I’ve been stuck trying to change for quite some time. I realized that my adult life has been a few sets of giant cycles of trying to create change. The cycle is some form of something new: move to a new city, start a new relationship, find a new job. I believe the “change” I’m looking for is to fill a feeling of void in myself, a sense of “emptiness” that I’ve felt since a very early age.

What’s extremely frustrating is that no matter what new thing I have tried to do, I have not changed much. I do not feel the opposite of “empty” or any sort of life satisfaction.

Albert Einstein’s quote comes to mind: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” I feel insane.

I feel so insane, that thoughts of suicide pop into my head. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I don’t want to die. Then why thoughts of suicide?

It’s because I desperately want change, and death is the quickest and easiest way to immediate change. It’s not the best long term solution though, so I just revert to my normal cycle of moving from city to city and staying insane inside my head. Very unhealthy, I know.

Most of my research lately has been trying to figure out why change is so hard. I last wrote about Mel Robbins saying that it is simple to change, but not easy.

Then I came across Dr. Joe Dispenza on Impact Theory. He explains that change is extremely difficult for people because our bodies are on a completely different programing. By the time we are 35 years old, 95% of who we are is a memorized set of behaviors, emotional reactions, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions. These all act as a program in our subconscious mind, running on autopilot. Even if the other 5% wants change, we are fighting against years of programming and against our own bodies.

So how can we get past ourselves? If we are already programmed to respond in one way, what can we do? Many people, myself included, wait for something outside to drive this change. But true change has to come from yourself.

In order to do this, we have to start mentally rehearsing the action that we want. When we mentally rehearse, if we are truly present, our brain will not know the difference between what we are imagining and what we’re experiencing in real life. This practice will start to install the neurological hardware into our brain to look like the event has already occurred. And slowly the brain ceases to become a record of the past. It transforms into a map of the future.

The hardest thing about this exercise is to teach your body emotionally what the future will feel like ahead of the actual experience. You cannot wait for your success to feel empowered. You cannot wait for wealth to feel abundant.

“The moment you start feeling abundant and worthy, you are generating wealth. The moment you are empowered and feel it you are beginning to step towards your success. The moment you start feeling whole, your healing begins and when you love yourself and you love all of life, you will create an equal and now you are causing an effect.”

That’s the difference between living as a victim versus a creator. As a creator, you are saying “my thinking and my feeling is changing an outcome in my life.” We need to start defining ourselves using a vision of a future that we define.

To begin this visualization process, we must start by disconnecting from our environment and focusing on the present. Often times, it’s our environment and our daily routines that represent ourselves. By disconnecting and focusing on the present, we are teaching ourselves to overcoming our current instincts to revert to a routine or feel past emotions. If we focus on past emotions, we are sending our energy into the past.

However, by catching ourselves in those moments and telling our minds to focus on the present, we are reprogramming ourselves that our will is greater than our subconscious program. As we repeat this practice, we eventually reprogram our subconscious.

This will help free us from the chains of emotions that keep us in the past and it’s the beginning of the change we are looking for.

I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll do it later. I’ll try.

If I utter any of those phrases above, I already know it’s a lie. I definitely will not start tomorrow. I won’t do it later. I will sort of try, but not really. My behavior won’t change at all.

I’m being brutally honest in this article. Honest, not with my imaginary readers, but more with myself. I suck at change and I am stuck. But is this really that shocking? The more I read about mental health, the more I realize that many people struggle with this. So being honest about this is not jaw dropping news.

Here’s the real issue: deep down, I don’t want to change. Because changing requires a shift in values. It requires course correction. It requires energy to do something different. It requires me to step outside my comfort zone of being negative and depressed.

Yeah, you read that right. Feeling negative and down about myself is my comfort zone. How can this be?

I have been struggling with depression, anxiety, negative thinking for so long, that I can’t even remember what it feels like to be in an opposite state of depression. My mental state has been negative for so long, that being negative is the status quo. Being negative has become my habit.

I recently watched an episode of Impact Theory with Mel Robbins where she explains that anxiety is actually a habit of worrying spiraling out of control. We are not “worriers”, but actually people that have a habit of worrying.

This made me think that maybe I am not actually a negative person. I’m just someone who has the habit of negative thinking. I have a habit of worrying. And it’s gotten out of control. It’s at a point where most of my waking moments are filled with worrying, hate, anger, fear, sadness. I fall asleep thinking negative things and wake up with negative thoughts. It’s no surprise that I am a negative person!

So what the fuck do I do? How can I get myself out of this negative spiral? Mel Robbins says the answer is actually within you already. It’s just been buried underneath the fake belief that “I have to be ready to change” and that “I need the motivation to do it.” It’s buried underneath hesitating to make a move.

When we hesitate, we send a stress signal to our brain saying something is wrong. Our brain will find some risk associated with our hesitation and blow it out of proportion. It’s doing this to protect us, to keep things easy because we were not designed to be uncomfortable or scared.

The irony is that to build the life we want, we have to do the uncertain things, the things that make us uncomfortable, the things that make us scared.

I realized that change will not happen by constantly telling myself that “I am not negative” and “I am not a depressed person.” I cannot change by telling myself to “think positive” and that “everything’s fine.” My mind will never wake up one day wanting to do the hard thing of stepping outside my comfort zone. It’s why getting out of bed is so difficult. Who wants to get out of a comfortable, warm bed?

This is the genius of Mel Robbins counting backwards from 5 practice. There’s a small window where we can move from idea to action before your brain kicks in and sabotages the idea. It’s a simple act of counting, out loud, backwards from 5.

The action of counting back from 5 interrupts our habit loops that are encoded in the part of the brain called the basal ganglia. This is where feelings and emotions exist. Once the habit is interrupted, our prefrontal cortex is activated. This is important because this part of the brain is required to change behavior. It’s the part of the brain that lights up when learning new things.

Once you hit 1, this prompts you to get started. It’s the trigger for your brain to start moving, to shift into a different gear.

Mel Robbins explains further on how this works: “It requires you to focus. It’s not a habit. It will become a habit that prompts you to have confidence and courage. But at the beginning it interrupts patterns of behavior that you do on autopilot. It helps you assert control and it teaches you how to become the kind of person that moves from thinking about something to actually doing it.”

In 5 seconds, our brain can fill us with self-doubt and rob us of our power and potential. Or we can take the 5 seconds, kick ourselves out of autopilot and become the decision maker.

I’ve started using this practice to take back control over my thinking. Because worrying and negative thinking have become a habit, when my brain loses focus, it shifts to one of these habits. When I catch myself thinking negative thoughts, I count back from 5 to interrupt my autopilot. Once I hit 1, my prefrontal cortex has been activated and is ready to accept a new thought. I focus on my breathing and repeat a couple mantras. Lately, it’s been “I am enough” and “I have all the answers within me.” Then I refocus on what I was doing, whether it’s writing, reading, watching TV, cooking, whatever.

I don’t expect this counting backwards practice to immediately change my life. (I feel like I’ve said this before about other practices.) I’m not all of a sudden going to become an optimistic person loving life. However, what I really love about this practice is how simple it is. To be clear, it’s not easy because I still have to act, but at least I am interrupting my negative behavior patterns. And just like practicing anything, if I can practice interrupting even one negative thought a day, I believe that I will see the changes over time.

If you’re struggling with constant negative thoughts, try this practice out for a few weeks and see if it can help you. Also, please check out Mel Robbins on Impact Theory for more. There’s a lot of great things in the episode.

Framing a question, study, or a marketing scheme makes a huge impact on the outcomes. For example, consider how doctors often speak of surgeries. They can say either one of the phrases below:

A: The survival rate is 90%.

B: There is a 10% mortality rate.

The sentences provide the same information. However, surgery was more favored from Phrase A vs. Phrase B. This is due to how the surgery was framed.

In another experiment, two gambles are framed with the word KEEP or LOSE. The outcome of the gamble is actually the same, but our minds tend to be biased towards the word KEEP versus LOSE.

It seems that it would be in our best interest to reframe decisions to find a different point of view. But, reframing is effortful and requires System 2 to step in. As we know, our System 2 is quite lazy and “unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of us passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.” (Thinking, Fast and Slow, Loc 6677)

Priming of a day seems similar to framing of questions. Our minds can easily be manipulated by simply framing questions. I believe this is why priming can do wonders.

By priming ourselves throughout the day to look for what we want to see, then our minds start to look out for what we want.

Personally, I prime my days in the morning by telling myself that “today is going to be an awesome day.” I’m framing my day with “awesome” to bring a positive spin to my days. This is actually quite difficult for me, because I currently struggle with constant negative thoughts. So priming my mind to look for “awesome” things throughout the day is a big part of my effort to get out of my negative thinking pattern.

As I continue the priming practice in the morning, the hope is that my mind will start to frame activities and decisions in a more positive mindset as the day unfolds. The more I read into Thinking, Fast and Slow, the more I realize that our minds are very pliable and can be reprogramed. We are not stuck in the mindset that we are at. We can overcome bad habits and patterns with the right mindset.

Something I’ve realized over the past several months is how negative I am. I believed that I was just a realist, that the glass wasn’t half full or half empty, it was just a glass of water. However, the more I freewrite, the more I realize how negative my subconscious has become. The glass is not just half empty, but also the cup isn’t squeaky clean, there’s no ice, and wtf, I didn’t even want water anyways! This cup has ruined my life! Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but you get the point.

Now that I’ve recognized this in my life, ironically, trying not to be negative actually makes me more negative! When I have a negative thought, I get upset at myself for being negative, and feeling upset just brings about more negative emotions, which cycles into a downward spiral.

This seems similar to the idea that to be happy, you don’t try to be happy. Mark Manson wrote an entire article titled Stop Trying to be Happy about this.

It seems that to not be negative, or to think positive, we have to stop trying to be positive. Personally, I find this to be extremely difficult, especially when I’m subconsciously thinking negative thoughts. I don’t think anyone has total control over their subconscious.

However, as the Stoics like to say, we should only concern ourselves over the things we have control over. While we cannot control what our subconscious thinks, we can control our reactions to our thoughts.

This brings me to two things I’ve started to do to have better reactions to my thoughts, specifically for the negative thoughts. I believe that these practices will help me not necessarily be more positive, but react better to my negative emotions. Over time, my controlled reactions will help shift my negative subconscious to a more neutral stance.

I want to be clear that the expectation of these practices is not that negative thoughts will disappear. The expectation is that I will learn to recognize when I’m having a negative thought and have controlled reactions to them.

Negative Visualization

Okay. What is this doing here. How can the practice of visualizing the worst case scenarios be on a list of things to do to not be negative? Hear me out.

Yes, this requires us to think about negative things and what could go wrong. However, this doesn’t make us a negative person. The Negative Visualization technique is all about imagining the worst case scenario and coming up with a way around this scenario. (This technique deserves its own article, and the Daily Stoic happened to have one!)

What this does is actually prepare us mentally for things to go wrong. Because in the real world, not everything goes perfectly. There will be bumps on the road, and the negative visualization practice prepares us mentally for these bumps. It helps us manage expectations. If and when something bad occurs, we will have a controlled reaction because we’ve already envisioned something like this occuring. It will help you keep calm in the face of strain and that’s a huge step when learning to shift our mindset.

Gratitude

Ugh. Being grateful. Yes, we all know that this is an important practice in life. We should always be thankful for what we have, have a fucking grateful journal, meditate on it, blah blah.

I actually hate being told to be grateful. It induces an immediate “ugh” and eye roll whenever I come across this.

So I slightly adjusted this practice. I stopped trying to be grateful all the time. Instead, I’ve only been grateful if I complain. I came across this while listening to Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, and Tim Ferris. He followed this practice of saying something you are grateful for whenever you complain. For me, this has done a couple things:

1. It made me conscious of how often I actually complain.
2. Gave me a trigger to actually practice being grateful.

I knew I complained a lot, but wow, I had no idea how often I complained until I consciously started to look out for my complaining. And because I now had a trigger to practice gratitude, I found myself actually being grateful. It’s still difficult to practice this, especially when the trigger is something negative. However, I believe that as I forge this new connection, my brain will slowly start to adjust itself and start to subconsciously think about gratefulness whenever I complain.

By combining preparing for a worst case scenario, managing our expectations, and being consciously aware of when our minds shift to complaining, we can start to reprogram our subconscious to be a little less negative. And as long as we’re a little less negative today than yesterday, then that’s a win for our future selves.

Our mind totally thinks so. We’ve evolved to think that losses loom larger than gains. “The brains of humans and other animals contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news.” (Loc 5431)

The paper “Bad Is Stronger Than Good” states “bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones.” (Loc 5444)

We are primed to pay more attention to the bad things versus the good things. In the early days of human history, this seems to make sense. The caveman who paid more attention to dangers lived longer.

Is this why some of us could be focused much more on the negatives of life? Our instincts say to avoid losses, keep an eye out for dangers. Due to that, some of us may start to see only the negatives in life to avoid them and easily dismiss any of the positives.

Even when we do see positives, it doesn’t impact our minds as much as a negative event. A single negative event could ruin an overall great day, but a single positive event can’t uplift an overall bad day. How could we make a mental switch to this behavior? Is this why many people work on being grateful? As a gentle reminder that in our day to days, there will always be bad, but there will always be good.

We could also set a good reference point for goals to empower our positive selves. “The aversion to the failure of not reaching the goal is much stronger than the desire to exceed it.” (Loc 5460) With the right goal and reference point setting, we could reach our goals because of our aversion to fail versus actually exceeding the goal.

“Loss aversion refers to the relative strength of two motives: we are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains. A reference point is sometimes the status quo, but it can also be a goal in the future: not achieving a goal is a loss, exceeding the goal is a gain.” (Loc 5460)

We should set our days so that we could achieve and maybe exceed our goals, to feel that we’re gaining something everyday.

When it comes to golf, golfers are much more accurate when putting for par versus for birdie. Economists Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer use loss aversion theory to explain that players were more successful when putting for par than for a birdie. Players tried harder when putting for par because missing par would be a loss. However, missing a birdie putt is a forgone gain, and not actually a loss (assuming they make par). Would there be a way to switch our mindset to concentrate on every swing? Even a single stroke saved is a huge difference in the pro golf world.

Is there a way we could apply this type of thinking to our day to day?

I’ve heard this phrase “questions are the answer” several times over my life. The most recent was from Anthony Robbins’ Awaken The Giant Within. In fact, the title of chapter 8 is exactly this article’s title.

I write about this today because a good portion of my freewrites are questions. I guess I just have tons of questions for myself. The big ones are centered around “what are you doing with your life.” While this seems like the right question to ask, I found from reading Robbins that this isn’t actually the right question. The right version of a question should push your mind for next steps.

Remember from Thinking, Fast and Slow, that our minds are making up the simplest answers possible. So if we’re stuck in a rut, and we ask ourselves questions like “what are you doing with your life” or “why can’t you do anything”, our minds will come up with an answer that best fits our story. “We’re not doing anything with our lives, James. Duh. Next question please.” “I’m tired and burnt out from years of chasing a corporate dream that I realized is just running in a hamster wheel.” Sweet, these are totally helpful!

It’s hard to show sarcasm through just writing, but I hope everyone got that.

The answers we get will entirely depend on the questions we ask. So if we ask questions that make us ponder what could be next, we then start to inject ourselves with some motion.

By reshaping our “what am I doing with my life” questions to “what could I be doing with my life”, our minds start to think about the possibilities of this question. “Why can’t you do anything” could reshape to “how could you do something” to get our minds to start, as they say, thinking outside the box.

The questions we ask should nudge our minds to give us actionable answers. Answers that give us some new direction or insight. But it won’t work like this right away.

I’ve only tried to reshape my questions for a few days now, and in all honesty, it feels the same. The answers have been the same. My mind tells me “I know this trick now and it won’t work on me.” And it’s totally right. We shouldn’t expect the answers to change immediately. I expect this will take time to change my thinking.

The important thing is that it’s a small step, a small investment into a different future. A future where I’ll be asking “what else could I be doing with my life?” A future that I will have created.

So what questions are you asking yourself and how could it be reshaped to drive you towards a future you want? Take that first step, and start by asking your questions, just reshaped in a tiny way.

We make decisions all day long. We decide what to wear, decide what to eat, decide when or how to go to work (or maybe not to go to work), the list goes on. Decisions (or making a choice, I will switch often between the two) are an every day part of life.

I believed that making the right decision was the most important. Obviously, making the wrong choice is not what anyone wants to do and would be the worst case scenario. We should always expect to make the right decision. We should plan as much as possible to make sure it’s the correct path. If the outcome is wrong, then our decision was wrong. So we should focus on always making the right decision, right?

This is the wrong thing to focus on.

I believe that over time, people who focus too much on making the right decision versus making a decision lose confidence in themselves. With making the right decision, the focus and judgement comes from the outcome.

However, we at some point all succumb to a decision (right or wrong) leading to a poor outcome. And those who focus only on the final outcome will suffer for feeling like they made a poor decision, even if the decision was correct! We planned for everything, we tell ourselves. How can this have gone wrong, we ask ourselves.

I welcome lady luck to the stage.

Whether we like it or not, luck is a big part of the outcome of a decision. Our minds are not set up to be able to know and plan for every scenario that could occur in a decision. Our subconscious simplifies our understanding of the world to help us have a sense of prediction and control over our future.

So it’s unrealistic to expect ourselves to know everything that could possibly occur, especially the unknown unknowns. However, if an “unlucky” event derails our decision, we blame ourselves for making a poor choice, even if that choice was the correct path. If a decision leads to success, we give ourselves very little credit since it was obviously the correct decision.

For many of us, we forget our success cases and remember only the bad. After enough poor outcomes, we start to lose confidence in our decision making. This leads to a fear of making decisions and all of a sudden, each decision we do make has more weight. When inevitably, one of those decisions leads to a poor outcome, our fear and doubt in ourselves increases. This cycle feeds on itself and gets stronger.

What we must do, is to shift our focus to the decision making process, and not the outcome. This does three things:

1. We release ourselves from luck.
2. We gain a better sense of control.
3. We allow ourselves to make more decisions.

Our decision making process is something we can control. The outcome, because luck is involved, is out of our hands. And the more decisions we make, the more outcomes we have. The more outcomes we receive, the more we can learn and adjust our process.

And this means that the worst case scenario isn’t actually a bad outcome. The worst case is the act of not making a decision, because then it leads to not learning anything.

Whether right or wrong, there is power in making a decision. So go out, make decisions, and adapt.

It’s easy to track physical gains. You can measure distance ran, time elapsed, repetitions, weight lifted, how much you weigh, how much you ate. The list can go on.

For mental gains, there isn’t much. I suppose you could measure amount you read, meditated, length of time focused without distractions, … and I’m not sure what else. Even if you track this (which I tried) it doesn’t seem too insightful. It’s nothing compared to being able to know that 1 year ago, I was able to lift X, and now I can lift X + Y. I began to think that there wasn’t a great way to measure mental fitness.

Until a thought popped up during my run. I’ve been training for a marathon and it has not been easy. I’ve been running between 5 and 6 kilometers for 5 days a week with a random longer run (<10 K). Today happened to be a longer run day and I was aiming for 12K. I hit a wall right around the 10K mark and I kept telling myself that I could get up to 12K. You can do it, you can do it.

It reminded me of work outs aiming for X sets with Y reps. On the last set of the last few reps, is when you’re close to your limit and pushing yourself. It’s here I found that we’re using not just our physical muscles, but also our mental muscle to push our bodies to finish the set.

This is the link between the physical and mental. It’s that voice in your head telling yourself to get to the end and your body, albeit screaming at you to stop, continues to go.

This is the work out for the brain muscle, will power, self-control, whatever you want to call it. The most gains, physically or mentally, happen when you are under the most strain. It’s when things are uncomfortable that our mind and body can learn and grow.

I have an Apple Watch and try to close my rings + get 10K steps every day. It’s easy to track these physical things. For mental reps, we should aim to push ourselves past the strain once a day. Training for the mind, I suppose. And the best part is, it’s now part of the physical exercise routine. Whenever you want to give in during your physical work out, flex your mental muscle, and fight through to the finish. That’s a rep and win for the mind.

Continue doing this and expand it to other parts of your life. For me, I’m trying to write everyday and it has been a struggle. Everyday is a fight. Every time my mind says no, but I push through and finish a day, I just exercised my brain muscle. As we apply this to more scenarios in our day to day, we strengthen our minds and start to upgrade ourselves in ways that our subconscious fought against. I think of it as reprogramming our subconscious to accept new beliefs. It’s how we’ll get comfortable being uncomfortable and learn that strain, whether physical or mental, is where the gains are.

I realized while freewriting that I tell myself often that I’m broken. I need fixing. Something is wrong with me. I’m fucked up. It eventually spins out of control and my writing goes into all caps with lots of exclamations. It’s been a common theme I found while writing and I began to wonder how much this actually impacts my day to day.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is teaching me that it has a huge impact, without my knowledge, and whether or not I even want it to. My subconscious has developed beliefs and values that has become hardwired into my mind over years. Our minds have intuitive feelings and opinions about everything, whether we realize it or not, and regardless of how complex the situation is.

When I freewrite, and something continues to come up, it tells me that it’s part of my subconscious. I’ve programmed myself to believe that I am broken and many of my conscious decisions stem from this belief. Remember that our System 1, subconscious, makes decisions based on information readily available. Our System 2, what we consider our conscious mind, has come to accept these decisions from our System 1 without questions.

My mind has reinforced itself over years that I need fixing and that I’ve fucked up. When I have to make a decision, one of the first things that I subconsciously acknowledge is that I am broken. If I am broken, how do I know I’m making the right decision? Broken people do not make correct decisions, therefore, I’m not the best person to decide. I do nothing and pass the decision down to someone else. Overtime, this leads to lower confidence and the inability to act. Without confidence or any actions, this strengthens the belief that I am indeed a broken fuck up. Now it’s just an intuitive feel that I have constantly in the back of my mind. Maybe some of you can relate to this. And if you can, then congratulations, because you’ve already taken a step into breaking this cycle.

The big win is that I (you) have actually realized and am willing to acknowledge this destructive cycle. I’m in this cycle for no other reason than my own. Sure, I can blame society, parents, school, assholes, bosses, etc. The list can be endless, but what does that really solve? If anything, that puts us in a state of helplessness. If we believe that we are here because of what others have done, then what can we do to get out? But if we believe that we are the reason for our own life, then we can also get out.

Yes, I’m broken, but I am still fucking here!

I can and will fix things!

I’ve found what makes me think something is wrong!

I am fucked up, but I am learning why and moving on!

The only way to break out of The I’m Broken Cycle (or any type of loop) is to first realize we’re in a cycle. Then it’s about starting to question our own judgments. You’ll know when you start to question and doubt your subconscious when you start to feel strain. Your mind will not want to go down this path. It will tell you that it wants to go back to what is familiar. It doesn’t want believe that it’s possible to not feel broken because it’s too much work. We have to adjust years of belief. And what happens when we break out of this cycle? What’s next?! It’s too scary.

But that’s the path to breaking The I’m Broken Cycle. And once we break out of it, even for 1 day or even one god damn minute, it’s the first step to upgrading ourselves. Then you break out a second time, a third time, and slowly, ever so slowly, you build a different cycle. The Upgrade Cycle. It will be hard, it will be long, it will be a fucking pain in the ass. But it can be done.

We are all broken and we will all continue to fuck up. It’s part of life and totally okay. The faster we acknowledge this about ourselves, the faster we can accept it, and move on to upgrading ourselves.

I will be honest. I tried to read my reviews for each chapter, and I couldn’t even finish reading what I wrote. If I’m not even interested, who else would be?!

Is it wrong to start off an article talking down about my writing? Probably. Maybe. But who cares? This is just my writing evolution and what I’m learning as I try to publish something every Thursday. Today’s will be my third article and I’ve decided it won’t be a regurgitation of reviews of chapters 4 through 8 of Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Instead, I’ll try to unite all five chapters under a single topic. The topic today will be about laziness and why it’s so easy.

A common theme I’ve noticed in the first part of Thinking, Fast and Slow, is that our minds like to be in a state of ease. Our System 1, aka our subconscious, wants things to be so easy that it will make abnormal things seem normal after just a few instances, jump to conclusions, and make judgments as quickly and often as possible. When things are easy, we are most likely in a good mood and are comfortable with our environment. Why wouldn’t we always want that?

Many of us grew up with the idea that we should always be in a good mood. Things should be easy and convenient. This is the best way to live and it’s why we go to school, get jobs, and make money. With money comes the ease of life. And with the internet doing its thing, it’s strengthened the idea for convenience. Food can be delivered to your door. Entertainment is at our fingertips. Shows are just one Netflix click away. Hanging out with friends can be as simple as pressing the ‘power on’ button.

Laziness has become easier. Before technology, it was harder to be lazy. If we were hungry, we had to actually get off the couch and drive/commute/move to get food. If we wanted to hang out with friends, we had to go to someone’s house. This meant we probably had to shower or at least brush our teeth. Being a bum on the couch was harder. Don’t get me wrong, I was still lazy as fuck before technology. My average time of being a bum on the couch has just increased with the development of technology.

So coupled with technology, and being told that anything but a good mood was wrong, we now run into our Lazy Cycle. Our System 1 is easily primed, which is to say that a stimulus could influence our next thought or action, without our conscious intention. In our daily lives, we are bombarded with positive thinking, living your best life, how to be happy, other people’s snapshots of their awesome lives, and on and on Instagram goes. Our System 1 is primed for “good vibes only.”

Now, our mind systematically wants to keep things easy because that’s the best for us, right? And it is seeing repeatedly that everyone else is living awesome and are always in a good mood. We also want to be in a good mood. But when we have to work, think about finances, or look into self-development, we feel the opposite of “good.” Thinking about these things is the opposite of ease; we feel strain. And our minds do not want to be in any sort of strain. It’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

So we run, push away the feeling, hide it, hold it, ignore it. Anything but actually feel it. As time continues, we become more set in our ways of always wanting the good and never the bad, and god forbid the real ugly. It’s possible that the “good” isn’t even that “good” anymore. It’s actually pretty shitty, but it’s what we’re familiar with. So we stick to it and the Lazy Cycle continues.

The secret to breaking the Lazy Cycle, or any sort of cycle, is nothing fancy. In fact, we probably already know what the answer is, we just don’t want to admit it. Because it’s not familiar and our brain is screaming that it feels uncomfortable. We need to go back to being in a good mood! This is wrong! This hurts!

But is it really that uncomfortable? Is it really that painful? These sorts of questions are only questioned, and answered, by System 2. And System 2 is activated during a state of strain. It’s the window where we can actually reprogram our thinking.

And so the simple, god awful truth to breaking the Lazy Cycle is to get familiar with what causes strain. Take small steps repeatedly, everyday, in feeling what you’re running away from. Things won’t change immediately. It may take months or years to truly overcome and break whatever Cycle. However, it’s the daily action of stepping into the strain that will activate the part of your mind that questions and can reprogram how your subconscious thinks.

It’s how I wrote this article today. Because let’s face it, writing this was extremely uncomfortable and not familiar at all. My mind has been telling me this entire time to stop this horrible practice. But you know what? After all this, it doesn’t feel that bad.