We’ve all known people who start working at the last minute and still produce something brilliant. But for most of us, serial procrastination means rushed effort, done at odd hours, and often under duress. Not surprisingly, procrastinators rarely produce their best work and are often tired, stressed, and frustrated.

Many of us procrastinate because we’re afraid of failing. If we can back ourselves into a corner, then we have a ready-made excuse when things don’t turn out well. It helps to remind ourselves when we’re thinking this way, and to recognize that we should give ourselves our best rather than worst shot at success.

So how does one kick the procrastination habit? One tried and true method is to break the job into smaller, more manageable pieces. Sometimes it’s hard to get started because the task at hand seems so big. When this feeling hits, take the job apart and break it into smaller tasks that are less daunting. Anyone who has trained for a marathon will tell you that 26 miles can seem an impossible challenge until they put together a progressive training regimen based on incremental goals. The right small steps can lead to big achievement.

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Another way to fight procrastination is to reward yourself for finishing the project or even just a piece of it. Treat yourself to that Mocha Frappuccino after you finish the first section of that report for your boss. If it’s a particularly big project, hold out a particularly big reward—like treating yourself to a movie or a concert for finishing on time and to your highest standards. The point is to associate those things that need to be done with the pleasures that help make life enjoyable and fun.

A couple of final procrastination tips . . . reduce the distractions around you, such as the television or email, and prioritize what needs to be done. Many of us fill our To-Do lists with busy work that really isn’t that important. And remember, that “monumental” task you’ve been avoiding is NEVER as difficult as you’ve imagined it to be. Just get started!

For years, doctors have known that vitamin D is important for good health. It promotes the absorption of calcium, making it vital for the maintenance of strong bones, and strengthens the immune system. But only recently have medical researchers seen evidence that it may protect against many of society’s worst maladies. Even though much of this research is still preliminary, the results so far have been striking. For instance, low levels of vitamin D have been linked to increased risk of heart attack and diabetes.

Some doctors are now calling for people to make sure they get at least 1000 international units (IUs) of the vitamin each day—five times the minimum daily dose currently recommended by the Department of Agriculture for most Americans.

One of the easiest ways to increase vitamin D intake is to sit in the sun. Exposing the skin to the sun’s ultraviolet rays prompts the body to synthesize the vitamin naturally. Although frequent and extensive exposure to sunlight can increase the risk of skin cancer, 15 minutes of sun per day can dramatically increase vitamin D intake. People can also get more vitamin D by taking supplements or by eating more of certain types foods, including eggs and fish, such as salmon and tuna.

According to Wirefly, a recycling web site, “Cell phone circuitry and displays can contain toxic compounds like arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, copper, and lead. The plastic shells of the cell phones have also been treated with brominated flame retardants.” When these cell phones are thrown away, they end up in landfills, and because many of their elements don’t decompose, they can cause great environmental threats, especially as they begin to corrode.

Many people know better than to throw their cell phones away and instead stuff them in drawers or put them into storage. There’s a better way. Many cell phones can be recycled or refurbished. Even phones that are not fully recyclable can be sent to recycling facilities that will dispose of their toxic components.

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There are a variety of ways to recycle your cell phone. Organizations like Earthworks will recycle your phone for you and even pay the postage. And some companies, like Verizon and Apple, offer free cell phone and iPod recycling. Stores like Office Depot have recycling programs for cell phones and rechargeable batteries, and Whole Foods has containers near their elevators where you can drop off your phone on your way back to your car. A simple Google search will help you locate organizations that collect cell phones for various charitable causes. Could it be any easier?

One thing to remember . . . for security reasons, be sure to erase all sensitive data (like phone numbers and contact names) from your phone before you recycle it. ReCellular offers a cell phone data eraser for free. www.ehow.com/how_2003571_erase-cell-phone-data.html

First, we extend compassion to ourselves. “May I be free of suffering and the root of all suffering.”

In Stage 2, we think of our beloved, someone it is easy to love without condition, such as our child, our partner or our closest friend.

In Stage 3, we focus on a friend or acquaintance, someone whom we care about, but for whom we may have ambivalent feelings or the occasional “issue.”

In Stage 4, we select an anonymous, neutral person, someone who has little or no emotional significance to us. “May the checkout person at Whole Foods be free of suffering and the root of all suffering.” “May the homeless man on the corner be free of suffering and the root of all suffering.”

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In the fifth stage, we turn to those “difficult ones.”—the people who have wronged us. These are the protruding splinters in our lives, the ones who are just unavoidably there. It can be a challenge to say, “May my evil boss be free of suffering and the root of all suffering,” but this is the heart and soul of forgiveness practice. (A good sense of humor helps.)

In the 6th stage, we group all of the people from the first five stages together. This stage may seem superfluous, but if we can connect the people who are easy to forgive with those who are not, we can begin to develop true compassion. This is where barriers disappear. We see that no one is immune from suffering, even those who have hurt us. When our worst enemy stands beside our best friend in the forgiveness lineup, something subtle but powerful starts to change in our hearts.

In the 7th stage, we extend this compassion to the world at large. “May all beings everywhere be free of suffering and the root of all suffering.”

Although this practice emphasizes compassion without bias or conditions, it is just as effective as a forgiveness practice, because it helps us to recognize that those who have hurt us have also been hurt.

It’s not just the environment that seems to be experiencing global warming. A hot climate of intolerance and impatience seems to characterize many of our interactions today. Joni Mitchell alluded to our tendency toward provocation and hostility in a recent song . . . “You can feel it out in traffic. Everyone hates everyone.”

Last year, like many people, I was shocked to hear of the school shootings in the tiny Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. What was most astonishing was how quickly the Amish forgave the man who committed the murders and reached out to the family left behind after his suicide. These big acts of mercy and reconciliation catch us unawares and make us ashamed of our far pettier grievances. In the aftermath of the shootings, ironically enough, the Amish were criticized by some who felt forgiveness was inappropriate without the expression of remorse. But this is precisely when forgiveness has the most power and meaning . . . most of the time there is no one standing before us with lowered eyes and hat in hand.

The fact is, life gives us plenty of very ordinary opportunities to practice forgiveness—occasions that are rarely momentous or profound . . . the yoga teacher who didn’t say hello to us in class today; the officious security officer at the DMV who wouldn’t answer our questions; the woman on her cell phone who cuts in front of us in line. Every day people hurt or slight or offend us in some way, large or small, sometimes knowingly, usually carelessly. But we have the power to choose whether to make these events mountains or molehills in our lives.

Why Do We Forgive?

Perhaps the reason Jesus spoke so frequently of forgiveness is because it is so hard to do! He knew that much of our suffering in life comes from wallowing about in our own stories of hurt and loss. But he also knew that forgiveness could be our greatest opportunity for joy and growth as humans.

It isn’t too difficult to see what “not forgiving” does to us. When we hold on to a resentment or a hurt, we place ourselves in a straightjacket where our movement is limited and our options disappear. The way we obsessively “re-hash” an event sends us into demoralizing spirals. We know firsthand how often depression and sadness follow close on the heels of unresolved anger. And any psychologist will tell you, if you are hard and merciless with others, you are probably hard and merciless with yourself. This is what author Wayne Dyer meant when he said, “It’s not the bite that kills you; it’s the poison.”

We forgive—not just for others, but also for ourselves . . . not solely to make us better people, but to keep us sane. Many of the people who have hurt us don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong, may be unaware of our hurt, or might never know that they’ve even been forgiven . . . and, even if they did, probably wouldn’t care!

That’s ok. Because it’s not about them. We forgive on our own behalf, to make life less of an obstacle course and more of a journey. We forgive to reach beyond the storylines we feel compelled to tell about ourselves in order to feel safe and sanctimonious. Smugness shuts us down. Forgiveness opens us up.

But What if the Molehill is Really a Mountain?

When I first began to explore what forgiveness meant in practical terms, I had a lot of questions:

1. What if the person who hurt me was REALLY WRONG? Don’t some people simply have dubious motives? Don’t I have a right, even an obligation to exact justice on my own behalf?

2. Does forgiving mean I have to be nice to that person if I run into her on the street?

3. How do I practice forgiveness without becoming a doormat? Are “forgiving” and “condoning” the same thing?

4. Aren’t there some “infractions” too horrible to forgive?

5. What if the boundaries aren’t clear? What if I partly share in the responsibility for what happened? Should forgiveness follow a ledger sheet?

Although these questions certainly have relevance, I realized that the underlying “theme” behind them was that I simply didn’t want to give up my resentments. When I reiterated for the 30th time how someone had hurt me, it made me feel self-justified—the victim in my own compelling tale of woe. In his book Forgive for Good, Dr. Fred Luskin describes how we create “a grievance story,” first by taking something far too personally and then by hanging onto it for dear life. Whenever I resist forgiving, it’s usually because I’m getting way too much mileage out of my own personal drama.

We all have at least one whopper of a grievance story in our past. When we think of this person or situation, time seems to collapse, and we are immediately escorted back to the pain and distress we first felt. Sometimes it is so real, it seems as if it is happening to us all over again, in the here and now.

One of my own particularly tenacious grievance stories stems from a friendship that came to an abrupt end a few years ago. Although I knew “May” for a very short time, we seemed to connect on many levels, and we became close friends quickly and intensely. I had come to think of her as the sister I’d never had. When the friendship ended, I felt blindsided—betrayed, disappointed, remorseful, neglected, even ashamed. I was wounded and openly bleeding for a while. All of that was perfectly natural. If it had only ended there, things would have been fine. But I took it several steps further by doing the very thing I dislike most in others . . . I sat in a corner licking my wounds and nursing my grievance over and over, until it had grown from an unfortunate circumstance of life to an enormous self-defining script that literally stopped me in my tracks.

I made May an excuse for everything that wasn’t working in my life. I started to isolate myself because after May, “I couldn’t trust anyone.” I could no longer take social risks because “May had destroyed my self-confidence.” I couldn’t share intimate feelings with anyone because “May had made me feel unsafe.” In the end, these beliefs only made my situation worse, and I was the only one who hurt from them. The sad truth is May had long since moved on. I was allowing someone who had gracelessly exited my life to exert tremendous influence on me in the here and now. As Dr. Luskin put it, I was “renting out the best part of my mind” to a grievance story.

Fortunately, I came to learn that I had failed to distinguish between hoping something would happen in my friendship with May and expecting it to happen. I had created a set of unenforceable rules that May simply wouldn’t follow. She was expected to respect my boundaries; to be truthful and loyal; to honor my privacy, etc. When she didn’t follow my rules, I felt personally—and it seemed permanently—wounded.

How Do We Forgive?

One of the ways forgiveness becomes easier is by “impersonalizing” our own hurt. This doesn’t mean that we dismiss our feelings or make excuses for the person who did the hurting. It simply means we recognize that a hurt like ours is fairly commonplace. Everyone, at one time or another has experienced a hurt similar to the one we’re feeling. Our pain doesn’t isolate us . . . it puts us in the same boat with millions of other people.

Another forgiveness technique is to not make another person’s bad behavior a commentary on our own self-worth. We are no more the sum total of our hurts than we are the sum total of our mistakes. We did not invite, solicit, or deserve what was done to us. It simply happened. Welcome to the life on planet earth.

By feeling gratitude for the good things of our lives and continuing to hope that “the next time will be better,” we transform our disappointment into an intention that is active and positive.

It also helps to remember that forgiveness isn’t an emotion. We don’t wake up one morning feeling magnanimous and healed and ready to forgive. Our emotions are rarely in sync with our intentions. Forgiveness isn’t about “feeling it.” It usually doesn’t leave us in a state of rapture afterwards. It is an action, and it is often very raw and real.

Ah, I’ve Finally Arrived.

The biggest discovery I’ve made about forgiveness is that it is never a one-shot deal. It is never finished. We don’t declare one day, “I forgive you,” and then we’re done. Forgiveness is something we will need to return to again and again throughout our lives. When we least suspect it, resentments and jealousies will rear their ugly heads, and we will need to once again remind ourselves to just let go.

On the final day of a recent meditation workshop I attended, a student raised her hand and asked the instructor, “When you say we should meditate every day, do you mean EVERY DAY?” We all laughed, but a bit sheepishly. We’ve all felt our positive intention as an overwhelming challenge at times. Forgiveness is like that, too. “Do you mean we have to forgive ALL THE TIME?” we ask. Yes, but we can be gentle with ourselves about it. We don’t have to beat ourselves into submission. We’re only human after all, and sometimes we falter. Occasionally the hurt is too deep and fresh to forgive right away. Some kinds of hurt, like childhood trauma, require special processing, perhaps with professional help. And forgiving someone doesn’t mean we have to invite her back into our lives again. We need to use good judgment, to distinguish between a traffic violation and an eight-car pileup. But if we can recognize that forgiveness is simply a better way to live our lives, then it starts to feel like the most obvious, intelligent choice.

Who wouldn’t want to feel less imprisoned by the past? Why wouldn’t we want to live with less blame and more joy in our lives? Who doesn’t want to be the hero rather than the victim in their own story?

NOTES:

“Railroad Tracks in North Carolina” and “Florida Beach Sky” photos by Lyndi Schrecengost, ©2008.

10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace, by Dr. Wayne Dyer, 2001, Hay House, Inc.

Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, by Dr. Fred Luskin, 2002, HarperCollins, NY, NY.

The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron, 2001, Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA.