This sounds like heresy, but it’s something worth exploring. Getting lazy happens to all of us. We get in one of those funks – NOT the depressed funk, but just this “zone out” funk where we just stick to the routines, and we don’t even do the routines well (because we’re getting lazy), and we have no desire to build, to create, to advance, to do anything more, and there’s no disgust either with our situation. It’s kind of this weird limbo place where you’re not really happy, but not really sad too.
Now if you’re in this type of place, just ride it out because what happens is you lose the “look”. You lose how you look at life over time. It slowly fades away and you soon see things in a brand new light. That’s when you get back on the horse. That’s when you get that gusto again.
By being lazy, you “wipe the slate clean”. Everything’s fresh. It’s sort of like when you decide to take a break from working out. You get into that lazy phase but then something shocks you out of that and then you go all out – you try different exercises, examine your nutrition intake more closely, discover new supplements or maybe eliminate some, etc. It’s just one of the ways life works. It’s a great way to get that beginner’s mind once again.
The key differentiator here is that you’re in a lazy funk, NOT a depressed one. That’s a different animal. Great things are soon to follow the lazy funk and part of the reason why is that you start getting sick and tired of being lazy. It starts to irritate you so that provides the spark to tackle how you do everything in life in a new and different way. You start experimenting and find yourself thinking in new ways, looking at things you normally do in a new light, and start getting different results, and in doing so, you get that spice, that “taste” back in life after it tasting so “bland” while lazy.
People fear being lazy and I think if you’re deliberately lazy for a long period of time, that’s not necessarily a good thing. The kind of lazy I’m talking about here is “organic”. It usually comes after “revving at a high RPM” in life for a long time and then you just slow down and your “speed” starts to slow. That allows you to look at everything around you more closely and in more detail. It helps you get your bearings and you start to design a new route to drive. You get off the highway, take some side streets, and get going once again.
Deliberate laziness is just pulling over and getting out of the car and sleeping wherever and not doing anything for a long time. It’s “hard” to get back in the car, start it up, warm up the engine, and get back on the road.
It’s easier to get back to driving when you’re still in the car, the engine is on, you’re still going, albeit a bit slow, but since you’re already inside and everything’s moving, it’s easy to turn the speed back on.
What usually comes out of this lazy phase is a couple big sparks. What I mean by that is stumbling upon some realizations or epiphanies that allow you to do something you couldn’t have done before because you look at it in a new light now.
It’s kind of like you’re coasting along in a job and you wanted to try this new career but there didn’t seem to be any possible way to get into it given your qualifications so you put it out of your mind, get on with the routines of life, get in the lazy phase, and then that spark comes. You see how you can get into the field, but in a different job, and then transition your way to that new job over time within the company and that starts to excite you.
That breaks you out of the lazy phase and now you’re brainstorming how to get into that “pre job” and off you go.
The lazy phase is a very freeing phase in that you “unload” all the mental baggage going on in your mind which gives it some much needed rest to recuperate and with that recuperation, comes the spark that gets you back on the road.
It’s just part of the many cycles of life.
