It happens to us all at some point. You know you have something that needs to be done and you know that it will benefit you and those around you yet somehow you can't seem to get your bum off the sofa. Inertia is a problem so many of us can experience from time to time. Sometimes we call it procrastination, sometimes perfectionism, apathy, people pleasing, all of it has one root cause. Fear. The ego is a clever construct and it can almost convince you that you dont' need tomove forward. It does it's best to numb you out of the pain you are in to convince you that it isn't there. I noticed years ago, when I was heart broken that I was more willing to embrace change. Not just because I had to but because change offered an insight and a healing from my pain that I knew I needed. The pain was so overt that I was willing to do whatever it took to be free of it. That's what inertia does, it convinces us that the pain we are in isn't overt. It becomes something much darker, much harder to confront and something much more insidious to who we are.
So many cases of depression that I come across have their roots in inertia. It can begin with small acts of self betrayal that quickly mount up until, almost without noticing you're waist deep in a feeling that you can't quite place. It becomes normalised to the point of where you just keep wading through something sinking deeper and deeper and feeling less and less able to clarify the root of it. Then very quickly comes a tipping point where depression sets in and then there's a whole new problem to deal with. I understand that pain is subjective and depending on our histories we all have different tolerances or capacities for dealing with it but all pain is actually the same. It's a catalyst for growth. Ignoring it means ignoring the next stage of your evolution. Holding onto who you used to be keeps you repeating the same pattern over and over again. This is all part of a pain that you have normalised. So what do you do? Where do you begin when you find yourself in this mess? My advice is to start small, forgive yourself for where you are.
We have all woken up inside a life that feels like it doesn't belong to us but what I've found in those kinds of situations is that to deal with the whole thing can often feel like too much. Little and often is the way to go. Forgive yourself bit by bit and work your way step by step back into your own light. You don't have to figure it all out, you just have to start figure out what needs to be done today. You may not feel like enrolling back into University today but you might feel like looking more closely at the prospectus. You might not feel like you have the gumption to start your own business yet but you can at least research how to get going. Make lists, draw pictures, get diagrams of where you would like to be. Even a small act of clarification can be enough to get you out of inertia and on the road of where you need to be. Reach out, talk to someone who is already doing what you want to do. See if they have any advice! Little and often is all you need to get you going. Some people like to make huge changes all in one go, I'm not one of them. In my life it's always been the small changes that have had the biggest impacts. Give it a go, what do you have to lose?
Thank you,
Big Love,
Ryan James x
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