What is the best way to overcome laziness and procrastination?
Your life may change after reading this.
The most important and revealing thing to understand about how you can stop procrastinating and being lazy has to do with how the brain works.
For example: When you eat a delicious food, your brain starts to activate.
Send a positive signal to your brain.
In neurochemical form, this is known as dopamine.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation.
Dopamine sends a signal to your brain saying "this activity is good, do more of this" as it has highlighted this activity as beneficial to your survival.
Dopamine helps you stay motivated through these long days and nights working on something that doesn't offer you a short-term reward.
Without dopamine, we would never get anything done.
Likewise, without dopamine, addiction would never exist.
Think for a moment: All adults know that smoking is bad, and despite this, there are millions of adults throughout the world who smoke regardless of its consequences.
This is because they have a dopamine problem. They literally can't quit because they've trained their brains to look for the "reward," which in this case is smoking.
They have retained some of their motivation to buy and smoke cigarettes.
For many smokers, when they see a pack of cigarettes, smell tobacco, or even think about smoking, they get a rush.
A surge of dopamine, of motivation.
"I have to smoke. I have to smoke. I have to smoke. I need this."
As you might expect, dopamine is chemically similar to adrenaline. If you add an ethyl group to it, you get adrenaline. If you remove it, you get dopamine.
The entire tobacco industry is based on this reward system in the human brain.
Think about that a bit before continuing.
A main reason many people have a problem with procrastination is because of the prevalence of the pursuit of instant gratification in our society.
Instant gratification are activities that produce good feelings without offering any real, tangible rewards.
Our world is so full of stimulation that someone could spend their whole life excited but achieve nothing of real value with their life.
What are some examples of instant stimulation?
- Social media
- TV on demand
- Foods high in sugar, salt and fat
- Pornography
- drugs of all kinds
- Gossip
- Video game
All of these things work in the brain's reward circuitry to give off good feelings.
When you eat junk food, you feel full, and you don't have room for food with real nutrients.
When you enter a social network, you feel good about every "like" or comment.
When you play video games, you can spend hours and hours searching for imaginary rewards.
Yes, doing all this is fine, it's normal.
But most people use them as a means of escape.
Think of your motivation like money. You have a certain amount of motivation to spend in a day.
If you want to complete a large project that requires large amounts of action, you need more motivation.
If you spend all your motivation on things that will not help you improve your life, you will have spent the motivation for that day.
Tomorrow comes, and you do the same.
As a result, you will have developed a signal in your brain that your "motivation" should be used for transient pleasures.
This is not good.
This means that when it comes time to lift the heavy weights, the things that really produce results, you won't be able to do it.
You have associated enjoyment and fun with small strokes of stimulation.
Your brain tells you that you already feel good, so why bother doing these productive things just to get a "job well done" reward?
It is very easy to create a life in which you have done nothing but waste your time.
What do we have to do?
We have to create limits .
We have to limit all these things, and put them in a safe that they don't come out.
Or else they will take over your life, they will be like weeds in the garden.
Put a limit on how much time you spend on the Internet, playing video games or after imaginary rewards.
Invest time in real things that help you and yours in the long run.
No, you won't get this quick hit of dopamine, but you should think of this as an investment.
There will be days when you feel down.
This takes self-discipline. And it's hard to practice self-discipline, but once you have it, once you have this foundation of self-control, you will start to be the master instead of the servant.
At this point, you won't "need" external motivation. You will already be internally motivated as you have a foundation built with hard work and good habits in your arsenal.
Giving you junk food cravings won't do you any harm.
Being tired after working to go to the gym will not kill you.
Not getting the approval of others will not affect you.
This is one way I have found to overcome laziness/procrastination/laziness.
I'm sure there are others, but we need to be on the lookout for these sources of instant gratification and constantly ask ourselves:
Will what I'm doing right now make me think at the end of the day "this was a waste of time and energy"?
If it does, limit your time on it or remove it from your life.
You only get one chance to live.
Do not spend it in an overstimulating your life with useless garbage.
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