How To Stop Being Lazy
Everybody has days when they don't want to do much - it can be raining cats and dogs outside, or you might have had an especially draining day at work. The thing is, these should actually be the perfect opportunities for us to kick back and relax. And this isn’t about watching some mindless reality TV show in your pajamas for hours on end, either! Why not take this time to read a book instead, go for a walk in the rain if it’s that bad outside, or call up your friends and catch up?
It can also help if you try setting more ambitious goals with yourself than just lying around all day doing nothing. For example, if you reach the end of your work day and are feeling a bit burned out, don’t let that turn in to an excuse not to exercise. Why not head straight over to the gym and finish off your day with a good workout? You may feel too discouraged after having a long day at work, but if you just push yourself through it, you’ll feel much better for it!
Reaching for ambitious goals for yourself will go a long way towards stopping you from being lazy . But there are other more concrete things we can do as well.
This is something that I have seen quite often in the fitness community - people who are perfectly capable of doing a lot of exercise both at work and outside of it, but just don’t bother. Now, this is important to note - exercising isn’t something you need to be forced into. We can do it on our own terms, when we feel like it. But by having a plan in place, it will make exercising easier and more enjoyable rather than being a chore that we need to plough through in order to get out of the house.
The key thing here is not to set yourself arbitrary goals like “I’m going to go for a run every day for an hour”. Who cares if you run for an hour? Instead, set yourself more manageable goals. For example, say that you want to go running in the morning. The real question is - why go running in the morning? If your goal is simply to lose weight, then it’ll be a lot easier to set your alarm 30 minutes earlier and run right after you wake up. But if you don’t want to wake up early just for the sake of it, then maybe you can try waking up earlier and doing something else before going running - like reading or healthy breakfast followed by coffee!
What I am trying to say here is that we should find positive reasons for doing exercise rather than negative reasons not to do it.
Taking all this into consideration, it’s not so difficult to see why laziness is so detrimental to us. It’s as if we think that the world should be made available to us at our whim and fancy! Sure, we have certain obligations in life - but they don’t have to be overwhelming or stressful.
The more we perceive ourselves as a prisoner of our own free will, the less we will be willing to exert any effort whatsoever in order to achieve anything. Nothing good can come out of that mindset.
Instead, let’s look at why laziness is actually so detrimental - and how it actually hinders us from achieving our goals:
Skill Sets It's no secret that when it comes down to choosing between two equally-capable candidates for a certain job - the one who has practiced his craft the most is the one who usually gets hired! The same thing applies in life too. As human beings we are highly capable of doing a lot of different kinds of things. Unfortunately, some of us simply don't see that or don't appreciate how much we can do. To this day, I am still amazed at how many people I meet who think they cannot do things just because they have never tried! The more we practice and put effort into something over time, the more our skill sets and abilities grow. Laziness is a barrier to growth in every sense - it stops us from practicing valuable skills that will show us what we are truly capable of doing.
Concentration Laziness tends to make people ineffective in the moment - it takes away their ability to concentrate. While this might not seem like that much of a problem, it can affect us at work and in our personal lives to a great extent. The truth is that our ability to concentrate can be the difference between landing a certain job or not. It can also mean the difference between one flight being delayed or another! When we don't have enough energy to focus on a task properly, things tend to go wrong. You will notice this when you try doing something new, like trying out an online game or new workout program. If you are constantly half-assing things, this tendency will reemerge over time - and become more and more prominent as time passes by.
Motivation Laziness is also a barrier to motivation . What we need in order to motivate ourselves is energy, purpose and enthusiasm. Laziness doesn't care about any of those things - and so it can be extremely hard to overcome it. If you are not putting any effort in, how can you be motivated to do anything at all?
How Do We Overcome Laziness?
The answer is: we can't. If it were possible to overcome laziness, everybody would have already done so. Instead, what we can do is change the way we view laziness - so that it has a negative connotation and doesn't have such an effect on us anymore.
The truth is that laziness isn’t something we are born to do. There is absolutely no biological or genetic reason for us to be lazy. In nature, the strong survive and the weak perish - it's all about survival of the fittest .
That doesn't mean that laziness can be overcome without any effort on our part though. In order to overcome laziness we need to practice, practice and practice some more!
Most people are familiar with the idea that “practice makes perfect” . The more you do something over time - the better at it you will become. This is especially true for physical hobbies - like going for a run or lifting weights at the gym.
Conclusion
We can obviously avoid being lazy by avoiding it in the first place. But if we want to tap into our full potential, we have to be willing to put in some effort. If we don't put in that effort, the only option is being a lazy slob - and that's no way to live at all!
Feel free to leave any comments below, I'd love to hear what you think! Thanks for reading!
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How To Stop Being Lazy