Why Am I Lazy? How to Stop Being Lazy and Win

Share With Your Friends!

Shares

If you’re asking why am I lazy? There are reasons behind it. People don’t naturally become lethargic all on their own. There are causes behind it that’s leading you to that kind of behavior. Some are good and some are bad but most of the time, laziness is a problem that you can easily solve with the right steps.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with being lazy on some days. We, as people, are not built to create and be productive 24/7/365. On the weekends, I am proudly lazy and do not like to be productive. I work on my blog and I don’t see that as a productive activity at all. It’s so much fun that I get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

I enjoy just sitting at my couch, staring at the ceiling to relax and enjoy my time away from work. Then I watch a TV series here and there. Go to the park and catch up with my good friend, and so forth. However, there’s this kind of necessary laziness where we need to relax and to recharge.

There’s other kinds of laziness where you’re sitting at the couch even though you have to be productive. Even though you know you have to go to work. That’s the bad kind of laziness that you need to avoid. Trust me when I say I’ve been there. I used to play computer games nonstop. Even skip classes at college.

There are inherent steps to take in order for you to get out of the rut. The first step is to ask yourself why am I lazy? The second step is to find the answer and figure out ways to combat it so it’s not a permanent characteristic.

Why am I Lazy?

One surefire reason why you are lazy is because you’re not SMACKING that social share button and posting to your favorite social media! Your friends could be suffering from laziness and they may need an article like this to pick them up.

If anything, please share the article for me, it takes a lot of research and time for me to put out a quality article.

So with that said, let’s get into the article!

1) Fear of Failure

Am I lazy? It's due to fear of falling down.
Are you afraid to fall down?

One answer to “why am I lazy?” could be because of fear of failure. The longer you put off doing something, the more the fantasy of winning stays in your head. A common saying that people like to fall back on as a psychological safety blanket is, “I know I lost but I could’ve won”.

This happens in negotiating. One of the glasses that my family bought with me was priced at $125. The seller offered to lower it to $110. Then we just paid the $110 and said, “if we wanted to, we could’ve gotten it for $100”. Do I believe we could’ve gotten it for $100? Yes. However, then why didn’t we ask for it?

We violated the simple rule of, “if you don’t ask, you don’t get“. We became lazy because we just wanted to stay on this fantasy land where we could’ve won. When in reality, we actually didn’t. Don’t remain in the fantasy world. Fail if you have to in reality. Failure in reality is better than success in fantasy.

2) Fear of Conflict

This happens to me all the time. Whenever I know that I have to call someone to negotiate and experience conflict, I push off the meeting as far as I possibly can. In fact, I’ve been pushing off negotiating my internet bill for as long as I possibly can. I’ve been pushing it off for the past six months.

This mistake cost me approximately $120 over the past six months. Every week, I add it to my to-do list and every week, I never cross it off. It’s one that I’m not particularly proud of. I usually call and negotiate quickly but this time it was different. I don’t know what I would do with an extra $120 in my pocket right now.

The answer to the question, “why am I lazy?” could be because you have to face conflict at some point. And conflict isn’t an enjoyable event. During times of conflict, one wrong word and completely set the other party off and it’s not good. This is another reason why laziness may rear its ugly head onto your life.

3) Lack of Motivation

The final and third answer to the question, “why am I lazy?” is because of a lack of motivation. When you’re not motivated, it slowly creeps onto your decisions you make on a day to day basis. There are many reasons why you should be motivated, and good reasons at that.

For me personally, the reason why I am so motivated is because of my parents. They brought me over to the United States when I was just a little boy. They didn’t know any English yet they took the risk anyway. If my parents did that for me, there’s no way that I was ever going to let them down.

Everything that I do, is to pay back my parents. And no matter how hard I try, I know it’s not going to come close to what they did for me. So I became scared at the thought that I couldn’t pay them back. That I would become a nobody. So I did everything that I could to make my life a success.

There are reasons for you to keep fighting and be motivated.

How to Stop Being Lazy: 6 Powerful Strategies

Now that you know the answers to the question, “why am I lazy?” now it’s time to figure out how to stop.

1) Use Fear to Your Advantage to Stop Laziness

Am I lazy? Use fear as motivation.
Fear is an incredible motivator.

If you’re lacking motivation, there’s no better motivator than to use fear for your benefit. Think about what your worst self would look like. Whatever your definition of your worst self is, think about it. Then envision that fantasy into reality. Remember that it could happen to anybody.

Just like this Yale graduate former Wall Street banker who is now homeless. The rise and fall from grace can happen to even the smartest of us. Therefore, if the answer to, “why am I lazy” is due to a lack of motivation, use fear to your advantage. Use fear to avoid ever having that happen to you as a possibility.

Build an invincible armor around you to protect yourself from the possibility of that future. The best armor against any sort of failure is hard work. Put in the repetitions every single day. Showing up is half the battle. Continue to press play and continue to show up and put in the effort and work. You can make it happen.

2) Don’t Blame Anybody Else but Yourself

It’s easy to blame others for your laziness and you know what? You may even be right and at the very least have a point. However, no matter whose fault it is, you are still responsible for your own life. It may be because you weren’t brought up in a supportive household. Or it may be because you got into a car accident at a young age.

No matter what the reason is, even if it’s not your fault, your life is still your responsibility. That doesn’t mean take every blame for everything wrong in your life. But in means on the big picture items, you have to take ownership of it and go after it. Depend on nobody else to get you to where you go.

As the youngest in my family, my parents did a lot to protect me. They cooked for me, cleaned for me, and so much more. That hurt me in the long run because when I got to college, I really couldn’t figure out how to do anything else besides get good grades.

However, I would never blame my parents. You are responsible for your successes and failures. Nobody else.

3) Celebrate Any Progress

Now you know figured out the answer to, “why am I lazy”, it’s time to celebrate the progress that you are having. The small wins domino into bigger ones in the long run. A celebration of your achievements give you the push to continue doing what you’re doing.

There’s a reward center in the brain that you can reward anytime that you do something good.

It’s called positive reinforcement. When you encourage yourself to continue doing positive actions, you can only end up with positive results. Treat yourself to nice small dinners every now and then. Maybe it’s consistently getting up at 7:30am that you set as your goal. Or it may be some other completely different small goal you set for yourself.

Whatever it is, notice the differences in your behavior and choices and celebrate any progress. When I feel like celebrating, I treat myself to some online shopping and buy things from Amazon. The latest thing that I bought was a used $300 iPhone after using my old iPhone for 7+ years. Rewards like these help me continue.

4) Sleep Well to Stop Being Lazy

Am I lazy? Sleep well to fight laziness.
A good rest is the best thing ever.

When you are tired, you don’t want to get out of bed. In fact, you can’t even focus on the important parts of the day when you are sleep deprived. Don’t listen to others saying, “sleep is for the defeated”. Take the full amount of hours you need in order to function properly. You need it.

I always tell my parents that I’m proud of the amount of sleep that I get every day. Then they tease me by saying that I’m lazy and/or a sleepyhead. I still ignore them and sleep myself away because I know I need it. The answer o “why am I lazy” may not be because you are inherently lazy.

It could be because you just haven’t gotten the necessary amount of hours of sleep. Don’t get sucked into the hustle culture, it’s not healthy for you in the long run. Some people are genetically engineered to thrive in that environment. Most people just aren’t biologically built to withstand it.

5) Set Attainable Goals

From a psychological standpoint, setting a goal of 10 and ultimately obtaining 8 is worse than shooting for 6 and getting 7. Even if the result came out to be better. Why is that? A little word called expectations. Expectations are what differentiates contentment or discontentment with results.

Then when you don’t feel motivated enough to keep going because you set too high of a goal for yourself. The motivation just continues to decline. Are you lazy? It could just be that you’re setting too high expectations for yourself. Too many people quit because they have too high expectations for themselves.

Life is a very long time for you to achieve your goals and get after it. Slowly but surely wins the race. That’s why setting the right expectations matter. The one who wins is not the one who was the smartest. It’s the one who figured out a way to outlast the competition and remain standing while everyone else left.

6) Change Your Habits and Accustomed Schedule

Whether we like it or not, we like it when things are on schedule. On auto pilot. No surprises with no risks in getting let down or up. That’s why your habits are so important. If you set your habits to be positive ones that add value to your life, you already won. There’s very little chance you won’t get to your final destination.

But if your habits are causing you to be lazy, then it’s time to change up your habits. It’s time to stop watching tv for so many hours in the day. It’s time for you to stop surfing the web for 15 hours a day during weekends. There’s an infinite amount of activities you can pursue on your downtime.

Reading, exercising, walking, maintaining relationships with friends, and many more. There are better activities and habits for you to pursue on a day to day basis. Imagine instead of making it a habit to watch TV, you make it a habit to read books that add value to your life. Imagine how farther ahead you’ll be already.

Why am I Lazy? Your Life Depends on the Answer

Once you figure out the answer to why am I lazy? it’s time to do something about it. Your life literally depends on it. No one else is going to hand anything to you, you’re going to have to earn everything yourself. People are too busy with their own lives to help you out.

Therefore, once you find the answer, take steps to abolish laziness in your life. What I want you to do is to make something out of your life. We are all given the gift of life, it would be foolish to not make the most out of it. Do you want to be a bystander in the world, watching as everyone else zooms past you?

Or do you want to be the creator, the one who actually makes things happen in the world? If the answer is the latter, you’re not going to get there by being lazy. You’re going to get there by constantly putting in the work day in and day out until one day you wake up and realize you are successful.

Everything starts with you. Are you willing to be brutally honest and admit that maybe you are lazy and that needs to be fixed? Or will you let ego and pride get in the way of success and think that there’s nothing wrong with yourself to change? Be honest with your strengths and weaknesses. If you are purposefully lazy, then that’s fine.

I’m purposefully lazy at times too because I want to be and I need to be to move forward. But there’s a difference between being lazy from time to time and letting being lazy to be your default position. One positively propels your life forward and the other forces you to take a step back.

How to Stop Being Lazy: Shortlist

  • 1. Use fear to your advantage
  • 2. Don’t blame anybody else but yourself
  • 3. Celebrate any progress
  • 4. Sleep well
  • 5. Set attainable goals
  • 6. Change your habits and accustomed schedule

Share With Your Friends!

Shares

2 Replies to “Why Am I Lazy? How to Stop Being Lazy and Win”

  1. I have always been extremely lazy and continue to be so. However I did not find that to be a problem in terms of preventing success. I went from summer intern to running a large corporation in my career and ran thousands of miles and a bunch of marathon races in spite of extreme laziness. Two of your principles are what allowed me to succeed in spite of being so lazy. Motivation and celebrating successes. I’m crazy competitive and by turning my career into a sport, a contest with my coworkers, to see who could get each promotion I found the motivation I needed to excel. And by stopping each time I had a win at work to celebrate in some small way that I had won that victory. But in spite of that I’m just as lazy now as I ever was, even though its Saturday and I was up before 5AM to run a few miles with my wife and our friends. I guess that’s a third principle you mentioned, having a schedule and forming habits. Interesting post, I’ve been puzzled my entire life as to how I succeeded so wildly and remained basically very lazy, this gives me some new insight into that. I guess I feel these principles can help you offset laziness even though it may not change that part of your nature, at least in my case.

    1. I think so many people see laziness as a bad trait when it can actually be a very good trait. Lazy people love to figure out how to get the most with the least and don’t burnout quite as often as motivated people do. Sometimes we steer away from our lazy path and become more motivated than ever but the default position of your nature being lazy isn’t necessarily a bad thing!

      If it does get in the way of important things in life like family, career, and health, then it does become a problem.

      Forming habits is such a huge part of our life. It’s what allows us to do things automatically and after years, it shows us who we actually are as a result of our habits. In your case, your habits and schedules turned out very well, Steve! A great feat, no doubt.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *