What a great fight many of us have to face against the laziness. That desire to leave until tomorrow (or the day after) what we have to do today (a phenomenon known as procrastination). AND How envious I am, I confess, of those who are capable of not giving up, of maintaining a firm course towards their goal..
I just assumed that at least two deadly sins dominate me, but in reality almost no one escapes. At all ages and in all periods of our lives, laziness is there, crouching and stalking us, ready to dominate us.
Laziness, laziness, laziness, laziness… many synonyms for the same state of mind
It doesn’t matter if what concerns us is writing, working, dieting, quitting smoking, studying for an exam or going to the gym, it doesn’t matter, laziness will hang on our backs at any moment to try to get us to abandon our “work”.
Its objective is none other than to push us towards pleasure at all times; an immediate pleasure that evades us from duty, that temporarily saves us from what we don’t feel like doing. It’s about the binomial inaction versus movement, entropy vs expansion.
Why we should free ourselves from laziness
Overcoming laziness produces internal satisfaction, increases self-esteem; while letting ourselves be carried away by it lowers it and can end up depressing us. How does this happen? now you will understand.
Let’s say my goal is to lose weight. In this situation laziness will appear as a constant invitation to give me a moment of pleasurefor example opening a packet of crisps to temporarily escape the suffering that dietary discipline forces me to endure.
Once the moment of enjoyment has passed, once the first potatoes have passed beyond the palate, the little voice (or loud voice) of my inner fatherthe one who scolds us inside making us feel guilty, will turn his fury against me as a punishment: “You are incapable of maintaining a minimum of discipline! You will never lose weight! Nobody is going to love you like that! You will be a seal all your life!”etc.
The string of niceties that we are capable of saying internally should be punished by law.
Abandoning ourselves to immediate pleasure lowers our self-esteem
The abandonment of duty for immediate pleasure automatically brings with it internal reproach. We become critics of ourselves, cruel and ruthless on many occasions, to the point of hating ourselves. And if that were not enough We activate the comparison with others, who, from the psychological bias of not being in the other’s head,we judge them as better than us, as more capable.
In this way, the negative effect that laziness and the resulting self-reproach have is none other than affecting our self-esteem: the level of appreciation and love that we feel towards our own person. Laziness makes me love myself less, lowers the consideration I have for myself.
And the less I confront it, the more power it has over me. It’s like a snowball down the hill, the force of it getting bigger and bigger as it goes. In this case the ball is formed by laziness, self-reproach and low self-esteem that As they gain strength within us, they depress our mood..
Deep down, it’s all about attitudethat is why there are those determined to face it with determination and there are those (I include myself there) who sometimes win and many other times lose. And in this matter of life there is no other recipe than to fight.
Overcoming laziness, doing what we know we have to do increases our self-esteem, brightens our spirit and keeps us away from depression. For this all you have to do is change the chip and assume the suffering that comes with going after our goal giving it a couple of noses. I insist, it is just a matter of attitude and habit. Choose to escape or to face. Perhaps now, that you know that the issue also involves your self-esteem and your mental health, you will think better before letting yourself be dragged into immediate pleasure.
