It's the New Year and part of my resolution is to let go of some things I wouldn't need to journey with this year, it can be a person/people, items, feelings and even a habit. These things have a way they affect our lives negatively and it's important that we just do away with them as much as we can.
This isn't the first time many of us have made a decision to do away with things but we end up finding ourselves doing that particular thing we chose to do away with at the beginning of every year. The issue of letting go can be quite challenging and it all begins with identifying that thing we need to let go. As easy as it might seem, a lot of us don't even know some of the things that we need to do away with until they are pointed out to us.
Sometimes in 2023, a big brother in the neighborhood was lamenting about how broke he was. He made it clear that he was getting good jobs lately but it's hard for him to point to what's draining him finally. I was surprised when he said he didn't know what was draining him and we had a deep conversation that day.
Alcohol was the problem but he didn't see it as one. I pointed it out to him and he kept saying he wasn't spending much on alcohol until we started calculating.
Just like this person I briefly spoke about, many of us don't see some things affecting us as a problem. We feel like we are doing what's normal meanwhile, it's the other way around.
Even after identifying the things we need to let go, doing away with them doesn't come easy. Imagine telling someone who took alcohol every day for over 20 years to quit just at once, it's almost impossible if we are being honest with ourselves.
It can be very challenging to part ways with an old friend, feelings and even habits when they have become part of us but despite how challenging it might be, nothing is impossible if we truly want to grow in a specific or all ramifications of our lives. Letting go is a gradual process and it might take some time to completely let go which is normal; it's almost impossible for us not to get carried away once in a while with these things.
I have a few things that I want to do away with this year and they are all habits that I developed a very long time ago. It's not my first I am writing about letting these habits go but I have made a lot of improvements between the last time and now.
I am a whole different person but there are still a few traces of these habits and I will continue working on them until I completely get rid of everything. In response to Hive Learner's third prompt for this week, I choose to continue doing away with procrastination until it finally becomes a thing of the past.
Procrastination is a terrible thing that has made me lose opportunities even as a teenager, I so much enjoy postponing things until it becomes too late to do those things again.
Let me share with you how terrible it was back then
I met a man while doing some menial jobs and he offered me a job. He told me to come for an interview on a particular date but I didn't have a CV and decided to get one. Days passed and I kept postponing the CV till a day before the interview which happens to be Sunday. The business centres barely open but I still tried checking around and didn't find a place to do the CV.
I made up my mind to leave home very early on Monday to make the CV before going to the interview somewhere in Omole Phase 2. Upon arriving there, the place turned out to be an estate and there was no business centre in that vicinity. It would interest you to know that I was still searching for a business centre at past 9 when the interview was scheduled for 9 am because the man said he wouldn't be available after that time.
I saw about two business centres but they didn't open until past 9 and I lost the opportunity to get a decent job without any qualifications.
I didn't learn my lesson after that experience and still messed up a lot of things just because of my addiction to procrastination. As years passed, I realized that it was a big issue for me and started working on it. Although, I have made huge progress with it but sometimes, I relax and slip into it again.
In 2024, I hope to do away with this habit completely. My usual routine to get rid of procrastination is staying committed to whatever task I have taken up for myself and doing away with distractions. A lot of people underestimate the power of commitment but not me because once I can set my heart on something now, there is no going back for me.
Distraction is another big problem with procrastinators like me, little things take our attention away from what matters and to have an edge over procrastinating, I choose not to be distracted.
Nothing about the future is guaranteed and doing away completely with some of these habits is almost impossible. I don't beat myself up when I have setbacks with it and instead, I appreciate myself before making a stronger decision against these habits.