If you've ever had a part of you wanting to exercise, but
also had a stronger part of you that can't be bothered, then
you know what I mean by laziness.
But laziness is not bad. It's actually good.
There are lots of emotions, plenty of feelings, and numerous
thoughts that people get every moment of every day, and
people incorrectly label most of them as "bad".
For instance a lot of people think feeling fear is bad. And
of course anything bad has to be fought, resisted or gotten
rid of.
But what they don't realize is that they are feeling the
fear because of something they experienced in the past and
consciously made a decision to avoid. Maybe it was something
painful. Maybe it was something embarrassing. Maybe it was
something that caused them financial or social ruin.
Whatever it was, the fear they are feeling now is the result
of something that looks just like that thing they wanted to
avoid. You may not always like the results of fear -
stoppages, blockages, locked muscles, frozen voice box – but
fear is just an old command you gave yourself which your
subconscious is reminding you of. So it's not really good or
bad.
Laziness is another feeling that people have which they
often call "bad".
Now laziness is different to fear. But to really understand
laziness though, I'm going to take you back to my days
working with computers.
You see I've been using these mechanical frustration
factories since about 1983 when what passed for a computer
was a plastic shell housing a TV and typewriter, but with
less processing power than today's digital watches.
And yet as clunky as they were I really got into them.
I was fascinated by them and what they could do. It
amazed me that except for very rare circumstances, a
computer always did exactly what it was told. Even if that's
not what you meant to tell it to do, it would do exactly
what you said to do.
If you told it to delete all your work, it'd do it.
If in the heat of anger you told it to send that email
telling the boss exactly what you think of him, it'd do it.
Even if you told it to delete its own files (effectively to
commit suicide) off it would happily go in self-destruction.
So when I started programming I learned that there is a
problem with computers obeying everything they are told. You
could give them a command which if you weren't careful with
what you said, they'd go into an infinite loop.
A simple example of this is to start with a number such as
10. Make a loop that keeps going until the number is below
5. Then within that loop, increase the number instead of
decreasing it. The loop will never stop because the number
will always increase and therefore will never get below 5.
Now if you tell a human to do that, unless they are very
trusting or very stupid, they will keep going until they
make a value judgment that it is not worth continuing.
And that's very different to a computer. A computer will
continue until it physically cannot go any further, and it
will crash in a heap.
What makes us different from computers is that we make value
judgments about whether something is worth our time; worth
our effort.
To get a computer to work you tell it what to do. To get a
human to work you have to sell the idea to them that the
action or its result is worth the work to do it.
So when you're feeling lazy, you're actually engaging in
that action that makes you superior to the fastest, most
powerful, biggest, all-encompassing computer on earth.
You're making a value judgment.
When you're feeling lazy, you're saying "Is this action
WORTH doing?"
And that's why, when you're feeling lazy you need to
remember why you are doing this. You need to remember your
goal. You need to remember the REASON you are training. Your
reason for training needs to be clear, big and immediately
available to that human part of your mind which is asking
the question "Do I keep going to 10,000 hindu pushups?" Or
"Is it worth busting my gut to finally do a proper
handstand?" or "Should I do that last squat even though I'm
shaking, sweating and in pain?"
Or perhaps you're sitting at your computer asking yourself
"Should I get up and train today?"
So realize that being lazy isn't bad. You're being a human,
not a mindless computer. But to feel good about yourself you
have to go one step further. To be a human that feels
worthwhile you've got to achieve worthwhile goals. This
means that when you ask yourself any of the questions above
about exercising, you've got to answer at least this one
word...
"Yes."
Matthew White is the author of Instant Calmness, a course
which teaches the easy way to achieve confidence, relaxation
and motivation.
You can find out more here.
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