A Buddhist Procrastinator's 12 Step

A Buddhist Procrastinator’s 12 Steps:

1. We admitted our lives had become unmanageable and that
procrastination and compulsive avoidance has taken over - we recognise its
consequences in our lives.

2. We came to believe that we can be restored to wholeness -
through the application of evidence, experience and reason, as well as the
support of our friends, family and community, and with the sense of a power that
transcends our conscious selves -that we
could return to sanity and sobriety.

3. We made a decision to go for refuge to this other power as we
understood it and realsied that this involved turning our will and our lives over to
thinking and action based on experience, evidence and rational reasoning and to accepting the wider
support, and listening to the advice, of our community.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.

5. We admitted to ourselves, to other human beings, and to our
teachers past and present, the exact nature of our past actions and states.

6. We became entirely ready to work at transforming ourselves.

7. With the assistance of others and our own firm resolve, using
experience, evidence and reason, we have sought to transform the unskilful
aspects of ourselves and cultivate the positive ones.

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became
willing to make amends to them all.

9. We directly made amends to such people where possible, except
when to do so would injure them or others.  In addition, we have made a conscientious
effort to forgive all those who have harmed us.

10. We continue to maintain awareness of our actions and
motives, and when we have acted unskilfully, promptly admitted it.

11. We have sought through meditation, mantra and ritual affirmation,
rational thought, and scientific evidence - to deepen our conscious awareness
and understanding of ourselves, to strengthen  our relationship with our community of
support, to foster our individual growth.  We do this through cultivating positive states
of mind and transforming negative ones; we aim to develop in awareness, love
and energy.

12. Having had an awakening as the result of these Steps, we practice
these principles in all areas of our lives and try to carry this message of
recovery to other procrastinators.