I am not a typical lazy person. I know what I should do and what I should not do for my well-being. But many times, even if I know I should do something, I feel hesitant to do it.
This hesitation comes mostly from my mind, not my heart. My heart compels me to do those things, tells me not to ignore them, and makes me feel guilty for not doing them. But my mind still hesitates and creates many excuses like doing it later, it’s not important now, I have no energy, I don’t want to do it, etc. Even if some part of my mind knows I should do the task, another part hesitates.
I mostly experience this while waking up in the morning and before doing some important boring tasks. I face it at other times too, like before exercise, dieting, meetings, etc. I call this my laziness. I accept it as my fault and take responsibility for it. This laziness was a barrier to my goals and well-being, so I tried many techniques to overcome it.
Initially, I tried to discipline myself by talking to more disciplined people and reading discipline-related books, but they failed in reality tests. Then I read some willpower-related books filled with scientific data. I learned a lot from them, but they didn’t work in my life. However, I believe willpower plays a major role in my life and my laziness problem.
Even today, I do many things to maintain my willpower. When I have good willpower, my mind feels under control, I have clarity, and it feels good. But this didn’t solve my laziness problem as expected, so I tried many more experiments, both my own and from other books. Most of my experiments felt internally hesitant, so I ignored them.
I was solving my major problem of dealing with my impulsive self, aka my self-control issue, and knew that my laziness is part of this issue. One day, I had to do many self-control tasks. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I decided to try. I thought of trying visualization. Initially, I dismissed this idea because of past failures with the law of attraction experiments. But my heart didn’t feel hesitant about this experiment; it felt safe. It had been months since I last tried visualization, so I decided to give it a try.
I went home and visualized myself doing the tasks, not feeling lazy, not doing impulsive things, and everything going well. It took just 2-3 minutes. I didn’t force myself to believe it nor tried the “act as if” formula. I just did simple visualization. And trust me, it felt good.
The next day, I woke up feeling a little better and found myself easily doing the tasks I felt lazy about the previous day. I avoided doing bad things I was tempted to do in the past. WOW. I did more such experiments. I chose tasks that felt good in my heart but my mind felt lazy about. Before doing them, I visualized doing them for 1-2 minutes. Then, I felt compelled to do them and was able to finish them.
There were times after some hard work when my mind became tired and didn’t want to continue. But my heart wanted to keep going and my logical mind knew it was important. At those times, I took a small break and visualized completing the task. After a few minutes, I always felt compelled to finish it. This really worked.
I even experimented with this technique this morning while writing this article. Yesterday, I had a drink party, and this morning I had a hangover. When I woke up, my mind wanted to sleep more, but my logical mind said I should wake up and start my work. My heart also wanted to wake up and gave me guilty feelings for not waking up. But the lazy part of my mind overpowered everything. So I tested this visualization formula. I imagined myself waking up, washing my face, brushing, going to the bathroom, drinking coffee, planning my day, writing some thoughts, exercising, etc. Then I stopped imagining and tried to surrender to my lazy mind by sleeping more.
After just 1-2 minutes, my body woke up. It seemed like something inside me overpowered the lazy mind. Haha. I completed all my visualized morning chores easily. Similarly, while writing this article, after 15 minutes, my mind was stuck and out of ideas. I felt lazy and wanted a break. My logical mind knew it was wrong and I should keep writing; even my heart agreed. But I felt lazy.
So I took a small 5-minute break, then visualized completing this article and writing more articles today. As expected, after just 2-3 minutes, I felt compelled to write. My body fully supported me and the laziness went away. It felt like I exorcised myself from laziness. 🤣
The Formula:
If you find yourself struggling with laziness, try this visualization technique first. Suppose you know what you have to do. Before doing it, visualize yourself doing it for a few minutes. Stop when it feels boring or wrong. Then see how you behave next. I think you will feel compelled to do the tasks more easily.
I advise doing this every day, in the morning and at night. Just visualize doing the tasks, one after another, happily and completing them. In the morning, if you feel lazy, use visualization. After doing your tasks, when your mind becomes tired and you feel lazy, take a break and visualize completing them.
Try this technique and log your experience. I hope it helps you.
