When you intend to do something but that intention never becomes action, you are deceiving yourself and no one else.
An intention without action is like preparing a delicious dinner that no one will eat.
Often, when intention is not followed by action, you put things off. When you put things off, you are procrastinating. You are sending an instruction to the universe that whatever depended on your decision and action will also be postponed. When you put things off, you delay all the good that was to come from the action you needed to take. When you leave until tomorrow what you can do today, time keeps passing, and with it your opportunities to learn and do things better. When you procrastinate, you sabotage the universal plan. You sabotage yourself; you can change your destiny, and not necessarily for the better, by postponing something that might have taken only a few minutes.
Usually, the things we put off are tasks we consider tedious or annoying, things we will have to do at some point, sooner or later. But the longer we put them off, the longer we prolong our agony.
When someone says they have two pieces of news for us, one good and one bad, most of us choose to hear the bad news first. Why? Because we want the feeling of hearing the bad news to be brief, and then overshadowed by the good. That way of thinking does not seem so crazy to me when we apply it to things we are putting off for one reason or another. What if we stopped to think before putting something off? Let us get this done as quickly as possible, so the bad taste in our mouths is brief and the satisfaction of having done it lasts. What if we focused on how we will feel at the end of the day after completing the task we have been putting off, rather than on the tedium we feel just thinking about it?
It is like having to bathe the dog. You see the poor creature there, his coat so dirty you can barely recognize its color, perfuming the house with the smell of unwashed dog. But just thinking about bathing him makes you feel terribly reluctant. What if you imagined hugging him—freshly bathed, of course—smelling lovely, knowing you were the one who made it possible? I think that would motivate me. Or when you need to wash your car, and keep putting it off week after week. Imagine getting into it when it is sparkling clean, with an incomparable pine-forest scent, all thanks to your effort. That would motivate me.
These are just a couple of small examples, but that is the point: to focus on what we want to achieve, recognize the satisfaction we will feel after all that effort, and give ourselves the little push we need to remember that the right time is always today. The discomfort of doing something we do not particularly enjoy will disappear, and the satisfaction of having given our best will remain.
Let us send the right instructions to the universe. The perfect time is today. Do not make passing time your pastime.
“You may delay, but time will not.” Benjamin Franklin