Hidden Killer

Chapter Three

The Enemy

When you are doing the right things in life, challenges are not excluded. New level, new demons. That’s how challenges appear like. They are seen as part of the building process you undergo to stir up your strength and zeal to achieve great heights.

We honestly want a lot in life like to be more productive and successful, setting daily achievable goals, waking up early and being healthy. But for some reason you just can't actualize these goals. We sincerely tried to put them to practice but at some points, we failed. At the end of the day, weeks or even years, we are unable to force ourselves to do the very things we eagerly want to do. So, we just give up, right?

Certain dreams and activities, for some reasons you just can't comprehend, why they are difficult and unachievable by you, can be really frustrating. If not well managed can lead to pervasiveness and wasting of valuable time and data on irrelevant things on social media. The simple truth is that it happens to everyone. In order not to be a victim of circumstance, wasted time and efforts, you have to identify who the enemy is.

There is a second personality of you within you that counters your real person. It creates cognitive dissonance within you and only wants immediate gratification. It works well when we allow emotions to override us. For instance, you want to study for an important examination or work for an important project. None of these feels good or pleasurable to your second personality.

The harder you try to see reasons why you must be focused, the other personality will always revolt and give you new suggestions. "You need motivation, see a movie first." "You can study at night, it's peaceful." Or " The project is next month, rest this month." You're now faced with two options; your option of preparing what's best for your future or the choice of long hours of pleasures. Once you obey your second personality willingly, it's known as procrastination.

Emotions have a lingering connection to procrastination. Our biggest enemy in this world is procrastination. It's the killer of our time, it has made us procrastinators, and social media is its strongest channel. Now, this is how procrastination uses emotions to work; "I don't feel like doing anything right now, maybe I will do it tomorrow or next." Since procrastination is a feeling, it fights positive feelings and promotes negative feelings with various techniques such as fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of being judged, low self - esteem, boredom, annoyance and frustration.

There's a bigger challenge, people aren't aware that they are procrastinators. How do you intend to fix what you're not aware of? Procrastination over time becomes habitual and harder to break. People left some things undone based on the assumption that the body needs rest but indirectly they are actually procrastinating. Some people might call procrastinators lazy but that isn't the truth. The truth remains procrastinators aren't lazy, they just need a strong willpower to break forth from it. It's a serious issue that needs to be worked on.

Most times, the enemy is not far away but within us. We just need to be more sensitive and pay close attention to ourselves and the activities we refrain from doing with no polite reasons.