Anxious because Lazy

Sometimes all we do is focus on ourselves. We focus on our body image. And we focus on our goals. And we focus on our mindset. We focus on setting up the perfect life. And when everything seems in perfect order we check back in with ourselves and wonder:

“My Life is perfect, why am I not feeling good?”

Of course this can have a multitude of reasons. But one possibility is, that we are lazy. We know what we would have to do, but we are not doing it. And we may even use our mental instability as an excuse for it. We put off the work we should be doing in favor of creating our mindset, or exercising more, or whatever that may be. With me this would go so far, that I would engage in self-harm, just to have a bigger problem to focus on. Of course not everyone who self-harms does it for that reason, I would even go as far as to say most people do not. But I did. I am also not stating, that anyone with a mental issue, is simply lazy. That would be outspokenly ignorant. But what I am saying is: If our lives are perfect and we still feel anxious, it may be because we are lazy and I think it is absolutely worth checking up on that.

How does our laziness affect our emotional state? We may long for someone telling us, that we are doing well enough. We may long for external approval, because deep inside us we know, that we could be doing better. We end up being anxious, because we do not approve of what we do. We do not approve of ourselves. This can lead to a wrong self-diagnosis. We think, we are attention-seeking, have mental issues and don’t love ourselves the way we should. While this may true as well, the real reason is laziness.

I do not believe, that lying to ourselves, and telling ourselves that everything is fine when it isn’t but can be made alright is a smart move. Sure, there are things we cannot change, like our past. But it does not mean, that we should accept that we are lazy and just decide to roll with it, when it really is something that bothers us. We have control over this. And why would we find ways to cope with laziness, if we can just eliminate that very laziness and make our lives better this way?

How do we know, if we are lazy. We all are aware that emotional state fluctuates and maybe we are not equally lazy all the time. There is a simple way to assess this. We need to have a look at our commitments. All of them. School, work, family life, hobbies, you name it. Once we know what our commitments are, we need to determine, how committed we really are to them. When was the last time, we worked on that project we claim to be close to our heart? Do we only do the minimum of what is expected of us? And if so, why? Could we do more? How much TV and alcohol do we consume? As sad as it is, that last one is a good indicator, because when watching TV we feel, like we are doing something productive, but we can end up doing it for hours, without really doing anything.

How can we fight our own laziness? This is difficult. And I have just started struggling with this, myself. However there are three main steps, we have to take: We have to first acknowledge that we are lazy and in what regards we are.
Then we have to choose not to be lazy. We have to remember, why we made that commitment. Without a good reason to do something we should not be doing it. Everyone whines about how they do not have enough time, but they could not tell you, why they made half of their commitments. So let’s get our why.
And finally we need to strategize. We need to find out, what actions we can take, to not be lazy anymore. We can either increase the effort we put into something, or the time we put into something. We can run faster, or we can run for longer. We can finish a task well or we can work on it for longer. To spend more time on our commitments, I recommend Calendar Blocking. Using a calendar and assign tasks to time slots. Because this way we have full control over our time.
We should not try to force ourselves to doing more than a little more. This is a journey. We need to improve step by step rather than setting up a schedule that we cannot keep to for longer than a day.
Once we have our time slots, and we are working on that task, there is one thought, that I find helpful:

“I am spending time on this. I might as well do it well.

This is great, because it allows you to gradually not only increase the time spent on our commitments but also improve the work we do during that time.

One final tip: Try to quantify. Not everything can be quantified. But some things can. How much time we spent, how fast we wrote something. How long it took us to accomplish the same task as last week. Because even though this sounds very competitive it is true: Success is measurable. And if we only think we are good, with no recent measure to back that up, we are probably not that great and we have most certainly stopped improving, because improvement is change and change is visible, at least to ourselves. We deserve success stories, we are working on improving ourselves after all.

So finding ways to measure the improvement is crucial for our motivation, but also to battle that anxiety, that comes with laziness. Because when we see, how we improved, we know we are not lazy. We are not just telling ourselves, we aren’t to make us feel a little better. We are not lying to ourselves, we are telling the truth and with that, the anxiety will disappear. (Unless there was another source for it, in which case, we are now not to lazy anymore to deal with that as well.) In any case making sure we are not lazy. Making sure, we are improving is equal to being the best version of ourselves. And I kid you not: the best version of ourselves tomorrow is a little better than the best version of myself today. Working on fighting laziness will improve everything. Us as a person, our lives our relationships with ourselves, the world around us and the people around us, but especially the relationship with the people we love.

Balance and Making it count

“Eating is an absolute waste of time. Keep studying!” and “If you take a break now, you will never get back to work!” are just two of the sentences the little voice in my head screamed at me last Thursday. When we try to work. When we try to pour our heart and soul into something, when we try to be good at something, it can easily happen, that we want to make ourselves spend more time with whatever that is at the moment. Because we have a goal that we want to achieve no matter what. This drive is incredible. It can make us become great people. There is just one problem. It is absolutely out of balance.

Also on Thursday I caught myself being irritated constantly. Being mad and impatient. I was swearing and screaming because I go frustrated, because it felt like nothing was working the way I wanted it to. The printer did not print. And I had failed to finish what I had planned the days before. I just hated everything. Then I realized one thing: It had been weeks since I last worked out. My body was totally out of balance. I had been challenging my mind to be disciplined and study, but at the same time I had failed to challenge my body. And this was when I got grumpy.

We may not all need exercise. But balance we all need. Because, eating and sleeping and taking breaks are not just a necessary evil, that we do in order to keep functioning. This is what I tell the little voice in my head. But what we really need is fulfillment. That is what will keep us going. If we do only one thing for days and only eat and sleep because we have to, we run the danger of depending on that one thing to fulfill us. Which can easily become an issue when that one thing starts getting on our nerves for some reason.

That is why we need hobbies and friends and work and family. And all these categories have the right to exist. And all of them have the potential to fulfill us. Sure, we do not want to choose friends that we do not actually like, but we should not rely on our friends to make us happy. Or our family, our jobs or hobbies. They all are wonderful and to lead a happy life, all of these need to be more or less intact. But we cannot depend on one or another. Because that will most likely make us neglect the others and thereby make us unhappy in the long run.

Especially recreational things like taking breaks, eating and sleeping should not be things we think of as necessities. We should be able to draw energy from them. We can actively help doing that, by creating little rituals around going to sleep for example. Or having a designated spot, where we read when we are on a break. Whatever it is, we need to convince ourselves, that we deserve those breaks. And we can be grateful for them and for deserving them, rather than hating on them. We need to believe that it is alright to not study 10 hours a day. Yes, maybe we feel like we might fail the next exams if we stop studying, but if we cannot take a break and recharge, there will be no efficient studying and then we will definitely fail.

We can take this even a step further. Which is typical for people with a positive mindset. We have to go to a doctor or dentist for a regular checkup. Most people would get annoyed by it. Consider it a waste of time. But very few see it as an opportunity. We can talk to our doctor about any concerns we might have and if we don’t we had a checkup and we know for a fact that we are fine. Not to mention the fact that we get out of the places we are on a regular basis. Maybe we can walk there and enjoy the sunshine. Or maybe we just enjoy the time to ourselves. The very same thing goes for running errands and doing groceries.

So to sum it up: there are things we need to do and we need to balance the different parts of our lives, to be able to draw energy from them. But while we are at it, we might as well think about how we can make the the small and absolutely necessary things in our lives matter. This is actively employing a positive mindset and will fulfill us and make us happy.

Happy by Choice

I have spoken about positivity before. And in my last post I talked about how a vision can help fighting negativity. So I thought I might elaborate on being happy a little more. Because I find, that I choose to be sad and hurt and angry most of the time. I let all those negative emotions get to me. And feeling them is not evil per se. But there is a limit to it. And we overstep that limit, if we find ourselves, being more sad than we are happy.

Please do not get me wrong. I am not saying that someone who for example suffers from depression is choosing to be sad. I think we all have phases in our life, where choosing to be happy is pretty much impossible. We all have to decide for ourselves, whether or not we are able to work on choosing happiness… because we really are not always in a position to do so. But sometimes we are. And I think, if we can, we should be happy.

But how? I think it is a mindset. It means that we focus our mind on the positive. Like our vision of ourselves. Or the beautiful sunset. Being positive by choice means choosing to not complain. I often do that. Just complain about everything. Finding a reason to pick on everyone around me. And yes: I know this is toxic behavior. This is why I am trying to work on it. Because at some point I realized, that complaining is for immature people. Because either we do something about whatever is annoying us, or we shut up. Why talk about something that makes us unhappy and thereby remind us why we could be unhappy? There is literally no benefit to it. There are so many awesome things in this world we can go on and on about for hours. That will wake the fascination and love in us and make us feel happy. Why talk about something that does the exact opposite? Sure sometimes we need to face a problem. I am not talking about productive criticism. I am talking about pointless complaining.

I used to carry this stone to University with me every day. I used to have it right next to me while I studied. Just to remember that I was not being forced to do that. But that I had chosen this myself.

The next step of being happy by choice is believing that we can do, whatever we want to. It is working on us becoming the person we want to be. Becoming our vision of ourselves. Sure thinking we are absolutely invincible is not helpful either. Some occasional “If I do not work hard enough I will fail.” is perfectly normal. But can you see what this sentence implies? It actually comes from the mindset of “I can do this.” because it gives the condition under which we fail. Not the condition under which we succeed. And it also implicitly explains how to not fail: Work hard enough. So, if we doubt ourselves, which is normal. Let’s try to figure out in what cases we fail and formulate it such that the very same sentence that presents the problem holds the solution.

Now why would we go through all that trouble with all those details? Why does it even make a difference how exactly we put our doubts into words? Because what we say has a direct impact on our mind. And positivity is a mindset. So formulating the problem alongside with our solution will make ourselves understand that there is a solution to whatever problem we are facing.

So choosing to be happy in the end comes down to acting and talking like a happy person. Because after doing that for a week or two. Our minds believe us that we are happy. Doing this alongside with having a good vision of who we want to be, sets us up to actually becoming happy. And it boosts confidence incredibly. This I say from experience. I am not just rambling here… I once was very happy. I once had pretty much reached my vision. I stopped being positive. And I stopped being happy. Ever since I have been trying to get back into that positive mindset.

All I am saying is: it is possible to be happy. Despite everything that is hard. Despite all the pain that comes our way. Because happiness can be worked for. Yes, there are times, when all we do is try to get through the next day. Through the next night. Through the next our. Next minute. Without hurting ourselves. Without hating ourselves. But when we finally wake up from our pain. We need to remember that positivity is a choice. A mindset. One that we need. Because it will make us happy.