Inertia

Inertia, that's my problem. I try to deny it, I try to work around it, but the bottom line... and what caused the hugeness of my - er - bottom line... is that I'm about as motivated as a potato. Ironically, I'm shaped like a potato. Perhaps it is all a quirk of fate...

It is hard to overcome inertia. Seriously. There are no excuses or rationalizations at work here. In fact, there are all sorts of rules about energy and objects at rest versus objects in motion. Call me a geek, but I actually enjoyed physics. It was the physics instructor that I couldn't stand... Enough nostalgia! Inertia deals with the idea that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and that objects in motion tend to remain in motion. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this... inactive people tend to stay inactive, and active people tend to stay active. That's why we're lumpy and they're buff.

 

In order to become active, a person has to get up off the couch or out of the chair and start moving. That transition requires a significant amount of physical energy. Active people seem to manage to get moving with very little fanfare. For some of us, the stagnant lumpy ones, the energy expenditure is like scaling a personal Mt. Everest. We would rather have our teeth pulled out than run around the neighborhood. We need incentives, constant streams of rewards, and the immediate gratification of noticeable results. But then, once we get going, we usually do okay. We get our walks or runs or biking done. We drag ourselves off to the gym. We keep going until we become complacent. You know what happens when we fail to be vigilant. We start to slow down. Workouts get more sporadic and then there's the inevitable roll to a stop.

  

All of us have been there. We've done that, and we've wished we could fit into the T-shirt. We know that it's easier to stay motivated than it is to get motivated in the first place. And yet, many of us allow ourselves to stop. Once we've stopped, we have to overcome inertia to get going again. That's what happens to me. Over and over, it happens to me. Sometimes it's hard to push myself to begin again. Sometimes, Highway 150 heads up a mountain. This is one of those hilly stretches. I suppose it's time to put the old buggy in 3rd gear and head up that next hill.

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Uber-irony... playing a word game today, instead of taking a walk, I missed the word "laziness"