Joe’s core instruction in the coaching session is radical in its simplicity: stop trying to eliminate unwanted behaviors and instead stay with what you are essentially. Not as an intellectual concept (“I am awareness”), but as a whole-body felt sense. When the man asks how to stop procrastinating and watching porn, Joe redirects: “If you want it to go away, stay focused on being with what you are essentially — all of it.”
The key paradox is that trying to feel your essential nature doesn’t work — trying is the first layer of avoidance. The man discovers this in real time: he goes to try and catches himself, and in the relaxation of letting go of trying, “there you are. It’s always there.”
“If you’re trying, then you’re not doing it right. And that’s what you just discovered. You went to try and you’re like, ‘No.’ And there’s this relaxation and there you are.”
This points to a fundamental reframe of addiction and procrastination: these aren’t problems to be solved but symptoms of disconnection from what you already are. The essential self is always present — it can’t leave. The question “where is it going to go?” reveals the absurdity of seeking what was never lost. All the avoidance strategies (thinking, self-criticism, numbing) are attempts to resist something that is effortlessly and always present.
Related Concepts
- Discovery, not improvement
- Being yourself designs your life
- The expansiveness of I Am
- Trying is resistance to experience
- Procrastination is not who you are — and knowing that is the real pain
- Asking ‘how do I stop’ keeps you in the doing loop
- You can’t stop being present
- Wanting to control others’ perception of you is absurd
- Intensifying a feeling moves you through it rather than trapping you