 What if the purpose of procrastination is to stop self-expression? That's the concept we're going to look at in today's video. So I've got a really interesting question here and this question is from Mika and I want you to listen to this question and see if anything Mika is going through resonates with you too. So as I said we're going to talk about procrastination here. There's a few very common issues you'll see in Mika's question but it starts off it says I've noticed that I keep putting off the things I don't want to do and my day job is quite tedious and entails a long list of things I'd rather not deal with. I think we've all been there. So there's emails, proposals, writing reports etc. While I'm hanging in there barely my tendency to put these things off and avoid them is bringing so much stress to my life. I delay and delay. I know if I just did the work I'd have less stress but another issue is that because of the stress I don't feel able to spend time on the things I really care about things like being creative, quality time with family, doing regular exercise, things like this. So I've heard you talk about guilt a lot with procrastination but I don't really get how guilt is causing this. It just seems like an inability to do these tasks consistently. Any ideas? Okay great question Mika. So it just seems like an inability to do these tasks consistently. Therefore our solution is just do the tasks consistently. It doesn't quite work like that does it? You see we're looking a little bit deeper to get to the the issue here and I mentioned obviously and as Mika says there in previous videos that the real reason we procrastinate is to do with guilt. It's a sort of a self-punishing activity that we engage in. Well what is guilt you could say? Well guilt when we think about it is guilt is anything that keeps you away from self-expression. Guilt another word for it is the defective story or something wrong with me. I'm not good enough etc etc. Because this self-concept is deemed unworthy it has to be rejected and put away. The real self that lies underneath is never allowed space to be expressive. Now we will have a lot of responsibilities in life that's part of life. We do these responsibilities mainly for purposes of survival not self-expression necessarily. So on one hand we have all these things we're dealing with all these you know these chores, these emails, proposals that Mika talks about. Not really things that would excite you or inspire you but a part of life that needs to be taken care of. So the really interesting thing about this question is it seems like the creative things the more enjoyable things in my life I just can't get around to them unfortunately because of all the stress of procrastination. But what if that's the entire point of the procrastination? We're always bewildered by why we procrastinate, why we keep doing it again and again. But if you look a little bit deeper you'll see that the real thing it's serving is to keep you away from self-expression, creativity, passion, anything that isn't about basic survival needs. So the purpose is to keep you away from that. That's why we procrastinate and it's because of this underlying guilt the real authentic self it's not going to cut it therefore we can't really allow too much of that self-expression that creativity that purpose that passion to come out because that's real that's the real deal. Now there's nothing wrong with responsibility but here's the thing what's a really great way I could keep you away from self-expression if I could from the purpose and the creativity and the passion in life. If I wanted to keep you away from that at all costs well what I'd do is I'd give you a whole bunch of responsibilities but even still you could just go and do the responsibility. What I'd do is I'd give you the responsibilities and I'd do everything I could to make you do them badly so you're always stressed about it you're always preoccupied with the difficulties and problems around taking care of these responsibilities and it'll seem like the other aspect of life the creative, the purposeful, meaningful part of life, self-expressive part of life something you just never get a chance to engage with. It's not because of busyness it's not because of laziness it's not because of any of these things it's an underlying metaphysical dynamic that's taking place so we want to kind of switch from always being in survival mode being preoccupied with these responsibilities all the time because really what's happening is survival mode has become hide myself mode right so the best thing Mika for this is to realize that well the tool you bring to this is why am I procrastinating? Bring self-awareness to the whole thing it's like isn't it interesting for the last three months for instance I haven't done anything on those creative projects that I keep telling myself I'd like to do and while I've been rationalizing that avoidance saying I'm too busy and I've got all this stress and I know that that feels very very real and of course there are responsibilities and stress but why is it that it always for so long and predictably and consistently keeps me away from anything creative isn't that interesting creativity self-expression this is authenticity this is the real self and that can't be put down unless there's this guilt that sort of is there to control it and keep it suppressed all the time so the awareness is what we bring to it first it's not these simplistic reasons why we procrastinate it's actually a way to unfortunately to live with guilt as opposed to looking at the guilt questioning it correcting it letting it go that's really what we want to do with this defective story this thing that there's something wrong with me life is not about survival it's certainly a part of life responsibilities are absolutely fine they're actually in a important emotional need we have but if we're constantly in survival mode and we're constantly delaying and thinking it's okay to put off creative passion projects or things that I really care about or time with family or regular exercise anything that isn't immediately about survival or firefighting or dealing with some kind of stress which is you know when the nervous system is in that fight fight or freeze response we really need to get back in touch with that aspect of who we are and that's a choice that we can make it's a choice we can make when we become aware of actually why am I doing this why has this happened so it's really it is due to the underlying guilt that we talked about the defective story so I've made other videos about that it's about questioning that narrative it's also about changing your story changing yourself perception changing the way you think and see yourself and to see yourself as someone who deserves the space to be self-expressive yes to take care of responsibilities but life is not all about responsibility it's a balance between our own emotional needs another book make it you might find helpful is my other book on emotional needs it's called forget happiness it's kind of more how to find a balance between our different emotional needs the model I use has five emotional needs in it responsibility is one emotional need but meaning purpose creativity is another one and we often think that we we have the luxury of well I just take care of the responsibility part and I'll put my head down and keep going with that but we kind of have an obligation to meet meaning purpose and creativity in life too certainly if our own emotional well being is certain there's something that we value we don't really have the option of delaying that indefinitely so Mika I hope that's helpful really what I'm calling for here is greater self-awareness and questioning that narrative that says responsibility responsibility but also avoid it why would it want you to do that why would it hold up these problems and these stresses and these responsibilities and then do everything it can to keep you away from it it's actually designed to keep you away from self-expression I know I'm repeating myself but I hope there's some some food for thought and maybe some insights into that and I don't know maybe you resonate with some of Mika's issues as well and if so I hope this was a useful video and as always guys thank you for being with me today and I'll see you again very soon in the next video bye for now