Cure Procrastination
Fellow procrastinators, I behold in your mind's eye the key to having a successful Christmas this year:
a sheet of paper and a pen.
Now, now, before you shoot the messenger or kick him in a dark bottomless pit that looks like a black hole (300 movie), I come in peace, not to become pieces. :--)
Yeah, you know who you are, Mr. Last Minute, December 24th—I'll shop now guy/gal.
No Budget No Doubts
Before we start writing, we have to cut all ideas we have about budgeting for the time being. Oooh, a painful notion for anyone who is in the accounting field. The more we focus on "Will I have enough money this year to get everyone a decent gift?", the more we become prone to procrastinate our Christmas giving.
We need be clear and confident about our ability to offer gifts to our friends, colleagues, and family. So let's start by writing "I can afford to give decent Christmas gifts to everyone I care about.”
Santa Started His List in January
The reason why we don’t have the money or think we don’t have the money for the Xmas shopping is because we plan too late. What happens when we plan early, we make room for budgeting. The idea here is that we need to write the plans down—the christmas list, so we can have our subconscious go to work on them. Santa doesn’t wait last-minute, he does it now, after all, he’s a business man. Let’s get our list ready now… just words on the paper—no need to panic, no need for budget sheets.
The Gifts Will Come to YOU
After we have written our list down, we will start to notice how we are constantly "magically” inspired by everything around us. The gifts that we wrote will suddenly some how appear on sale or someone will be selling it for dirt cheap, or even perhaps someone will give it to us for free. We will get that extra bonus we wanted, and instead of spending it on a $200 date, it will go towards that three, two, or one gift that cost $200. It’s all relative. We have to know what we want to give to that person(s) in advance, to let the universe do its work to bring us closer to it.
Hence, skip the budgeting I say!
Wrong Chimney?
Sometimes we can make wrong gift selections or that person may change his/her mind about something they always said that they wanted; the gift you were going to give to a couple who are your best friends—broke up yesterday, Jimmy doesn’t like bikes anymore—he’s into airplanes now, Cindy wants to go to Europe instead of Asia—time to change that refundable airline ticket. These things happen but because we wrote our list in advance, we will be ready for them.
So Merry Xmas to all... in ADVANCE!
- Bernard Noel