Mili Metz on Overcoming Procrastination

Mili Metz was born and raised in Mumbai, India. She migrated to the US in middle school and continued her education on the East Coast. She holds a dual B.A. in Psychological & Brain Sciences and Public Health, Social Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University; a M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University, and her doctoral work in Counseling Psychology is in progress at Georgia State University.

Currently, she is the Psychology Chair at a small liberal arts university in San Marcos, CA; owner of Open Hearts Open Minds (www.oh-om.com), a leadership consulting practice focused on helping millennial women thrive, featured columnist at Ask Mili on GirlSide Chats (www.girlsidechats.org), and an advisor at Swell Collective (www.swellcollective.org) a non-profit organization dedicated to collaborative leadership and conscious communication.  She is married to an active duty U.S. Marine with whom she shares a heart for service, love of learning, and commitment to authentic living. They have two kittens and a senior dog.

Here are a few of the big topics we talked about:

  • Kelly introduces Mili and asks her to describe what procrastination and perfection mean to her.

  • Do you work best under pressure? It’s pretty common and Mili explains why.

  • Mili digs into why we procrastinate and how perfection plays a role in that.

  • Procrastinators often need to feel an urgency in order to get things done.

  • Perfectionism often has its roots back in our childhood.

  • Why charting out how long a task will take can actually help a procrastinator.

  • Mili gives an actionable tool to use to determine how long something will take.

  • Kelly gets real and vulnerable in this episode.

  • Authenticity is being attuned to your true self and meeting where you are.

  • How to embrace that you are both a masterpiece and a work in progress.

  • When you feel resistance, that is your mind telling you that you should actually try something.

  • Why stepping outside your comfort zone is so important to overcoming procrastination.

  • Mili shares how hot yoga helped her come to a breakthrough in being more present in life.

  • Mili shares her weekly practice and what her Inner Voice is telling her.

In Mili’s Voice:

“There are so many things that are genuinely pleasurable about giving yourself freedom to be present.”

“Something as small as being mindful about keeping a steady pace to my breath became very meaningful and pivotal shift towards true presence for me."

“If I had let myself remain in my comfort zone, I could never experience the profound change that has come from stepping out of it.”

“Redefining ourselves has to do with breaking out with the binary that we cannot be a masterpiece if we are work in progress.”

“Authenticity is being attuned to your true self and meeting where you are. Not where you should be, not where you could be, not where you have been. Right here, right now where you are”

Connect with Mili:

Mili’s Website