Hello again,

I feel I'm in the middle of some kind of breakthrough, regarding my
understanding of myself and my behavior. I'm starting to get a grip on my
irrational fears and hangups about a lot of things, but there's still a lot
of puzzling to do.

What I'd like to ask is a fundamental, age old question:

I know that I should do some thing, and I know from experience doing it would
bring me joy and relief. Still I don't do it, but procrastinate instead.

How would you begin to crack that nut?

Could it be my old demons in a new disguise?
Just a force of habit?
Something else?

What did *you* do if you faced something like this in your past?

Thank you,
HG

"HG" wrote in message
news:m363vnsmyt.fsf@nothung.homelinux.net...

HG writes:

Take some time off, and ask "why" (or "why not") persistently, the way
children do. "Why not do X now?" - "because of Y" - "why does Y
prevent me from doing X now?" and so on. At one point, you'll run out
of excuses, and find the real reason. As Tom wrote, it's usually a
form of aversion like fear, or sometimes anger.

If reading books is not a cause of procrastination for you, you might
want to read this: "A Path with Heart" by Jack Kornfield. The
material in chapter seven on "naming your demons" would apply directly
to your problem.

Two points about the book: 1) it's from a Buddhist perspective, though
general enough in content to be useful to any spiritual practitioner,
and 2) the tone of the writing is very kindly and almost fluffy,
touchy-feely-like, but don't be mistaken, there's a huge amount of
really useful solid stuff in there.

Monkey Mind wrote:

I've found that this sort of practice is difficult. Before I know it
I'll have found an excuse or another activity and avoid it. I just end
up going round in circles.

On 15 Mar, 22:20, HG wrote:

Absorbed hotmail.com> writes:

"Tom" comcast.net> writes:

On 16 Mar, 07:17, "Tom" comcast.net> wrote:

monkeymind@hactrn.ch (Monkey Mind) writes:

I've been doing that. Sometimes I have results (like with Tom's "get off
your ass"), but sometimes when I run out of excuses I run into a blank wall -
an irrational fear, with no idea where it's coming from.

The Speaking Clock live.co.uk> writes: