Andy is a burgeoning, talented independent filmmaker who has investors for his first two movies. He honed his craft and learned the business working for other companies. He came to me concerned that he was spending too much time procrastinating and wanted to find out what was going on in his subconscious to create the issue.
Before starting the MindMafia session, we explored why he thought he was procrastinating. At first, he thought it was because his father often procrastinated on big projects or because his uncle had modeled it for him. Then he mentioned that it might be fear of success. I could tell he was concerned and grasping at straws to determine why he was unfocused and not making the progress he thought he should be. When we entered the MindMafia session, I asked which part of Andy’s subconscious or psyche was contributing to the procrastination. Immediately, a subpersonality called “success” identified itself. When asked why it was causing Andy to put off working on his films, it responded with, “It is a pacing mechanism.” Then it continued, “He worked himself out of a job at his last company. I want to make sure that he uses his time wisely and doesn’t get ahead of himself. He only has funding for two films, one is completed and the second is almost complete. He needs to work toward the official release date and wait for funds from the sale of the first film before he starts his next.” Indeed, Andy had been let go of his previous position because he created several films for his bosses – enough for a year’s worth of releases and they had a backlog of work to edit, package and distribute.
After the session, we debriefed by exploring what this information meant for Andy and how he could use it to his advantage. Armed with the knowledge that procrastination was helping him to stay on target with a fixed deadline and that it officially is caused by the part of his subconscious most concerned with his success, he can relax and enjoy the time his psyche urges him to procrastinate.
A few weeks later, I spoke with Andy and he said, “Now I don’t feel so bad for ‘pacing’ myself and can use that wasted energy from “worrying” all of the time into channeling more creativity when I’m focusing on work and have more worry-free fun when I’m procrastinating!”