Own Your Lazy

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. I am incredibly lazy and I own it, and I actually credit this with the fact that I’ve become more disciplined because of my ownership of my own laziness. So let me explain. We are creatures of comfort and convenience and ease. When we think about the habits that we repeat, they’re often easy. They’re unconscious. They have solved a problem for us, and they’ve become so innate they don’t take any willpower or thought to really replicate. It’s why it’s really hard to break some of those habits, like maybe coming home from work and going straight to the cabinet. We’ve ingrained that pattern so much so that we don’t even think about it. It’s convenient, comfortable, and easy, but this same fact of the fact that we are creatures or comfort, convenience and ease is why new habits are so hard.

(00:53):
Because a lot of times they take thought they’re uncomfortable, they’re different than what we’ve always done. There might be a learning process which is hard involved. And so when we’re thinking about this, the more we can embrace that we are the creatures of comfort, or as I like to put it lazy, the more we can break down those new habits we’re trying to implement, and even the habits we’re trying to unlearn in a way that allows us to steer into this and make it more comfortable, easier. So when we think about habit change, it’s the unlearning process of habits that might be there and the learning process of new habits. New habits might be easier to implement because there isn’t an unlearning process that has to go there. So if you’re trying to implement a totally new habit that you don’t have any bad habits with, you might be like, okay, great.

(01:33):
I can easily do this new thing. It fits in right away. It’s comfortable enough and convenient enough, no problem, right? There’s no unlearning. Unlearning is what makes things often hard in that we have to make that conscious break that pattern as we’re creating that new pattern, which often also clashes with what is easy, comfortable, and convenient. So when we think about this, the first step might be to make things so small that we make that habit. We’re repeating that we want to stop a little bit harder because by just doing that, all of a sudden we’re building towards the other habit. Or by implementing the new habit, we might want to break it down into such a small component that it also helps us stop the other one. So things that really can work are shifts in our environment, especially for old habits and routines.

(02:15):
You might’ve heard me use this example in the past, but it’s something that’s so silly in nature, but made such a huge impact. So we don’t have to think about these things being super dramatic, but I had a problem with what I called the one more game where if I started eating a piece of candy and I had multiple little mini candy bars, I felt like I just always ate the entire bag. And so I wanted to stop this pattern. So when I did get it and I wanted to have a few pieces, I would put some now out in the cabinet and instead of leaving the container of all the other candy, the bag of the candy in the cabinet as well, I put in the freezer. Candy in the freezer tastes just as good, if not arguably better than in the cabinet. But just shifting that so that it was in the freezer, I felt like it was there whenever I wanted it would last.

(02:56):
Now eons even longer. It stopped me from feeling the need to have more of it, and sometimes now I still take it out of the freezer and eat right from there, but I’m not as tempted because it’s a different pattern interrupt for me, it’s a change in my environment, which may not work for you may seem very silly because again, it’s still just as good, if not arguably better. But that changed the routine from being something unconscious to enough of a discomfort, a new hard, just a little bit more difficult and a little bit more out of mind that it helped me. Same thing with learning new habits. You might say, Hey, for my goal to see results as fast as possible, I know tracking macros is great, but it’s overwhelming. It seems tedious. It seems just like something I can’t do. It’s so hard.

(03:37):
So you mentally resist it, even if you could potentially physically do it. So instead of just going straight to trying to force that which ends up making you feel restricted, you push it back even mentally more, which makes it even harder and uncomfortable. Think about what is the easiest, most comfortable thing to do with that. Maybe you’re like, Hey, I’m okay tracking as long as I don’t have to actually make any changes to start. Or, hey, maybe I’ll write down my food or maybe I’ll take pictures of my food, or maybe I’ll even focus on specific things at each meal to hold myself accountable and track in that way. One habit doesn’t have to be done in one way and won’t be done in one way by everybody or even by ourselves over the course of our life. But we want to think about how we can make those habits we want to break harder and the habits we want to implement even easier.

(04:19):
Recognizing even maybe the ideal habit we want to build towards knowing we’re taking those steps because the more we just go right against that hard, we bash our head into a wall. Basically trying to make that habit change the more we are going to push back against it and not want to do it again. Owning our own laziness, what can I be lazy with? Hey, I want to hit macros, so I’m going to map out one day of macros and track one day and create meal prep or even buy meal prep to make it real easy. I love having meal prep. Yes, I do like cooking. I think it’s great to working all these different things, but I also know that I am lazy and at the end of the day, if something takes longer than five minutes to microwave, there are days I won’t do what I should do, what I really want to do in terms of my goals, and I’ll make a choice that I won’t be proud of later.

(05:00):
So instead, I have that frozen meal prep. I can microwave in under five minutes and I can go. So the more you think about, Hey, I’m lazy, let’s own this so that my energy can go to the priorities I really want to focus on. The more you’re going to find ways to make those habits that you want to break a little bit harder and those habits you want to implement a little bit easier, and then find the fun in it. If something is feeling like too much effort, how can you break it down? Because maybe your priorities have shifted. How can you find something new to invigorate it? Maybe you don’t like foam rolling, but you really love listening to the podcasts. Listen to the podcast as you foam roll. Connect those habits, but find ways to steer into making things a little bit more comfortable, convenient, and easy when you want to implement them or a little bit harder uncomfortable and just not as convenient when you want to break them, but own your own laziness and see your discipline actually skyrocket from this.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.