pains of a year and gains of lifetime

Dear Shikha,

I know from experience how easy it is to feel depressed and disheartened about this.  My prayers are with you.  You have inifinite potential within you!  Remember, as long as you "get back up on the horse" one more time, you are not defeated!

Have you tried any visualization?  It is a powerful technique.  Sit or lie comfortably somewhere quiet.  Allow your body to get as relaxed as possible--you can do this by focusing on relaxing one area of your body at a time, starting at your feet and working your way up to your head..It helps to say inside yourself, "I am feeling more and more relaxed, deeply relaxed" etc.  Once you are quite relaxed, vivdly imagine yourself doing the things that you are putting off, and/or perhaps imagine yourself having already completed them.  Use as many of your senses as possible to make the imagined experience as vivid and real as possible.  Examples: FEEL yourself sitting in your work chair, typing or writing or holding a book; SEE the pages of the book in front of you, or the computer screen; HEAR some sounds associated with the activity (turning book pages? typing on a keyboard?); if you can figure out something to SMELL or TASTE, that's great; most importantly: as much as you can, create positive EMOTIONS associated with doing the work--happiness, exhileration, relief, gratitude, satisfaction, etc.  Again, this is all done through vivid imagination.  It does take some practice to get really good at it, but ANY efforts in that direction are helpful.  You get the idea?  With practice, you can also do short "sessions" of visualization as well as longer ones.

You will probably find that there is a natural desire to start carrying out the work you have been visualizing.  You are using the power of your subconscious mind to help you.

Forgive me if this is already discussed elsewhere on the site--I'm pretty new here.

I hope this is a blessing to you, and helps.  Let us know if you try it, and what happens!  

I think you will have a daily reprive and use your knowledge to help others infected with "the monster".

We are all behind you here--don't give up on yourself!

Just in case you are not familiar with them, there are two strategies that can be very helpful.  One is called "Microbursts" and is described on this site (see a link to it on the homepage).

The other is kind of an expanded version of microbursts and is usually called "timeboxing."  You can find some good articles about it on the web, also.  But basically, you create a "box" of time that you set aside for a particular task.  The amount of time can be very short, like 4 or 5 minutes (or even less!).  You can later build up to 15 or 30 or more minutes in a timebox.  Decide exactly when the time will start (it might be IMMEDIATELY), and then just start in on your task at exactly that time.  Use a timer of some kind, and stop at the end of the time you have decided.  If the timebox is very short, it will be that much easier psychologically to get yourself to start the task.  It is common, once you get going, to want to continue it past the prescribed time, which you can do if you want.  But the big advantage is that you have only committed yourself to work for a limited period of time, usually on an open-ended task, that is otherwise intimidating.  When you have finished working, you can plan another timebox for a later time, perhaps the same day, perhaps not. Here is a good link (containing links to other good articles): http://litemind.com/time-boxing/

Hope that can help you!