Sept 21, 2016
Health and Well Being
There was a phrase in the old TV show Bill Nye the Science Guy that really stuck with me: "Inertia is a property of matter." I can no longer remember the rest of the song but the phrase "inertia is a property of matter" for whatever reason is buried in my brain and will likely be with me until I rest in my grave. At the time, I had no idea what inertia even was, the whole concept was confusing to me. Yet the more I learn about inertia, the more intrigued I was in terms of how we can apply it to our everyday lives.
Inertia is the property that an object will keep doing the same thing it has always been doing unless you put in energy for it to do something else. Lost yet? It breaks down to this: if an object is sitting still, it will continue sitting still. If an object is in motion, it will continue to be motion. And this will be true until you put energy to get the sitting object going or put energy to stop the object in motion. The property is true of everything, whether it is a ball or a spaceship.
Inertia is also a property of many people's lives. We often get stuck in our daily routine of waking up, brushing our teeth, eating breakfast, going to work, eating lunch, going back to work, going home, eating dinner, then repeat. It becomes really easy to follow this same inertia every day. However, we may not be satisfied with this routine, and may want to change at which point we would have to confront inertia. Inertia will be working against us, trying to force us back to our same routine. Inertia is why it is so difficult to diet or work out. Our regular routine did not take into account those new things, and we struggle to have energy to do what we had before and take on these new tasks. At this point, inertia is fighting to get this intrusion it out of our lives so we can be back in our old routine. It will take lots of time and energy to get those habits into our daily routine, time and repetition. Once we can accomplish that, then inertia becomes our ally. If we can work our diet and exercise into our daily habit then eventually it will be harder to stop doing it than to just continue. Just think about the last time you did not brush your teeth. How weird was it to walk around all day, possibly with bad breath. We were not born with an urge to brush our teeth, yet it has become such a regular part of our lives that it would be harder to stop. At this point inertia is helping us continue the good habit of brushing.
I recently had an experience with inertia while working out. Unfortunately I have not made a habit of working out quite yet. And when I do not work out for a while, then my desire to work out diminishes substantially, and it becomes harder and harder to get started again. I made myself a promise this past Sunday to work out for 3 days of the week, and found myself half way through the week without having started. So I forced myself to go for a run, feeling my heart race, and my lungs strain. They too were out of practice by this point. I must put in energy to get my inertia going, to the point where working out would be a regular as brushing my teeth. Today was day 1 of 3 of for my workout, and I am happy to say it is done. Hopefully this inertia continues on to a workout for the rest of the week.
Once inertia has started moving forward it will be tough to stop. I can see this applying to the other aspects of my life including learning to invest and honing my skills. I know that if I want to make those changes in my life, then I need to put in energy. Right now it sounds difficult and tiring... and it's late...but I am off to brush my teeth so I know it is doable.
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