Have you ever found yourself in the act of making a choice, or doing something, even if your brain was telling you that it wouldn’t help you and not to do it?
You’ve just experienced inertia.
It’s like trying to turn a large ship, and expecting it to be able to turn on a dime.
Only, in this case, that large ship is your life.
What is the trap of inertia, and what does it do to you?
Objects in motion
As Newton said, objects in motion tend to stay in motion.
Also put another way, objects at rest, tend to stay at rest.
So if you haven’t been exercising and taking care of yourself, you really can’t expect to go form 0 today, to a full transformation the next day.
There’s a process to change.
And yet, I expected instant change. That’s what all the programs and products nowadays promise, right? Buy me, do this and that, for a short period, and get the results that you want.
It’s not that easy.
All the instant stuff won’t get you far. You may be able to do it now, but it’ll be harder two weeks from now.
And much harder when there’s a good excuse to stop.
This is what change is all about.
It’s about developing the right momentum, to get the motion, feelings, actions, and expectations going in the direction that you want.
Negative momentum
The same goes for the things that you’re doing, that you want to stop.
Bad habits develop negative momentum. Instead of helping you, spiraling upward, it’s like a downward spiral, pushing you further and further into results and a life that you don’t want.
I was addicted to playing computer games. I’d play games the whole day just to avoid facing pain, frustration, failure, and my inability to make things happen, then.
It was a downward spiral. By not facing my issues, I had built negative momentum. I’d keep on playing games, which in turn, got me deeper and deeper into my pit.
And when the time came when I wanted to make a change, it was hard. I knew that I needed to do something productive and helpful, but at times, my fingers and mind would just casually boot up the computer games that I’d been playing for so long.
It took time, and deliberate action, to change all that.
The bigger, the harder
It is to turn or to change something.
It’s like a big ship trying to turn right away. It’s momentum and weight wants to keep going right, while the captain is trying to coax the ship to now go left.
What if the ship is forced to turn on a dime? It might very well break in half.
Same goes for us.
If we try to force ourselves to do something drastic, we might be able to do it once or twice, maybe several times. But when we encounter difficulties, challenges, or simply become tired, we revert back to our old habits.
Even if we know that’s not good for us, we still do it. We seek the comfort of what we know and what we always did.
Our brains and bodies choose the path of least resistance.
Unfortunately, that is to pick what we’ve been doing before.
Even if we know it will harm us in the long-term, we don’t think of that. All we’re thinking about is how to satisfy ourselves in the short term.
My wife loves to regularly eat chips. Once every so often is fine, but for me, certainly not everyday! Good things she doesn’t eat as often now as she used to.
If you want to change big habits and beliefs, deeply entrenched and experienced ones, you’ve got to work it out, deliberately, small step, by small step.
Build forward momentum.
I like the term momentum better than inertia.
Inertia tells me there is resistance. Like our resistance to change. We don’t want to stop, or to start, even.
Momentum tells me that there’s been effort and investment in the direction. That the momentum will carry you through days that seem rough, or days when you feel like stopping.
It’s like how people develop a habit of exercise. Even though the main reason may be gone, the habit is still there. People who have a habit of exercise, crave and look for exercise when they don’t get it.
Forward momentum, pushing you forward, even when you don’t feel like it in the moment.
Be deliberate. Make sure what you’re doing is meaningful and important to what you want to get.
Overcome the trap of inertia, by building forward momentum in your life.
What’s keeping you stuck in your life, right now? Please share in the comments below!
Leave a Reply