Why You Can't Stop Procrastinating

Why do you keep procrastinating even when you know exactly what you need to do? In this episode, I break down why procrastination isn’t laziness or a lack of willpower—it’s your brain and nervous system trying to protect you from fear, failure, judgment, and uncertainty. I’ll show you how to make action feel safe, take smaller steps, confront the fears underneath your procrastination, and finally start moving toward the life you actually want. Freedom Live is a 3-day live experience in Austin designed to help you break through what’s keeping you from your next level. Get $100 off your ticket: https://robdial.short.gy/freedomlive The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll, and Dr. Steven Gundry. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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  Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you're looking to get to your next level and you realize that it's not found in another strategy or another book, it is only found by you conquering the version of you that is holding yourself back. And you need to be at my live event called Freedom Live this December. We're going to find out exactly where you want to be in life, why you're not there yet, and then the unconscious patterns and fears and limiting beliefs that are capping your success without you knowing it. So if you want to live up to your full potential, but you don't know how to break through, come to my event. Go to freedomlive2026.com.

• 2:17Speaker 04

  There's currently a $50 off coupon on that website. Once again, it's freedomlive2026.com. Today, I'm going to talk to you about the only real way to stop procrastinating. I'm going to say this first before we start, because you need to know, you're not procrastinating because you're lazy. You're not procrastinating because you're broken. You're not procrastinating and you're not doomed to be one of quote unquote, "those people that never follows through." Whatever you're dealing with, with your procrastination, I promise you, I have heard it many times over the last two decades of coaching people, of working with people. And I promise you this, you're normal. You're out there and you're going, there's something wrong with me. You know, I'm one of those people who doesn't procrastinate. I don't know how to get past it.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  No, you've been beating yourself up over procrastinating, thinking that it might be just who you are and that it's, there's no solution to this thing. But it's not true. There's definitely a solution. And I'm going to teach you today, the biggest part of the solution, the main reason why you procrastinate. And it's not your willpower. It's not your schedule. You don't need some new productivity app or new planner or something like that. Really what it comes down to and what we're going to dive into today is it is your nervous system and it is your brain working together to stop you. And I'm going to talk to you about why that is. I'm going to talk to you about how to actually get past that. Because your nervous system and your brain are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. I want you to know this, before we go any further.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Procrastination is just protection. Get that burned into your brain. Procrastination is protection. So next time you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself, what am I protecting myself from? And then you really need to start to understand yourself from there. There's a part of your brain that's called the amygdala. And its only job is to scan for threats and to keep you alive and not let you die. And the amygdala is one of the oldest parts of the human brain. It belongs to what neuroscientists call the limbic system, which is part of the quote unquote reptilian brain is what they call it, which is the, also called the primitive brain. These are structures in the brain that developed hundreds of millions of years ago.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Can you imagine what life was like for our ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago? That's when the amygdala popped up to try to help them stay alive. But we don't deal with the same crap that our ancestors did. You know, we don't have to worry about a tiger coming out and attacking us. But when you sit down to write that proposal, or to launch that business, or to start the workout plan, or to speak your truth and put it out on social media, your amygdala lights up like a Christmas tree. And it says, warning, unknown territory. This is a threat. Keep this human safe. Do whatever you can to trick them to not do it. And then your body just floods with tension. You feel fear.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  Your thoughts start to spiral. Suddenly you feel tired, or you feel hungry, or maybe you're just confused about where to start, and you don't do anything. And we're like, oh, it's because I'm lazy. No, no, no. It's your brain trying to keep you safe. This is how, this is the reason why I say, your fears will scream at you and your inspiration will whisper. Your system is literally louder. It's screaming danger, danger, danger, when it's trying to protect you from something. And your brain doesn't care about your dream life when it thinks that you're actually under attack. And so what is it that you're really avoiding then? Let's, let's go deeper into it because there's some subconscious stuff that we need to pull out. You're not avoiding the task.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  You're not avoiding writing the book, sending the email, putting yourself on Instagram, starting the business. You're not avoiding that. You're avoiding the fear in the emotion that's underneath it. Usually it's something like the fear of failure, the fear of judgment, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of being seen, the fear of success. Because success means real change. And so what do you do? Your brain and body trick you to doing nothing. And we call it procrastination. We call it laziness. But it's you being tricked by your brain. So you stall, you get your phone out, you scroll on Instagram for 45 minutes, you tell yourself, oh, I don't feel really good. I'll start, I'll start on Monday.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  You find something else to do that's important around the house, but really not as important. So you find something else to do versus doing the thing you actually need to do. It's not a laziness issue. It's not a time management issue. It's a nervous system regulation issue. You just haven't made the action feel safe yet. And until you do, your brain will continue to slam on the brakes. No, no, no, this is a threat. This is a threat. Don't do this. And you don't consciously notice it. You only consciously notice, oh, I'm scrolling on Instagram. But subconsciously, your brain, your subconscious, your nervous system, your body are like, do not let this human do this thing, because there is a threat out there. Here's the truth. Like I work with a lot of really, really high performers.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  I've worked with NFL athletes. I've worked with some super high powered CEOs of multi-billion dollar businesses. I work with them. I train them. I train them on their minds. And they, the thing I notice about high performers, and if you're a person who is a high performer or wants to be, is that we always want to learn the next thing. We always want to get the next thing into our brain and understand the next hack. But in this situation, you don't need it. You don't need to download the productivity app to stop you from procrastinating. You don't need more motivation. You need safety. Ooh, that's sexy, isn't it? No, of course not. It doesn't sound sexy. I know.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  But this is the real shift that you need to understand inside of your brain if you really want to change your life. You don't need anything else if you're procrastinating, except the feeling of safety. Because once your body believes and understands and knows it's safe to act. And we will be right back.

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  And now, back to the show. You stop waiting for permission. You stop overthinking. You start taking small steps in the right direction. And that's really what we're trying to do here. We're trying to make ourself understand, huh, I'm actually safe to do this. And once our brain and body know that, there's no reason to stop you. And so let me give you actual step-by-step process that will make action feel safe for you. Okay? So number one, you have to understand, you gotta work on your body before your brain. And so a lot of times we're like, I need to change my thoughts. I need to change my thoughts. No, no, what you really need to do before anything else is you need to change your body. You need to change your body.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Your body needs to viscerally feel that you are safe and you are okay. Because when your fear response kicks in, your logic goes out of the window. And neuroscience shows this. When you, this is why I say when emotions are high, logic is low. It's because when you actually have a high emotional or high fear, your brain actually stops sending as much blood flow to your prefrontal cortex, which is your decision-making part of your brain. And so you don't need logic. You don't need to think differently. You need to calm your damn body down before you can do anything else. You need to get out of your head and you need to get into your body. And so before you try to reason with your procrastination and with your laziness and with your doom scrolling, you gotta move to your body first. So a couple of ways you can do this.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  You can stand up, you know, maybe you notice yourself, I need to go build my business. And then you're 15 minutes straight on Instagram and you're like, hold on, something's going on here and I feel really anxious to grow my business. I don't know if I really want to do it. It doesn't really feel safe. You need to stand up, you need to shake out your arms, shake out your legs, act like an idiot. If no one's around, just move as much as you possibly can. And one of the ways you could do this as well, just shake everything out if you want to for a minute, two minutes. You can also do what's called tapping, where you can actually take your, your lightly hit yourself with your fist all over your body, every single muscle on your body. And you could just do light tapping throughout your entire body. After you do that and you get your body kind of moving and get some of the anxiety out of your body.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Do a minute of deep breathing. And you know, the easiest type of breathing for people to remember is something that's called box breathing. It's just a box. So there's inhale, hold, exhale, hold. It's like a box. There's four sides to it. So inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, and then start back over again. You do the shakes, you do the breathing for two, three minutes. You'll already notice like, oh man, I'm starting to feel a lot more calm. Then here's what I recommend. If you don't have a cold plunge or you don't want to take a cold shower, the fastest way to do this is to get a bucket or whatever it is that you have around your house or in your kitchen, fill it up with cold water and then fill all of the rest of it with ice.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  Move it around for a minute or so and then take your face, put your face in it for a few seconds so that you're actually starting to wake your, your body up and you're completely changing your state from what it was earlier. And what you're doing when you do these types of things, you're trying to tell your body, we're not in danger. Like we're safe, let's go. And this is a really huge key because almost nobody does this. I don't know if I've ever heard anybody else teach this. This is just stuff that I've realized over almost 20 years of coaching people, is that it has nothing to do with conscious mind. It has everything to do with the subconscious mind and the way that it links up with your nervous system. But you know, almost nobody does this, but it's the fear in your body that's holding you back.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  And so we need to understand, we need your body, I guess you could say, to understand, you're safe, you're not gonna die. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, tiny tasks. The next thing that we need to do is we need to show it more safety. So your body feels more safe, we need to show that it's safe. And so we need to take teeny tiny steps in the right direction to show that there's no danger. No matter how small it is, we need to figure out some sort of way to show that there's no danger. I don't want you to write the book. I want you to write a really bad first sentence. You know, I don't want you to overhaul your entire life and your fitness program. Just drink a glass of water.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  I don't want you to do an entire workout. Like I just want you to take the first step on a walk. Just put your shoes on to go for that walk. If your brain thinks the task is a mountain, you want to give it a pebble. And then your brain goes, oh, it's, it's not that bad. The smaller the task, the easier that it is to prove to your brain that the action will not kill you. You know, we're not trying to build Rome today. We're trying to lay one brick today. And so how can you make these mountains that we're making out in our head to seem like a pebble to our brain? So that's the second one. The third thing is once you start to understand yourself a little bit more and do this, you want to actually like name the fear, like find the fear and disarm the story.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  Cause there's some sort of story that's happening in your unconscious mind. And you know, I want you to understand yourself more. I don't want you to just listen to podcasts and read books. Like I want you to, to truly understand yourself more over the next couple of years. There is a subconscious story that's playing under all of this and we need to find it. Because this pattern will happen over and over and over again until we find it and change it. And so you need to ask yourself, what am I really afraid of? Like what am I afraid is going to happen if I do this? You know, if I fail at this thing, what does it say about me? You know, whose voice am I hearing when I meditate? Because our fears like to kind of thrive in the shadows. Like they kind of disappear and we don't know that they're really there. We want to call them out.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  We want to put a spotlight on them, to bring them out to the light. Because it's never as scary as, as we think that it is. And when we speak about it, it's like, oh, I'm really, I'm really making a mountain out of a pebble. And so if you have like, okay, I'm noticing the fear of failure. Like what if I fail? You know, the story is like something probably like, if I try and I fail, it proves that I'm not good enough. And this one's pretty sneaky for people. It sounds like perfectionism. It shows up in like endless planning and tweaking and waiting for the, you know, the quote unquote right time. And so you procrastinate. Why do you procrastinate? Because starting means risking failure. And failure to your subconscious, it's not just about the task, it's about your self-worth.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  And so whose voice is behind that? It might be a critical parent that expected perfection from you. It might be a coach or a teacher who made your mistakes shameful. It might be your own inner critic that you've trained over years and years and years of judgment. And so what do you want to do? You want to, you, the antidote is to ask yourself, if failure doesn't mean I'm broken, what else could it mean? Am I willing to grow and be okay with failing? You know, do I expect to fail on this journey? And you're trying to change your narrative around there by asking yourself questions to see a completely different perspective than you've been seeing. You know, another fear that pops up a lot is like, what will they think? In some sort of way, fear of judgment, opinions, whatever it might be.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  And the story is like, if I put myself out there, people are just gonna judge me and I'll get rejected. And this fear is really hard because we have this primal need to belong. And so in the moment where you want to put yourself out there, share your voice or share your ideas or share your truth, this fear will slam on the brakes. And so you procrastinate because taking action equals being visible. And visibility means vulnerable. And when you have rejection, it equals massive danger to your nervous system. I'm like, God, I'm not rejected. I need to be around people. I need to be accepted because there's that primal part of our brain that's like, I need to be in the tribe. And so there might be somebody else's voice behind it. You know, there might've been kids who bullied you for being different when you were a kid.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  The family member who mocked you when you were younger for your dreams or the, the toxic ex or friend who made you feel like you were too much. And so the antidote in this situation is to ask yourself like, rejection from who exactly? What does rejection mean to me? Is rejection fatal? Like who's, who's approval am I chasing? Do I even want that person's approval? And so that's number three. Number four is to connect to the why. Like you need a mission, you need a purpose, you need something bigger than you, something that, that is bigger than the discomfort of starting. You need to ask yourself like, what is this? Who benefits from me succeeding? Why was I born to do this? How will this change my family's lives?

• 19:10Speaker 04

  My very first mentor used to always tell me, my first coach that I hired when I was 19, said, when your, your why is strong enough, your how will reveal itself. And so when you think about quitting, remember why you started. Test number four, and the number five is to actually schedule failure time. This one's huge. It's a game changer. Make failing a part of your plan. Write 30 minutes of bad copy. Take 15 minutes to record a messy podcast episode. Take one hour to test stuff that you're scared of. No pressure, no outcome. This, it doesn't matter if you completely screw it up. This is just practicing showing up for yourself. You know, I, in, in my course, Mindset 2.0, where I teach this type of stuff,

• 19:55Speaker 04

  the neurology of taking action and the psychology behind it, I call this fuck it up and figure it out. Right? Because every time you show up, regardless of the results, you're teaching your nervous system that it's safe to try. And that's important. And so you really need to understand this. You're not lazy, you're just wired for survival. That's the real cure to procrastination is finding the safety. It's not some life hack, it's not another app, but deeply knowing how your brain and your body work together. And when you teach your nervous system that it's safe to start, it's safe to be seen, it's safe to fail, it's safe to suck a little bit and to not be good for a while. And you will get better over time. And then your brain goes, it's safe for me to try these things.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  Because you're not here to live under some sort of fear. You're here because you're supposed to build some sort of life that excites you, that helps you and helps other people, even if it does scare you. And so I really want you to understand that. This is the thing that you need to do if you're trying to stop procrastinating. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, once again, like I said, this is exactly what I may be diving into in a much, much, much deeper way over the course of three days at Freedom Live in Austin, Texas. It is going to be live in person, Austin, Texas, December 3rd, 4th and 5th. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to freedomlive2026.com. Once again, freedomlive2026.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode.

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  Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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  Oh, dad loves music.

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