The Universe is made out of several powerful forces. There’s gravity, and the strong electro-magnetic force, and the weak electro-magnetic force, and chemical bonds, and a whole host of other ones that I don’t know anything about and I won’t talk about especially because this is supposed a blog post about self-improvement and not physics and chemistry.
On an emotional level there is belief, and there is love (probably THE most powerful force in the Universe…move over nuclear explosions, there’s a new game in town!) There’s also anger, and hatred, and other “negative” emotions, all of which I’ll go into another at time.
But last but not least is one of the least well-known, but most subtly powerful and destructive, in both physical and emotional terms, is inertia.
What is inertia? Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion. That’s the scientific definition, but it applies to emotion as well. I think we all remember our high school physics classes…an object that stays in motion tends to stay in motion, and one at rest tends to stay at rest. That goes double for us human beings.
People as a whole don’t like to try that hard. We get into ruts. We get lazy. We get comfortable. We seek safety rather than danger – which is pretty normal, but it may also hinder us from progress. It’s tempting to keep on doing the same old thing, but is that really the best for us? Or to ask an even more pointed question – is that really want we want to do?
This speech always comes to mind whenever I think about inertia :
(I actually couldn’t find the original video but all of Les Brown’s content is more or less about the same thing, so…)
He’s right you know. If you take the easy way out, life will be hard. But if you take the hard way out, it will be easy. Like many profound (yet true) things in life, there’s a paradox there.
Ask yourself if you’re really happy with the way things are. And if the answer is yes, keep on doing whatever you’re doing. But if the answer is no maybe you should then ask why you re not doing anything about it.
Inertia can be a very subtle thing indeed. It sneaks up on you in the form of “oh, it doesn’t matter, things are more or less ok.” You’ve gotten so used to how things are that you can t bring yourself to change them. It doesn’t seem worth the bother, or the effort.
You think of all the songs you re going to write someday. Or the new garden that you want to plant but that you never get around to doing. You’re going to France…when? Well, one of these days, of course. Sometimes all these answers are valid. Sometimes we really are tired, or don’t have the funds, or the time may not be right because of emergencies or things outside of our direct control. But sometimes they are a product of inertia – or in simple English, being too damn lazy to get off your fat ass.
But I don’t think we should be quite so quick to be so hard on ourselves – that often produces a reverse effect. Other things may be getting in the way – resistance, for one (I’ve written about it here) There may be other things you have to take care of.
You know what you can do? Tune into your body. To know really what is the block, go beyond the mind. The thinking mind is restricted to logic, but the body can bypass that. Go beyond thought and let it lead you.
So what is your purpose? What are you meant to bring into being? That’s a question I can t answer for you. But what I can tell you is that inertia is real, and that it can prevent us from doing the things that we really want to do, and being the people that we really want to be…just because we got too used and comfortable to doing and being what we are.
Don’t let it. Because we can be much, much more than we know – if only we let ourselves believe.