Are you one of the many people that is suffering from chronical laziness? It is really frustrating, because actually you want to get things done. However, you just can’t do the necessary efforts to meet your goals. There are of course many causes of being idle and not productive. In this blog post, I want to take the time to explain just one of the deeper structural causes of laziness. It’s one that we developed at an early age. In our relationships with our parents and other relevant influencers, like teachers for example.
Conditional love
When we were young children, we were completely dependent of adults to take care of us. Their love especially, was so important. Love is so subtle and mysterious, but it’s what we need the most. As new beings on earth we needed to feel welcome, to be allowed to have our rightful place in our family. To be surrounded and to be loved for the unique people that we are. Thanks to the love we receive from our relevant adults, we can grow up to be confident and strong people.
But in many cases, our adults used their love as a tool to get things done from us. They only gave us their love in a conditional way. Only when we were behaving according their expectations and wishes, we were receiving their love. Since a young age, we already became well trained and conditioned. When we were good girls or boys, than we got our parents’ or teachers’ approval. We started to confuse this approval with love. Real love is of course unconditional.
“Good girls” and “good boys”
Being children and not knowing any better, we got addicted to the feeling of being approved and being a good girl or boy in the eyes of our adults. It became our purpose to prove ourselves and show how good we can meet the expectations of our family and society in general. Following the many unwritten but powerful rules, constantly “improving” and changing ourselves, being meaningful in the eyes of others,… became our purpose. Slowly we started ignoring our own unique personality and our inherent qualities in order to be of better service to others.
We were trained in such a way that only when we were meeting the expectations of our adults, we would get approval. When we were trying too much to do things our way and going too far out of the zone our adults created for us, we were disapproved and corrected. In short, we were literally conditioned to please others and deny our own uniqueness. We learned to work hard to impress others and to be of service and we were in many cases denied from the unconditional love for our own uniqueness. Our self-esteem and self-value became dependent of other people. Furthermore, because we were not really loved for who we are but only for what we do, we never developed a strong self-love. We can only love ourselves when we feel the approval of others. So also our self-esteem became dependent of our ability to please our relevant adults and society.
Let’s get lazy!
So how does this all relate to the problem of laziness? When we grow up, in many jobs or studies we can keep going on doing like we were used to do: obeying prescribed procedures and pleasing our boss or teacher. But often we have to or we feel the urge to start taking our own initiatives. We have to create something, build up a project, bring our own input, start our own company, write a paper… After a quarter life of obeying, we slowly realize we need to get in touch with our true selves. We feel dull in our jobs, studies or life in general and we need to build something where we can put our souls in. Also it is often that exactly our jobs or studies ask for our own input and creativity after we learned our whole youth that we are not allowed to think and act from our own inherent qualities.
And here it gets hard. Once we need to get ourselves in action, we often get stuck. Once we have to work independently and have the freedom to create something, we get blocked. We start procrastinating, escaping in entertainment and comfort. We don’t find our motivation and our energy fades away. Because we were trained to work for approval of others. As a result not having enough self-love, we are unable to do work for ourselves. We are only motivated when we get the necessary approval of relevant others as a reward. We can’t work purely for ourselves, but only other people can make us feel proud for what we accomplish.
Lazy idlers make motivated pleasers
So far, a big part of the people I talked with about their struggle with idleness are only lazy when they have to work for their selves. When they receive enough space in their project for personal input or when they have to work independently, that’s when they struggle. When they feel needed by others or when the chance for being a “good girl” or “good boy” is big, suddenly they get activated. These idlers are not lazy, they are just missing the motivation they need: approval. They are in the grip of their previous conditioning environment. They love to help others and to be of service. They love to be needed and fulfill expectations and solving problems for others. But when they want or have to work for their selves, they lack motivation,… because the reward they are hooked on is missing.
We were conditioned with the idea that we are only doing a good job when we please our adults. We didn’t receive the unconditional love for who we inherently are, so we slowly ignored our own needs and qualities. Even when we later in life rediscover our true nature and talents, we lack the necessary self-love and self-esteem to realize something for ourselves. Maybe you or someone you know never took action to develop his own idea, to change his job, to write that book, to start his own company, or even struggles so hard to write a paper or work on a project where he gets a little freedom? The moment we can finally do something for ourselves, manifest our inherent talents… we suddenly lack energy, motivation and purpose.
The problem is, we were never loved for our uniqueness and personal qualities, but only for meeting other’s expectations. Like this we never appreciated our true selves. We were often even inhibited and punished for being ourselves. When we don’t get approval, we don’t like who we are. We value ourselves through the eyes of others. So we get only a good feeling when others approve us. Like this it’s so hard to motivate ourselves purely by self-love and self-approval. It’s so hard to believe in ourselves and to overcome self-critic and the fear for other people judging and criticizing our work. When we are working for our selves and creating something from our hearts we are extra vulnerable, so even more sensitive for critics of others. While the truth is that our own self-love and pride of who we are should be enough to keep us motivated and fulfilled.
What can we do about this kind of laziness?
The first and most practical solution with short term results is to find other people who support us in what we do. It is true that if we are loved, we can perform miracles. If we can work together with others that we love, we can support each other in our personal goals and grow together. The most important is of course that we are willing to be involved in the work of other people, so they have the feeling they are not doing this alone. And even more important: we need to support them unconditionally. We are not allowed to influence them and manipulate them to meet our own expectations. We have to make sure that we give them the motivation and love they need to create something in all freedom and we have to be able to do this genuinely.
A more difficult but thorough solution is that we start developing the necessary self-love and self-esteem we need, to be able to motivate ourselves and get out of our laziness. We have to realize we don’t need others to give us approval to be able to accomplish what we feel inside. Try to get in touch with yourself, connect with who you really are and disidentify with all the beliefs, rules, ideas that other people have been putting in you. Have the courage to put yourself in front of the mirror and see through all your insecurities. Find your inherent talents you are born with and be proud of them, no matter what they are. And with your gifts you create something for yourself and you learn to appreciate it, without asking for approval from others. You create what you need to create and you drop your work in the world for everyone to see, but only your opinion matters… not the one of the others.
A third solution does not help us, but helps others who come after us: our children. We can make sure our children will not become lazy pleasers, by giving them the space to manifest their selves as unique beings and loving them unconditionally for this. If you love your children for who they are and you don’t use your love as a tool to get them doing the things you want them to do, they will not get addicted to your approval. Like this they will develop enough self-love and self-esteem to have enough motivation to work on their own behalf without being needy for the approval of others. Like this we can break a strong vicious circle.
Realizing the positive side
I always like to turn the coin around. Where I see a struggle, I also see opportunities. While some people struggle with laziness and their self-esteem, I see the same people doing amazing work being there for others. They are often not materialistic. They are not driven by money or profit, but by having a connection with others and by feeling the satisfaction of the people they help. By being fulfilled by the other’s gratefulness these people are always ready to help and eager to put the other person’s needs first. Of course there are many negative sides about this exchange, but we also need to look at the bigger picture. Like I mentioned above, it’s not healthy not to be able to work for your self and needing the support of others too much. But if we would make the sum of all the great work people like this are doing, we would’t want to miss them in our society.
Volunteers, caretakers, teachers, housekeepers, social workers, entertainers,… many of them are driven by the need of having approval from the people they help. Of course the ideal situation would be if they would do their jobs because the required qualities are synchronizing with who they inherently are. That would prevent a lot of other struggles too, like burnouts for example. The cause for a bunout is often the lack of approval, support and gratefulness people who work in social jobs need to feel fulfilled.
