What’s the best way to overcome crippling laziness and gain some discipline?

I saw this question on Quora the other day and I began answering it. I wanted it to be here too.

I’ve asked myself this question before. A few times. In seasons where I’ve gone numb. I was in one of those times a couple of years ago. I lived in Nashville, TN. It was 2009.

My whole life was heavy. I could feel all the wasted time, accumulating. Like I was building up my own shadow. It was like a cloud I slung over my shoulders. An oversized straight-blanket.

I was in Nashville to get right with a ghost I found inside. It was always asking dangerous questions. About me, about music, about money. Always from behind the wall, or around a dark corner.

I could be doing so much more. But I wasn’t.
I could’ve tried harder, given more shots. But I wasn’t doing that either.

I just wanted to go to that rooftop downtown. Look at the cement buildings. Drink potato vodkas with olives on plastic sticks. Melt the coldness inside before midnight.

But before feeling bad about the laziness.
Before the cortisol dump and slipstream.
Before you let the warm sting of disappointment in.
Before anything, to feel less nothingness.

Try this:

Put your eyes on your laziness. Look at it.
Longer than usual.

Keep looking. It’s uncomfortable. It’s okay.

What is it doing? That big fat slab of laziness, right on your chest.
What’s it doing?

For you.

Hmm.

It’s doing something.

Can you look between it, or through it? While it’s spinning in place, like the plates from the Radiohead song.

What’s behind it?

Is it keeping you from something that’s too blurry and in-between for now. That’s too new to unfold and be what it is, just yet.

Maybe the slacking discipline and the ever-distraction are the parts of you trying to take care of itself. All that spinning kindness.

Is there really such a thing as laziness? Do we ever really slow to a stop, completely, except death?

We are alive! With spinning hearts!

All our lazy parts, when look real close, are bustling about, busy like bees. Making sure we’re filled up with thoughts, and drained of action.

Or that we’re stuffing the calendar with meaningless tasks and errands, so our thoughts go blank and become weightless. Buoying like hollow citrus on top the surface.

All our lazy parts are like teenagers, working their summer jobs. They’re like lifeguards. Pool-side. Minimum-waged. Happy for now.
Making sure the pool is waveless. Because safety-first makes everything easier. Because we’re responsible for all the kids not drowning.

I don’t believe in laziness.
I believe in kindness.
And summer jobs for teenagers.

Until it’s the end of summer. And your heart is stingy because you have to say goodbye. And you’re going to be sad, and leaving soon. And all this will be behind you, even though you want it all to stay. Here and now.

Change is hard and sad.

But change can be meaningful and energizing too.
It is a real gift. It can feel like a coming-into-your-own, just as much as it used to feel like it was a “losing”.

You might even feel glad you’ve lost who you used to be.
So you have room for your becoming.