Question: I need some kind of new motivation for doing things that I just don’t feel like doing, even though I know I need to do them. Where do I look?

Answer: All procrastination is rooted in resistance. The mind imagines how unpleasant a task will be by comparing it to past tasks, and then resists its own comparative findings. If we are asleep to this inner dynamic, we unconsciously accept its findings and are defeated by it! Try doing what you don’t want to do by going into it with a wish to learn something new about it. Newness is life’s principle. On the other side of resistance is the flow of real life.

Question: I find myself constantly justifying putting off what really needs to be done. Parts of me convince me that I’m entitled to procrastinate; yet the end result is always that I suffer over the inevitable consequences!

Answer: All acts of justification are your way of saying, “I’m in charge and can handle this,” which holds the promise of, “Tomorrow I won’t be the way I am today.” As long as you can justify yourself, you will have mastered your pain. But the only thing that is the master is the pain.

Until you uncover the deception in self-justification, you can’t grow. When you continue to justify yourself, you allow the lower aspects of yourself to act out for the higher ones. Procrastination is just one of many forms of justification, which include complaining, “if only,” and all negative states that seem to validate the thoughts and feelings that are stealing your life.

Refuse to take part in considering yourself from these negative states. Begin to die psychologically to these aspects of yourself that have a death grip on you. Giving good reasons for your procrastination has nothing to do with freedom from it. Real change begins with running out of ways to justify yourself.

You can begin to have another kind of relationship in the moment. When you no longer find comfort in putting things off, you can begin to understand the mechanism of justification and how it makes your experiences line up to your views of how you see what’s going on. Realize the need for a higher life and stop procrastinating. Dare to bare the feeling of what will happen when you don’t cover up the lie of your presently painful life.

Question: Oftentimes I know the right thing to do, and yet I don’t do it — for example — rather than continuing to work, I give in to being lazy. How can I develop more inner discipline?

Answer: We are empowered to walk away from self-defeating behaviors in direct portion to our ability to see these same behaviors as being such. Start by recognizing that the person who procrastinates within you is the same person who then punishes you for your irresponsibility. These seem like two separate selves to our sleep nature, but they are secretly one self whose sole purpose is to keep us in its ever-darkening circle.