Often when I have something to do, but don’t feel much like doing it, I find it useful to fully acknowledge my not wanting to do it. “No, I don’t want to do that now,” in effect giving myself complete permission to not do it. Quite often I find that my response to this is a feeling of relaxation and increased willingness to do the task, and I can proceed with full attention, no longer hindered by the not wanting. There is something about fully validating the “not wanting” that frees me from it. And of course there are other times when I find myself congruent with not doing the task, and relax or do something else.

A more general form of this process is that whenever you have to make a decision between two alternatives, and have all the information that you need, but still can’t make a decision, try the following:

Arbitrarily decide to commit yourself to one of the alternatives, and notice your response. Sometimes it will be “Yes, that feels right,” while at other times it will be, “No, the other one is better,” and you can switch to that one. Either way, you will have moved out of indecision into action.

The general principle is to validate all the different aspects of your functioning, making it much easier to decide between the many opportunities available to you, and make choices that are satisfying.