The Psychology of Life and Working: Of Laziness, Inspiration, Motivation and other Buzzwords!
When I was maybe 12 years old, I declared to my mother — when she once again asked why I couldn't keep my room tidy — "because I'm just LAZY, that's why!"
I bring this up because it was possibly the catalyst for many subsequent years of my life during which I characterized myself as both "lazy" and as a "Creative Slacker."
Was this a valid self-assessment?
Well, not exactly. At the time, it was an excuse; a rationalization and strategy to render myself as unaccountable and unreliable as possible.
I was by no means lazy. In fact, quite the opposite... I have typically been able to move the proverbial mountains in many situations where others have given up. Add to that that I was also highly capable, and the true character of the situation was that I wanted to portray myself in such a way that little would be required of me, and even less would be asked of me and potentially nobody would depend on me.
Laziness was merely a "cover story" and applying the term "Creative Slacker" to myself was a way of opting out of most things.
Now, why would a person go down that road?
Many years back — as part of a time in my life when I went to a lot of self-development retreats — I spent some time with a Dr. Barrie Jaeger, who was an author and "Work Purpose Coach," among other things. One of the things I came to understand better is that so much of what people do in their lives — and particularly in their work lives — is essentially a form of "drudgery."
Bottom line is that it's really really difficult for most people to stay motivated to do things they really don't like.
We talk about people living their lives like they are in a trance, evidently having a pulse but otherwise pretty much coming across as mindless automatons. Much as we'd like to think we have "work ethics" and we have been taught to "feel the pain and do it anyway" doing things you hate pretty much sucks the life force out of you and it's a small wonder we "don't" have the energy to diligently "pursue our dreams" outside our work days!
And it doesn't become any easier because you "have to" pay your bills... that's a false motivator.
My many years of being "lazy" and a "Creative Slacker" were basically a pervasive case of disinterest and lacking motivation.
There was a deeper problem with calling myself "lazy" which is that we (society, culture) perceive that word very negatively, and even if we're not consciously aware of it, when we use that word to describe ourselves we're also hurting our self-esteem. In a sense, we are shaming ourselves... and I was certainly (inadvertently) doing precisely that in much the same way as my father often did. Not as aggressively, perhaps... but with similar effect.
A substantial part of the antidote for chronic disinterest is to determine be honest about what really interests you.
In a recent post I wrote about "Having Time" @lucylin reminded me in a comment how time drags when you're doing something you hate, and it flies when you're doing something you love.
That made me thing about my conversations with Barrie "back then" and how childhood often can guide us towards our true interests as adults. Her point? Children tend to intuitively know what fascinates them, but gradually adults and life in general beats those things out of us as being "childish silly nonsense."
She suggested that most people can find their happy place by looking to their childhood (to about age 12), making a list of the five things that most held their attention and offered true childhood joy... and then getting creative about identifying the adult versions of those particular interests.
In my own case, it was "stories" (aka writing); working on my stamp collection; crawling around with my nose absorbed in nature very close up; picking up interesting things on the beach; and drawing tiny geometric patterns on little scraps of paper.
Of course, "conventional wisdom" teaches us that such things aren't good for anything, and what we SHOULD be interested in is engineering, and architecture, and law, and medicine. Although they are long dead, I can sense my parents both nodding from some other dimension, right now!
However, there's a point to bringing that up, which is that it comes right back to being disinterested, and the negative cycle that follows.
Instead, I look at my adult life now and find myself amused by the fact that the things I can always do, that I always distract myself with are... writing, macro nature photography, drawing tiny patterns on rocks, beach combing and working on my stamp collection. 50 years later, those things still hold my interest!
Along the way, I've been blessed to find creative ways to scrape out a living (or sorts) doing all five of those! At times, there has been more scraping than others (including a period of homelessness) but I can also look at each occasion where I tried to have "real and sensible" jobs and how each slowly ate my soul.
And perhaps that is the final lesson here: In order for life to work, we have to have the courage to be honest about truly holds our interest... independently of distractions such as "what makes sense" and "what the world EXPECTS of us" and "Living up to our potential" (as others project onto us).
And so, now I'm going to set this blog post "free," in the knowledge that I am actually doing exactly what I want to be doing!
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Have you ever wrestled with DISINTEREST in life as it was unfolded? Every been called "lazy" when actually you were just disinterested and unmotivated? Ever called yourself "lazy" as a way to getting out of being called on/relied on? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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