When I talk to patients about making changes, people will often tell me things are still the same because "I'm lazy." While there are certainly lazy people in the world, the excuse of laziness is often wrong. I do not believe people are lying to me, but when I am told that something hasn't happened because of laziness, it's rarely accurate.
Lazy means unwilling to work or use energy. This does not do a good job of describing most people. Ironically, most people I see suffer from the opposite problem– they are overscheduled, working too hard, not sleeping enough, and generally exerting too much energy doing too much work (or playing too hard, or something…) People working 10-12 hour days at a construction site lifting heavy objects all day tell me that change eludes them because they are lazy. Moms taking care of children and the house all day, and working a job on weekends, tell me “I’m lazy.”
Yet these same people often blame laziness for not making important changes. When we avoid change for some reason, particularly change that we know is in our best interest and that we want to do, there’s usually a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with being unwilling to work or use energy.
When I see someone not making changes, my starting assumption is that there is a good reason for this. Even when we are not making good decisions, we are all making the best decisions we can. Even when we are failing, we are doing the best we can. Calling inertia laziness is usually either sloppy thinking, or cover for some deeper reasons. When people are eating lousy, not exercising, doing drugs, not prioritizing things that are important, or putting off difficult conversations, my starting assumption is that the behavior has some sort of logic. So, if we continue on the wrong path, and it's not laziness keeping us there, what is?
Lack of time, fear, stress, uncertainty about where to start are all more likely culprits. But saying those things out loud, admitting to ourselves and others those true, underlying reasons– is uncomfortable and takes courage. It's much easier to say that we spend too much time on the couch because we’re lazy, than to say we spend too much time on the cough because we are lonely. No one questions it, and we are saving from facing our loneliness. It's easier to say our lack of exercise is due to laziness than to face our fears about our physical fitness. We would rather say that we have not addressed a problematic relationship because we are lazy; saying that the conversation will be hard, or looking inward will be painful, is a much bigger lift.
In this context, being lazy is a way of avoiding the difficulty of facing uncomfortable realities. When we say lazy, what we often mean is something else entirely. When we accept that there are real reasons for failing to change (rather than accepting an excuse like laziness), we move towards actually examining the reasons for resistance. The acknowledgement and recognition of the real reasons behind laziness gives us a real problem to address. This may not be deep fear or insecurity, but practical considerations. Lack of time, lack of importance, logistical obstacles– all of these things might also be confused with laziness. If we acknowledge the obstacle, we can work with it. If time is the problem, we can work with our schedules. If fear is the problem, we can practice being brave.
When we misdiagnose real obstacles as laziness, we apply remedies that also do not work. The solution to being lazy is some version of “try harder.” The problem is, if laziness is not the actual problem, trying harder does not usually work. Flagellating ourselves to work harder, and then continuing to fail, often leaves us feeling worse about ourselves, and less motivated than the beginning. The misdiagnosis of laziness ends up worsening the overall problem.
This approach is relevant when turned toward others as well. When we are trying to help the people we love and care about change, working to get a real understanding of the problem is key. When someone puts up resistance and attributes it to being lazy, do not take that for an answer. When we are working on change in our lives (or helping others), yelling at ourselves to just try harder is unlikely to work. We can be curious with others the same way we can be curious with ourselves– what’s underneath lazy?
Cheers,
Doc
Forwarded this email? Sign-up here
Follow me on Bluesky | LinkedIn