do what you do, there’s a high probability that you will continue to do it. Here are some healing modalities that can begin to assist you.
Loosen up your muscles. Start to see a chiropractor relatively regularly, even if you don’t have neck and back challenges. At least get an X-ray, or get yourself adjusted once a month to loosen up the muscles in your neck and back. If you are a chronic worrier, there’s a high probability that you grind your teeth at night, or that you have lower back pain. Many times, your lower back pain is connected to emotional feelings about receiving, asking, and deserving, and this is also connected to your finances. If this describes you, find some way to loosen up your body.
You can do this through physical or nonphysical adjustments. Explore different kinds of massage, yoga, tai chi, or any kind of martial arts type of modality that gives you the opportunity to practice some emotional discipline.
Begin to get out of isolation. Start to get out more, even with something as simple as going and sitting in a mall and just people-watching for half an hour a day. Stop obsessing. Spend less time online. Take a walk. Get a dog or cat if you’re alone—a pet that you can share some emotional space with. Join a networking group, a book club, or an exercise class. It really doesn’t matter what you do, but find a way to share some kind of activity with someone else!
The Rebellious Procrastinator
Rebellious procrastinators exhibit passive-aggressive behavior. They say what they want people to hear, but they only do what they want to do. They may agree to something, but that doesn’t mean that they will do what they say. They get their attention through creating conflict. They do more to create conflict than they do to produce.
Rebellious procrastinators often come across as hip, slick, and cool. They may look suave and debonair, and they may even come across as an amiable-relater type of personality. Rebellious procrastinators might appear to be great givers.
Rebellious procrastinators look as though they really have it all together, and initially you might be envious of them, but the more you get to know them, the more you understand them and see that there is a lot of emotional chaos behind their shiny veneer.
Rebellious procrastinators are very talented, but they live by the law of entitlement. Their assets virtually become their liabilities. Often they are so talented that they don’t want to practice when it comes to a sport. All they want to do is show up and play the game.
Rebellious procrastinators don’t feel as though they have to engage in the emotional discipline, repetition, and experience that lead to mastery. They don’t think they have to pay the price. They don’t want to go through the process; they just want the payoff.
Choose Collaboration—Not Conflict
Did you create a conflict today, or did you create collaboration? Were you warm and friendly, or were you angry, upset, and resentful? Did you generously tip someone, or were you upset that you didn’t get the service that you felt you deserved? You have the ability to understand your own duality and begin to live in peace, in the present, in the moment, and in the now instead of holding on to the past that creates rebellion and nonconformity. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being a nonconformist, but it’s time that you channel that energy into productivity, passion, creativity, collaboration, and the ability to connect with people.
You can learn to recognize those who are attempting to draw you into conflict. You can let go of being right so you can be rich. You can develop the ability to step into the present and recognize when that situation occurs. Instead of stepping in another conflict, you step back, and your whole awareness, your whole energy, your whole being, and your whole presence begin to change.
When you live this kind of an inspired life, people want to be a part of it. If you are a rebellious procrastinator, you can rejoice in the fact that you can find an outlet for that angst, that energy, that rebellion, that nonconformity, that juice, and that desire.
You don’t have to be a victim. You don’t have to be a procrastinator. You have the ability to become a producer, to become someone of influence and affluence. You can become a role model, a mentor, a messenger, an ambassador of change. You can become a pastor, a minister—anyone whom you think people look up to instead of look away from.
The Drama Addict
Drama addicts’ egos continually attract and create drama, and tend to weather the storms of crisis and chaos. Drama addicts are responsible for the drama they create. They’re addicted to their feelings, and they thrive on the adrenaline rush of saving the day under emergency conditions.
Drama addicts are either very meek and timid or hostile and energetic. Other people have to constantly take care of drama addicts’ personal and professional business while they pursue one distraction after another just to keep their life dramatic and entertaining. Drama addicts live in their own movie. They’re always on the go, keeping in touch with family and friends—but seldom on time. They like to make dramatic appearances.
Drama addicts are codependent. Drama-addict procrastinators are preoccupied with the adrenaline of drawing attention to themselves and getting others involved in their chaotic lives. They live in denial and seldom face the way they waste time procrastinating and exhausting their energy in drama and chaos. Drama addicts attract people and situations that will constantly send them into crisis mode.
Neutralize the Drama
We will always have people who show up in our lives to remind us of past events; no matter how advanced we are, we will always have some drama and chaos. The key is to learn to neutralize the feelings that create the cause so you can live in the effect. This requires autonomy (in other words, independence). The next time you feel yourself going into drama, see if you can catch yourself before you go over the edge. Start by taking a deep breath.
To overcome drama, you first learn to spot it in yourself, and then you can sense, feel, and see it in other people. You become a recovering drama addict. Instead of being a drama-addict procrastinator, you become a producer. The opposite of procrastination is production.
The Angry Giver
Angry givers say yes to everything; they can’t (and don’t) say no to anything. They pride themselves on giving and serving. They give, and give, and give. They over-give to the point that they alienate the very individuals they attempt to serve.
Angry givers’ giving is often disguised; because of low self-esteem, their giving is really about control. This is an example of codependency. This type of giving allows them not to take care of themselves. Their whole identity is taking care of their kids, their parents, their grandkids. If they have jobs, they tend to take care of their superiors or the owners of the company. They are the servers of the world. If they’re not taking care of someone else, they have no identity. This is often the case when there’s a mom at home who takes care of everyone in a large family: When the last child leaves the home, that mother has to rediscover her identity. But serving herself causes feelings of guilt, and this leads to inaction and procrastination.
There’s nothing wrong with giving great service, but if service becomes your identity, with no balance and very little production, then it’s really an addiction. By now you know that addiction turns into procrastination.
Angry givers tend to over-give as a way to seek approval and recognition. Unfortunately, they never feel recognized and rewarded fairly because a large percent of the population won’t reciprocate. Angry givers feel resentful because they’re not recognized for their service. They brood and pout, causing drama and conflict because they feel slighted. Their motivation in giving and serving is to be recognized.
Becoming a Healthy Giver
Learn to limit your time by determining its value. You can learn to let go of your tendency to over-give and turn your time into value. Being an entrepreneur requires learning how to devote less time to more people. If you want to create more value through your service, you have to learn how to serve more individuals more quickly, and the way to do this is by not spending so much time taking care of everyone.
Know the difference between priorities and demands. Priorities are events and situations that are personally important to you and that only you can accomplish. Priorities are personal. Demands, on the other hand, are events and situations that are important to someone else but require your time.
Monitor how long it takes you to finish projects. Do you overanalyze? Do you overestimate? Do you overdo and spend too much time on perfection that leads to procrastination? Recall situations and events that you truly wanted to experience but never got around to because of your guilt about relaxation and joy. Take some time to smell the roses.
Instead of being a producer, become a relaxer. Become a relaxed producer. During this year, plan at least a three-day vacation. Take mini breaks. Instead of being consumed with production, focus on results and the time required to get those results. Develop the ability to produce more with less effort, and then spend that valuable time with your loved ones, the people who really deserve to feel your warmth, your spirit. Learn to put the same energy you put into serving, giving, and producing into relaxing, because you unequivocally deserve to receive it all.