We
all do it. We all have that
something that we know will make our lives better. For many of us there
is that
book that sits on the shelf, you know the dusty one, that if we get
around to
reading it or we start to follow the steps it outlines we will get rich
or
become enlightened or loss weight.
The
book just sits on the shelf.
Our life goes on in the same way that it has for years. Change does not
happen.
We never make the start.
The
scientific term for this is inertia.
Inertia says that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in
motion stays
in motion. Until that body is acted on by an outside influence.
There
two names for the same phenomena
in our lives. For minor issues, or issues that involve ourselves, we
use the
term habit. For severe issues we use the term addiction.
We
all know someone who has, for
years, said that they wanted to quit smoking. They gave excuses like
“it is
just a habit of mine to have a cigarette after a meal” or
“I know I am addicted
to the nicotine.” Than comes the outside influence, like a
heart-attach, and
they find that they can stop smoking.
There
are many smaller instances.
We know a number of energy workers who have lots of skills. They have
been
trained in Reiki, Healing Touch, or a number of other practices, and
also have
chronic conditions. Even through they have the skills and knowledge
they forget
to use their tools on themselves.
We
can guarantee that no matter
what diet book you buy you will not loss any weight. That is, unless
you read
the book and change your life. Owning the book will not make you loss
weight.
We
sell stones to people for a
number of issues. When we see them the next time we ask how the issues
are and
if the stones are helping. We usually get one of two answers. Either
“yes and
what stones would I use for…” or “oh,
ah, well, they are still in a bag sitting
on top of my dresser.”
We
all want to have memories of our
families. We especially want to have a record of the early years of our
children’s lives. Buying a camera does not create the
memories. Buying a camera
does not even create photographs. You must take the pictures with the
camera.
Doing
it must include follow
through. We had a friend that took pictures of events. He would take
the film
out of the camera and find them years later in the bottom of one of his
drawers. He had no pictures, just exposed rolls of films. He never took
them in
to be developed.
In
most cases we know what needs to
be done. We need to “get a round to it.” You can
get a reminder of that. There
are wooden nickels that have printed on them “Don’t
wait to get around TUIT”.
If you would like one of these, just drop by our booth at one of the
shows.
Thinking
or planning does not cause
changes. You need to take actions in order for change to happen. You
must get a
round to it in order to do it, what ever it is.
If
you step on the breaks and the
car does not slow down as it did in past weeks, you do not wait until
you plow
into a school bus before you get your breaks fixed. Why wait until a
heart
attach, stop smoking, loss weight or start exercising? Why wait until
you have
a stroke before you reduce your salt intake and lower your blood
pressure?
Inertia
is what many people refer
to as running on autopilot. When a person goes through each day like a
zombie,
just doing the same thing as the day before, they are demonstrating
inertia.
Remember, inertia does not mean that there is no change, just that
there is no
change in direction.
When
things are going downhill at
work, there is constant change, but it is all to the negative. In fact,
people
get use to changes, even negative changes. Plans are usually made in
ways to
change the direction. People usually wait until the situation get to a
critical
before they get around to the changes.
It
is not just corporations that
wait until a crisis before they get around to it. Every day people walk
around
or limp around. A new pair of shoes or a change to the exercise
regiment may be
all that is needed. They let it go until their back goes out and they
end up in
the hospital, then they make the change.
There
is another fact about
inertia. It is extremely hard to reverse direction. One must completely
stop
and then expend the same amount of energy in the other direction to
reverse the
momentum. By contrast, it takes relatively little energy to change
direction.
If
you walk down the hall in your
house or you office and are change your direction by just one degree,
that is
less than one percent of reversing direction, you will be walking into
the
walls. If you were in an airplane flying from Detroit
to San Diego
and the course was off
by a few degrees you would land in Los
Angeles,
San Francisco,
Portland
or Seattle.
Here
is a simple test. Take a
loaded shopping cart. Start down an aisle. Turn the cart around and go
the
other way. Now, with the same cart, turn the cart left at the next
aisle and
left again at the next aisle. See how much easier that was to reverse
direction
in small adjustments than it was to turn around all of a sudden.
You
know the changes you need to
make. If you want to do it, now is the time to get around to it. You do
not
need to change it all at once, but you need to get started.
Does
anyone think that they can loss twenty pounds
now? No, we all know that it is going to take time. But now is the time
to get
around to it.
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