Kevin Ray Ward argues that calling procrastination "distraction" or "getting caught up" is just lying to yourself. Owning the truth about what you're actually doing, not sanitizing it with softer words, is what lets you change the behavior and win.
Chapters
I have observed how we minimize the things that we do that keep us from winning or that cause us to lose by sanitizing the way we communicate them. What are you lying to yourself about by sanitizing it, by minimizing it, by the words that we use? You see, what we try to do is we take our failures and we take something that we don't like about ourselves and we try to downplay it, we downgrade it, we sanitize it, we try to make it so that it doesn't sound quite so bad. So instead of saying, I'm lying to myself and I'm not doing what I promised my family I would do, we just call it procrastination. Instead of saying, I'm being irresponsible, we say, I just got distracted. Not the same, but it is. But we downplay it, we sanitize it, so it's much easier and it sounds much more socially acceptable and not quite so harsh and Brutal. But I also noticed that, or I realized that there is nothing more empowering to heal and to wake yourself up to the reality of what you're doing so you don't continue to do it or you don't do it again. And so your excuses, your euphemisms for procrastination or distraction or You know, I got caught up, or it's— all it is is a soft-pedaled excuse for why you're losing. You want to win? Call it what it is. Call lying to yourself lying to yourself. Call irresponsibility irresponsibility. Own it. Change it. And win.
