Thanks for calling my post insightful. The thread is called “Results matter”. I was mostly referring to that. And “success, that’s where the meaning is”.
Your advice is well meaning, I’m not doubting that. You see, people mostly know that results require taking action.
I agree, I wasn’t trying to say that’s “what it’s about”. It’s just that you see lots of this kind of advice online and it wasn’t helpful for me. If anything, it made me feel even more inhibited. Lazy people aren’t inherently lazy imo. They’re feeling overwhelmed, and just saying “take action”, well, they’ve heard it before. There are usually deep-seated psychological issues why somebody is “lazy” and not taking action(or maybe an exception would be low motivation because of schizophrenia, in which case my advice still applies I think).
Usually they have low self-esteem and fear plus maybe some other contributing factors. More often than not, somebody has put them down, often a parent, and told them they’re “no good” and maybe even that they’re lazy. Or they’ve been around lots of lazy people and become “infected”. I posted recently on another thread where somebody was dealing with constant negativity from other people:
You didn’t say it out, but to me, there’s an implication that it takes will-power to accomplish things. I have used will-power or negative motivation(if you think about it, will-power just refers to using negative motivation), and I accomplished lots because of it, but I was never happy and had I used positive motivation, I think I would have accomplished as much, if not more, plus I’d been happier. I think people also have this fear that if they are nice to themselves and don’t beat themselves up constantly about not working hard enough, then they wouldn’t be productive or maybe even that they’d do nothing. I had that sort of thinking a while back, and my parents are all about will-power, so they instilled it in me.
If you stop being hard on yourself, then sure, at first you might accomplish less things, as you get used to it, at least from my experience. But what you’ll find after some time is that you don’t want to just sit on the couch and do nothing, you get drawn to things, maybe even productive things. You have more energy and motivation because it’s not this huge weight pushing you down.
After you stop the negative self talk, then maybe at first you need to push yourself a bit to get the ball rolling, but for me at this point, I don’t have to use any will-power to get things done. Obviously if your job is not aligned with your life purpose then you’re going to resist doing it, and it feels like a huge burden. I’m in the middle of starting to change careers, and it’s scary but exciting at the same time. It’s going to be a slow transition so that I don’t get too overwhelmed.
I think people want to be productive, at the core, and then it gets “beaten” out of them. I have never met a lazy 3 year old. Sure they resist doing some things, but there’s not this huge baggage they’re carrying. Kids wake up excited every day, unless(or until) they’ve been conditioned to see life as a task to be done. This experience is almost universal, but everybody I’ve talked to has said that in kindergarten they wanted to go to school, once they had been in school for some, not so long, time, they started hating it. I won’t go into a huge deal why our schools are terrible(could go on and on why that is), but I’ve really tried to rekindle this childlike wonder, excitement, creativity and curiosity I had, that’s how you should approach life imo, not by willing yourself to do things.
If you need will-power, then imo you’re doing the wrong thing(s). Sure I still need willpower to do some stuff on a daily basis but something as major as my job is not going to be a drag on me, even if that means making a bit less money.
So no, I would say it’s a bit more complex than just doing it and not stressing. You need to address the reason you’re stressing if that’s what’s stopping you. Not rocket science either, but just “Nike it out” was not successful for me.