Yes, you know. You really, honestly meant to exercise, meditate, practice calming breathing techniques, start that paruresis program and get more sleep to improve your quality of life as well as your shy bladder symptoms.
But for some reason, it’s just not happening.
While there may be myriad reasons none of these things are coming true for you, you may be able to change that if you remember the overall “Big Picture” of why you’re doing these things in the first place. Before we get into the big picture way of thinking, let’s first kick out some of those myriad reasons you may be using to procrastinate or otherwise avoid some things you honestly want to do.
Excuses, Excuses
- You’re too busy
- You’re too tired
- The stuff is not fun
- The stuff is too tough
- You want to start fresh next week/next month/next year/next millennium, etc.
- You don’t have enough money to do it
- You don’t have enough (fill in other excuses here) to do it
- There are simply not enough hours in your day
Now that some of the topmost excuses are out of your system, let’s buckle down to another possible reason you’re avoiding all these healthy habits and behaviors. Here’s where the Big Picture stuff comes in.
‘Big Picture’ Way of Thinking
The Big Picture way of thinking is simply keeping the bigger picture in mind, or the large benefits you may reap from completing small activities or tasks. You may have heard it termed as “keeping your eye on the prize,” or focusing on the final reward.
“For instance, ‘exercising’ can be described in Big Picture terms, like “getting healthier” — the why of exercising — or it can be described in more concrete terms, like “running two miles” — the how of exercising,” explains motivational author Heidi Grant Halvorson.
In the case of helping paruresis, you can view exercise in the Big Picture manner as a means of alleviating the stress that exacerbates your shy bladder symptoms. In the dinky Little Picture terms, it remains a potentially tedious task of “hitting the dang treadmill once again.”
You can try dealing with other lifestyle changes that have been equally hard to transform from intention to action in much the same way.
Study to Back up ‘Big Picture’ Thinking
In a study published in Psychological Science, researchers examined the relationship between procrastination and construal, or how participants viewed a specific task they were asked to perform. Those that were guided to view to the task in concrete terms, or what happens when you relate a task to the Big Picture, were more likely to complete the task sooner than those who viewed the task in an abstract, rather than concrete, manner. The level of procrastination, or lack thereof, held true regardless of the task’s level of difficulty, tediousness, attractiveness or importance.
That means giving a Big Picture view can work equally as effectively for the small things you find fun to those you find tedious – so you still don’t have an excuse to get out of exercising!
“Thinking Big Picture about the work you do can be very energizing in the face of stress and challenge,” Grant Halvorson says, “because you are linking one particular, often small action to a greater meaning or purpose.”
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