As Brian says, if there’s something you want that you aren’t making steady progress towards, it’s because there are underlying emotions you are avoiding facing.
It may very well be subconscious – you don’t even realize what’s really going on deep down inside you. It’s extremely common throughout society. We help men uncover and face this kind of stuff – what’s going on “underneath the hood” – at all our events.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2019.
There’s some kind of tension involved with getting to where you want to be that you don’t want to deal with, and that’s certainly the case with procrastination or the appearance of “laziness.” Many of us are taught to avoid tension as much as possible, but muscles are strengthened by putting tension on them, diamonds are formed under tension, and all kinds of success in life similarly requires tension.
So changing your relationship to tension, stress (a form of tension), and responsibility – beginning to see it as the catalyst it is for growth, productivity, success, and living a bigger life – is important. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal even did a TED Talk on how it’s your relationship to stress that affects your physiological health (right down to how your blood vessels react), NOT how much stress you have on your plate. I’m inserting that video at the end of this post.
Once you’re taking on a more empowering view of tension, check in with yourself deep down.
What emotional tension are you avoiding with your unfocused or “lazy” behavior or habits? There’s a time to relax and maybe even be flat out lazy, but that’s only truly rewarding long term after cycles of stepping into and walking through tension, and even being uncomfortable.
What fears or discomfort are you avoiding feeling by being lazy? What are the payoffs (instant gratification, feeling comfortable, etc) of your behavior and what are the costs, short and long term?
You may even have a fear of succeeding and getting what you want. Of the various responsibilities or vulnerabilities you may face if you succeed. That’s another extremely common thing we see from our clients.
Especially when it comes to men, many of us are good – or at least serviceable – when it comes to dealing with big, obvious tension: When the pressure’s really on with a deadline, protecting our loved ones and friends from physcical or even just verbal threats, putting ourselves at risk to pull others out of harm’s way, extreme sports, managing physical pain…right onto running towards danger in war zones.
But many of those same types of people are awful when it comes to the little, innocuous, less obvious forms of daily tension in our lives. That’s where all this lazy, unproductive, disorganized energy comes in. Being organized by itself, for one. Planning things out and tracking progress. Working on your goals when you’d rather watch Netflix, scroll Instagram, or get on YouTube. So get conscious of that and check in with everything we’ve discussed so far around these little bits of daily tension.
Work on getting comfortable being uncomfortable – like a hard, even slightly painful but very productive gym session – and remember author Jeff Olson’s 1%-rule: Both success and failure are created 1% at a time, with small, daily habits and decisions…and you’re constantly heading down one path or the other, 24/7/365.
