Tiny Buddha

Tag: lazy

  • Stop Gaslighting Yourself

    Stop Gaslighting Yourself

  • Why It’s So Hard to Just Rest and Why We Need to Do It

    Why It’s So Hard to Just Rest and Why We Need to Do It

    “If you don’t give your mind and body a break, you’ll break. Stop pushing yourself through pain and exhaustion and take care of your needs.” ~Lori Deschene

    In November of 2021, my autoimmune issues flared up. My doctor and I are still unsure which of my conditions—rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia—was the culprit, or if they were acting in cahoots, but the overall achiness and debilitating fatigue were a solid indication that something was more active than usual.

    I woke up tired, needed naps, and often ran out of spoons—a phrase familiar to many with chronic conditions, based on a gorgeous essay called “The Spoon Theory” written by Christine Miserandino.

    While I may not know the reason, the one thing that was certain was that my body was demanding rest.

    Do you have any idea how hard it is to just rest?

    I mean it.

    Knowing that I needed rest did not grant me the immediate ability to actually pull it off.

    I would sit down to watch a show and find myself trying to multitask. Or I would attempt to put off a nap like a recalcitrant toddler. Instead of throwing myself on the floor in a tantrum, I was trying to “push through” so I could finish typing an email or move a load of laundry into the dryer.

    Even with a body and brain that were crying out for rest, it was difficult to allow myself to do it. In the end, I had to reparent myself in order to be able to rest, enforcing stopping times and rest periods.

    Those of us in the western world, especially here in the United States where I live, are programmed to be productive. We are told—and we tell ourselves—all of the things that we “should” be doing in order to be busy. Work in all its forms, from job tasks to errands to chores, is what we are “supposed” to do.

    We are conditioned to be productive and to stay busy from the time we are young. We hear people say things like “I’ll rest when I’m dead” and “no rest for the weary.” We are exhorted to “pay our dues” and “put in the work.”

    If we were somehow fortunate enough to avoid the overt messaging about staying busy and working hard, most of us received those messages indirectly by watching the people in our lives.

    We watched our parents come home from work with arms full of grocery bags, only for them to fix dinner while putting groceries away. Or we were asked what we were doing and made to feel wrong if our answer to the question was a child’s honest “nothing.”

    Long after dinner, once everything was cleaned up or tidied and it was “time to relax,” we watched our parents do additional work, both paid and unpaid. Or we watched them knitting, ironing, or puttering around the house.

    We have been told that we have to “work hard” in order to succeed. That “nothing good comes easy.” That we shouldn’t stop when we are tired, but only when we are “done.”

    Sitting down and resting is not prioritized. Those who decide to rest often must justify it: they have to have earned the right to rest.

    Rest doesn’t only mean sleep, although sleep is a large part of it. It also includes sitting comfortably doing not much of anything at all.

    It could mean listening to music or watching TV or meditating. Or perhaps working quietly on a jigsaw puzzle or craft or reading a book or article. Maybe playing solitaire, or looking out the window, or journaling.

    In the fall, as I was struggling with my autoimmune flare, it occurred to me that I should rest more. I was so accustomed to overriding my body’s signals that I hadn’t realized how far I’d pushed myself.

    When I tapped into how my mind and body were truly feeling, I was shocked to find that my mind and body were almost buckling, on the edge of collapse.

    I waited to notice what was happening until I’d reached the point where I was unable to do many tasks in the day at all. A banner day during that time might have involved doing a single load or laundry or cooking dinner for my husband and me.

    I was so fixated on staying busy that I could no longer assess my need for busyness in an honest manner. I had lost the ability to tune into my body to find out if it needed to move and stretch, or even to stretch out and sleep.

    Had I continued to push ahead for much longer, I’m certain that I would have fallen ill. As it was, I was dealing with brain fog, fatigue, and both joint and muscle pain, all of which made life unpleasant.

    It is easy to see now that I should never have allowed things to get to that state, but fatigue and pain and brain fog have a way of teaming up on you so that you can’t clearly assess much of anything. Nevertheless, when I hit the edge of collapse and burnout, I realized that some serious rest was in order.

    I essentially cleared my calendar for at least three weeks. I cleared my work calendar of appointments, scheduled some brief blog posts and emails, and took time off.

    It was torture at first.

    For one thing, my husband was still getting up and heading out into the world to teach tai chi and qigong classes, so he was modeling “proper” work behavior. For another, I discovered that I was incapable of “just resting.”

    I had to relearn how to listen to my body to discover what it needed. 

    I also had to reprogram my thoughts about rest as being an inherent right that we all hold, and not a reward for productivity.

    I also had to learn how to actually do it.

    I did all of the things I listed earlier as forms of rest, from naps to puzzles to sitting quietly. It was ridiculously difficult.

    I had to almost force myself to limit myself to single-tasking, which is doing one task at a time. That was especially hard if the task was mechanically simple, such as watching a television show. My inner monologue would kick up, chastising me for “just sitting there,” urging me to “be productive.”

    In those moments when I decided that rest meant watching a movie on TV, I sometimes sat on my hands to make sure that I didn’t pick up my phone or a crossword puzzle or something else. I often put my phone on silent and deliberately left it in another room, just to reduce temptation.

    Full disclosure: Even with taking affirmative steps to single-task, I didn’t always manage. I did, however, learn through reinforcement that there was nothing likely to arise in an hour or two of time that required me to give up on resting and take immediate action.

    I realized that in many ways, I was retraining my nervous system to allow itself to relax. It was so used to being in a state of alertness that resting and allowing it to have some time off took some getting used to.

    What I learned when I started to budget rest into my days was that I could start to tell more easily what signals my body was sending. It became easier to converse with my brain and body to find out how they were feeling and what they needed.

    It sounds a bit dissociated when put that way, but I have never felt more integrated than I do now. At any given moment, I can pause, tap into what I am feeling (mentally and physically), and act on my own needs in ways that are more nurturing and caring than before.

    When I realize that I am losing focus on a project—perhaps while typing a blog post or planning a workshop—I no longer push through. Instead, thanks to months of practice, I pause and check in with my brain and body. Thanks to practice, I can quickly ascertain whether I need to take a simple break, to get up and walk around for a bit, to take a walk outdoors, or to stop for the day.

    I am learning to embrace the idea that rest is an inherent right, not something that needs to be earned. It is no longer something that occurs only once I have pushed myself until the point of collapse. 

    As it turns out, the more I lean into rest and build it into my days, the more energy I have to actually accomplish all the things I want to get done in life.

    When I add time off or breaks during the day, I find I have better focus when I need to be working on a task. When I include rest in my days, I have the energy to exercise in the morning and also make a good meal for dinner.

    I invite you to join me in adding actual breaks into your day, where you do nothing “productive” at all. No catching up on phone calls or emails or texts—just rest. I’d love to hear if and how it works for you.

  • It’s Okay to Be Sad Right Now

    It’s Okay to Be Sad Right Now

  • How to Stop Procrastinating When Things Feel Hard or Scary

    How to Stop Procrastinating When Things Feel Hard or Scary

    “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay

    I dreamed of starting my own business for years. Ten years, exactly.

    While there are a few reasons it took so long to take the plunge, procrastination is at the top of the list.

    It’s hard work to change careers, uncomfortable to leave a steady paycheck, and nerve-wracking to think of failure.

    Even after spending months and years learning, studying, and getting certified, when it was no longer a matter of having the skills, the uncertainty of success was enough for me to keep kicking the can down the road to start marketing myself.

    I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of not being perfect. I was afraid that people would think I was a joke. And I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be capable of all the work it entailed.

    So I dragged my feet and kept passing my work off to “Future Me.”

    I did this for everything, though.

    “Tomorrow Sandy” can do the dishes. She’ll take care of scheduling that doctor’s appointment. Oh, and sign her up for that tough conversation I need to have with my mom too.

    At one point I recognized that I often procrastinated because I needed everything to be perfect.

    • I wouldn’t work on a craft project or cook a new recipe unless I knew it would come out flawless.
    • Or I would keep tweaking projects at work up to the last second and beyond, at the sacrifice of getting more work done.
    • Or I would agonize over every text and email I sent, often opting not to send any message unless I knew exactly what to say.

    But, as you can see, I’ve come a long way from that version of me.

    I’ve since started my own business (and I’m loving it!), and I’ve pulled my best tools together on paper for how to stop procrastinating—even though I actually procrastinated on writing this post (ironic, I know!).

    Today, I didn’t let my fear of “good enough” hold me back from sharing actual, helpful advice and mindset shifts to get moving and stop staying stuck.

    Because when we’re stuck, we start telling ourselves stories. So that’s where we’ll start, with this story we tell ourselves about why we procrastinate.

    What We Think Procrastination Is

    We have this misconception that procrastination is laziness.

    But procrastination is an active process. You choose to do something else instead of the task that you know you should be doing.

    In contrast, laziness is not caring. It’s apathy, inactivity, and an unwillingness to act. It’s an “I could, I just don’t wanna” kind of attitude.

    But when you’re procrastinating, you feel even more stressed because you do care about getting the task done. You’re just avoiding stress and having difficulty with motivation.

    Because that is why we procrastinate.

    What Procrastination Really Is and Why We Do It

    Procrastination is a stress-avoidance technique. It is an active process to temporarily avoid discomfort.

    We subconsciously are saying, “Present Me is not willing to experience this discomfort, so I will pass it on to Future Me.”

    (We do this as though we’re asking a stranger to do the work for us. Researchers have seen on fMRI that when we think about our future selves, it lights up the same part of the brain as when we think about strangers.)

    The really cool news is that by working toward overcoming your procrastination habit, you’re building your overall resilience to distress.

    That is how I define resilience: a willingness to experience discomfort.

    Examples of Procrastination

    Procrastination is tricky. Sometimes it’s obvious that we’re doing it. Sometimes we don’t quite realize it (like when I had to water the plants right then and there instead of writing this blog post).

    So here are some examples:

    • Scrolling through Instagram instead of getting started on important tasks
    • Putting off work assignments until the last minute
    • Wanting to start a new positive habit (dieting, exercising, or saving money), but repeatedly delaying it while telling yourself that “I’ll start soon”
    • Wanting to start a business but wasting time in “research mode” instead of taking action
    • Doing an easy, less important task that “needs to be done” before getting started
    • Waiting until you’re “in the mood” to do the task

    5 Steps to Stop Procrastinating

    Now that we know what it is and why we do it, let’s look at how to stop.

    1. Motivate yourself with kindness instead of criticism.

    What really holds us back from moving forward is the language we use when talking to ourselves.

    Thoughts like:

    • I don’t want to.
    • It will be hard.
    • I don’t know how to do it.
    • It might not come out as good as I want it to.
    • I’ll probably fail.
    • This will be so boring.

    This is what we think that drives us to procrastinate. I mean, really, when you read those thoughts, they just feel so demotivating, right?

    This negative self-talk has a good intent. It is trying to save us from discomfort.

    Unfortunately, it’s achieving the opposite because it adds to the stress by making us feel bad.

    If you speak to yourself with kindness, just as you would a friend, it will feel so much more motivating.

    So think about what you would say to that friend. It might sound like:

    • I get it, it will be uncomfortable, but you’ll be done soon and then you can relax.
    • Once you get started, it will be easier.
    • You can do it!!
    • If it doesn’t come out perfect, at least you’ll have practiced more.
    • If you fail, you’ll have learned so much.

    2. Create a pattern interrupter.

    That negative self-talk has simply become part of your procrastination habit.

    Because that is what procrastination becomes—a habit—and habits are comprised of a cue, a routine, and a reward.

    • The cue is thinking about a task that needs to be done.
    • The routine is to speak that negative self-talk that leads to procrastination.
    • The reward is less stress. (Not no stress, because avoiding the task is still somewhat stressful because we know it eventually needs to be done.)

    In order to break the habit and create a new one, you need to introduce a pattern interrupter.

    Mel Robbins has a great one she calls the 5 Second Rule. When you think “I should do this,” before the negative self-talk starts in, count backwards, “5-4-3-2-1-GO” and move.

    I find this helpful when I’m having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

    If I’m having trouble getting motivated to do something difficult like write a post about procrastination, my pattern interrupter is “I can do hard things.” Not only am I interrupting the pattern, I’m motivating myself positively as well.

    If I’m having trouble doing a boring and tedious task like my taxes, I use something like “I’m willing to be uncomfortable now so that Future Me can be at peace.”

    3. Break down the task.

    One of the big drivers of procrastination is overwhelm. Overwhelm happens when we’re looking at a project in full scope, either not knowing where to start or feeling like all the work involved will be too much.

    If the next task at hand is too big, or if you don’t know where to start, your first task really is to either 1) make a list, or 2) figure out the smallest thing you can do first.

    The whole house is a mess? I bet you know where that one sock goes!

    Another example, I had social anxiety and going to the gym was overwhelming to me.

    So I broke it down into:

    • I just need to put gym clothes in my car, that’s it.
    • I just need to drive to the gym. I can turn around if I want once I get there.
    • I just need to walk in the door. I can always leave.
    • I just need to get changed in the locker room I can do that.

    Honestly, I never turned around and went home. Because once I’d taken the small, easy step, the next small easy step was doable.

    Which leads me to the next step…

    4. Just commit to five minutes.

    Studies show that if we commit to five minutes only, 80% of us are likely to continue with the task.

    Five minutes is nothing. You can do anything for five minutes.

    There is an 80% chance you’ll continue working once you put in those five minutes, but even if you don’t, you’re still five minutes closer to your goal.

    And, you’ve taken one more step to breaking the old habit of not starting.

    It’s a big win-win!

    5. Reward yourself or make the task more enjoyable.

    Another problem with looking at a big task in scope instead of the next five minutes is that the reward is too far away or not satisfying enough.

    When you’re trying to lose weight, twenty pounds is weeks and months away.

    Or, when you’re putting off your taxes, if you aren’t expecting a return then the reward is “not going to jail.”

    So bringing in more rewards sooner will fast track creating the new habit of getting started.

    But also, making the task itself more pleasant will make it a less monotonous task.

    • To write this post, I put on my softest bathrobe and grabbed my baby’s tub from when he was an infant to make an Epsom salt foot bath under my desk while I write.
    • I’ll be starting my taxes in the next few weeks, and I already plan to have a glass of wine and super fancy cheese and crackers while I sit down to do them.
    • I save listening to super nostalgic nineties music for when I’m exercising just so that it makes that time extra special and fun.

    What Would Open Up for You If You Stopped Procrastinating?

    We spend so much more time avoiding the discomfort of a task than we do stepping into what it will be like once the task is complete.

    If you were to stop procrastinating, what would open up in your life?

    • Would you start your business because you’re no longer afraid of experiencing any discomfort if you “fail”?
    • Would you simply enjoy life more if you weren’t in a perpetual state of stress because there is a list of things you’re putting off?
    • Would you finally lose weight or get in shape and feel good once you push through being able to get started?

    The Bottom Line

    Procrastination is an active process to temporarily avoid discomfort (it is not laziness!)

    By overcoming your procrastination habit, you are building your emotional resilience.

    Notice the negative, demotivating self-talk and motivate yourself with kindness over criticism.

    Create a pattern interrupter before the negative self-talk starts weighing you down.

    Commit to just five minutes and you’ll either keep going to do more, or you’ll at least be five minutes closer to done.

    Reward yourself or make the task more enjoyable so there is less discomfort to avoid.

  • If You Think Contentment Will Make You Lazy and Unproductive

    If You Think Contentment Will Make You Lazy and Unproductive

    “To be content doesn’t mean you don’t desire more, it means you’re thankful for what you have and patient for what’s to come.” ~Tony Gaskins

    There’s a thought I want to share with you that used to keep me up at night.

    It’s a toxic idea that caused me stress and burnout and actually got in the way of my productivity and creativity (and more importantly, my happiness).

    Nevertheless, I hung onto it, and eventually came to see that it wasn’t just me. It was actually prevalent in many developed societies.

    The thought went something like this: If I accept who I am, where I am, and what I have, then I will become unproductive and lazy.

    Unconsciously, it boiled down to the following misconception: acceptance = contentment = laziness.

    A few years ago, I may not have admitted to you that I believed this, but I certainty acted as if it were true. I was by no means lazy; I was self-motivating and self-employed, working day in and day out. But at the end of the day, no matter how much I had “achieved,” no matter how many things were crossed off the to-do list, I would still find myself sitting at home with two thoughts.

    1. I didn’t do enough today.

    2. I need to do more tomorrow.

    These thoughts never allowed me to truly relax, and this caused a cycle of anxiety and tension. At some point, like many of us, I came across the idea and practice of self-acceptance. But no matter how much I tried to tell myself that everything was okay, I simply couldn’t feel that this was true. I couldn’t shake the thoughts about not having done enough, not being enough, not being content with the moment.

    Unsurprisingly, this was terrible for my mental health.

    Finally, I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and they casually asked me the following question.

    “What would having done enough actually look like to you?”

    And then it dawned on me. I had absolutely no idea. In truth, there was no such thing as enough—it was a constantly moving target. “Having done enough” was just a vague notion I used to fuel this myth of anxious productivity that I’d bought into.

    I didn’t need to be anxious to be productive, I didn’t need to be productive to be content, and being content would not make me lazy.

    I even started to realize that the opposite was true. When I accepted whatever was happening, I would be more content, and when I was more content, I would have more energy and confidence, which translated to more productivity.

    Humans are creatures of habit, and it was ritual and routine—not fear and anxiety—that would determine what I achieved. The worry that had driven my life for years was a complete falsehood!

    I’ve learned it’s possible to be both content and productive—no anxiety required. Here’s how.

    5 Ways to Be Content and Productive

    1. Start small.

    If you’re stuck in the habit of feeling you never do enough, don’t try and challenge it all at once. Try letting go of your attachment to a couple of ideas and see where it gets you. For example, maybe you feel that relaxation is something you only deserve on days where you’ve completed your to-do list. You could reframe this so relaxation is something on your to-do list that is a priority rather than a bonus.

    2. Run an experiment.

    If you’re convinced that feeling content with some aspect of your life could be detrimental, why don’t you try it out?

    Why don’t you try a week where you don’t stress yourself out about eating clean, going to the gym, or working on some non-essential project. Record what you do anyway, then compare the difference in outcome between weeks where you are allowed to feel content regardless of whether you meet all your expectations, and weeks where you anxiously push yourself. You may find that you do more than you expected you would without the internal pressure.

    After a while you may also find that your sense of contentment doesn’t hinge upon your day-to-day achievements—but if it does, then maybe you need to look at reward-based motivations, rather than punishment-based motivations.

    3. Focus on the process and not the outcome.

    This is time-tested wisdom, but it’s not always easy to follow. Think about it as a value you have, rather than something you do or a skill you acquire. To value the process over the outcome is to place your attention on what you are doing rather than why you are doing it.

    Fixating on the end result or outcome makes it easy to get trapped in cycles of future-oriented rumination. This is not only unpleasant, but also takes up energy that you could devote to the task at hand. On the other hand, if you focus entirely on the immediate task—the what and not the why—then you are more likely to fall into the flow-state, and less likely to fall victim to worries and mental chatter.

     4. Less desire, more trust.

    There are two ways we can look at the idea of hope. One is the hope you have when you want or desire something. Like when you hope for a promotion or a bigger car. The other is a more general and vague sense of trust that you have. Like, I have hope that things will turn out okay.

    If you can reduce the first type of hope, the desire for something else, while increasing the second type of hope, trust that everything will be okay, then self-acceptance will become a habit, not just an ideal.

     5. Approach goals indirectly.

    Economist John Kay calls this process obliquity. Sometimes when we strive aggressively to achieve a goal, we can trip over our own feet. This is why some goals, such as happiness, are best achieved by taking an indirect route.

    For example, instead of saying, “This year I want to meet my soul mate,” you could say, “This year I’m going to meet more people and be curious about what they all have to say.” Instead of saying, “This year I want to be happier,” you could say, “This year I’m going to put aside thirty minutes a day for things I enjoy—like writing songs—and give 100% of my attention to those things for thirty minutes.”

    If you feel that you need to do more, but that feeling is never going away, maybe it’s time to try experimenting with the feeling that you can try and do less?

    How have you struggled with feelings of self-acceptance and the belief that you’ve never done enough? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.

  • 5 Ways to Get Energized and Motivated When You Feel Lazy

    5 Ways to Get Energized and Motivated When You Feel Lazy

    “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

    Although laziness is common and a natural part of life, it has the potential to completely consume us.

    I personally have times where laziness causes me to feel trapped. No matter what I do, I cannot seem to shake it off. I feel tired, fall asleep constantly during the day, sit around a lot and feel unable to be active, avoid doing anything productive, and put on hold things that I want to accomplish.

    I believe there are two kinds of laziness. First, there’s the kind where you have been working your butt off for weeks and finally, after all your hard work, all you want to do is be lazy and do nothing.

    But then there’s the kind of laziness where you struggle to find motivation. Every time you think of something you would like to do or achieve, you cannot find the energy or drive to work toward it. This is the kind of laziness that I am talking about.

    Being lazy is actually quite draining and depressing. I know because I regularly find myself feeling so lethargic that even the simplest task seems like a challenge. I’m sure I’m not alone in this struggle.

    I have found five effective ways to overcome my laziness that I want to share with you so you can win your personal battle too.

    1. Focus on just a few things at a time.

    We often create a big list of things that we want to do and achieve. Focusing on two or three things at a time will allow you to feel less overwhelmed. Instead, you will feel motivated, as your goals will now seem so much more achievable.

    Out of the two sets of six-month goals below, which set gets you more motivated?

    Learn to play guitar, do well at work, and get fit.

    Learn to play guitar, do well at work, get fit, build big muscles, get better at singing, get top marks at school, learn how to draw better, and write a book.

    When I see the second list, I feel overwhelmed. When my life looks a bit like this, I usually don’t know where to start or if I can succeed at anything I’ve set out to do.

    People feel motivated when they feel they have a good chance of success.

    This has been a big learning curve for me. When success seems like it is just around the corner, suddenly I get an amazing rush of energy where I feel liberated and excited to achieve bigger things.

    Set yourself two or three easy to achieve goals at a time and you will notice that you will naturally gain inspiration and motivation.

    2. Exercise.

    Exercise is the simplest way to overcome laziness. A lot of the time, we feel lazy because completing a task seems too difficult. With exercising, you don’t have to figure anything out. You just have to make that one big decision to literally start moving your body (jump up and down, go for a run, or start doing lunges in your living room).

    This has been a big revelation for me. Sometimes I get so fed up with feeling lazy and lethargic that I literally just start running. I have learned that if you can overcome physical laziness, your mind will naturally follow.

    You will find that you will become more willing to think about complicated things, such as working on a project or doing something that you have been avoiding. Exercise will help you break through that barrier of inertia and will help you feel motivated and more willing to put in effort.

    3. Allow yourself time to relax and do the things you enjoy.

    Sound’s ironic, doesn’t it? Overcoming laziness by relaxing! But it works.

    Often, we become lazy because a task seems too difficult. By relaxing and doing the things we enjoy, we allow ourselves to feel satisfied. When we are satisfied, we are more willing to take on bigger tasks and achieve bigger things.

    By relaxing and enjoying yourself, you also allow yourself to think about things, reflect, and feel inspired.

    For example, I often feel uninspired to write articles. I get a mental block. Writing and researching becomes an overwhelming task, so I retreat to laziness. I completely block out anything that requires hard work.

    I have learned that as I relax and do things I enjoy, my mind is encouraged to reflect again. It is not scared of becoming overwhelmed because it knows that I am not going to push it to do something productive if it does not want to.

    This is how I gain inspiration again. When I relax, I suddenly find myself thinking of all these great ideas and I regain inspiration and motivation.

    4. Get organized.

    Your physical surroundings have a big impact on how you feel. If your house is a mess, you are likely to feel even more overwhelmed—both because clutter creates a sense of chaos and because having to clean your house adds to your giant list of things to do in a ridiculously short amount of time.

    Clean your house and organize your physical surroundings and you will naturally feel motivated to be more productive and active.

    You will be making life simpler and easier to manage.

    Once you’ve organized your home, you may feel motivated to get organized in other areas of your life and tackle tasks you’ve neglected.

    As I mentioned earlier, laziness is often our attempt to avoid difficult or unpleasant tasks. Ironically, once you start tackling them, it will all feel less difficult and overwhelming and you’ll likely feel a lot less tense.

    5. Be aware of and monitor your internal dialogue.

    Our internal dialogue (the way we speak to ourselves) has such a big impact on how we feel and what we do.

    Anthony Robins, world famous motivational speaker, explains that if we want to feel ecstatic, all we need to do is adopt a point of view that creates that emotion.

    For example, picturing in your mind the things that make you feel that way, change the tone and content of your internal dialogue and change your posture and breathing to create that state in your body.

    This has become my personal motto, and I am genuinely amazed at how much more positive I feel just by choosing to have a positive outlook.

    Every time I have a negative thought, such as “today is going to be a long, hard day at work,” I immediately challenge that thought by telling myself something like this: “I have so much to be grateful for and today is going to be fun and enjoyable!”

    I then make a choice to get rid of my slouchy posture and tell myself that I have lots of energy.

    Just thinking that way makes me feel excited and gives me a big boost of energy.

    I once learned that we have over 50,000 thoughts a day. Even if only 10% of them are negative, it equals a total of 5,000 negative thoughts a day. When I heard this, I realized that we have way too many negative thoughts and it helped make sense of why so many of us struggle to feel motivated.

    Being aware of and monitoring your internal dialogue is so important, and will inevitably impact on how lazy you feel and how easy it will be for you to overcome that laziness.

    These methods have helped me incredibly and continue to help me everyday. I am sure that if you apply them too, you will experience a big boost of energy and motivation in your daily life.