The dangers of inertia

in·er·tia
1. a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.

2.PHYSICS a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force."the power required to overcome friction and the inertia of the moving parts"

A friend of mine sent me an article soon after I disclosed to her that I was taking time off work due to depression. The article discussed the idea of inertia, more specifically how it applies to mental health.

I am sure we have all either told someone, or been told, “Get off that couch and do something!” That, in its simplest terms, is inertia.  Sometimes we get so preoccupied with the overwhelming amount of things going in our lives that our body, simply, shuts down and has to stop and sit down. It can’t handle the weight, or it doesn’t want to. It just wants to sit still and veg out.

Inertia applies to mental health in a couple of ways. Let us look at that example of our body shutting down. Inertia teaches us that an object, or body, at rest will stay at rest until acted upon by an outside force. That is why it is so hard to get out of bed in the morning, or to get off that couch. The body wants to stay there. It doesn’t want to move.

So the body requires force to get out of bed. That force is our mind, our will. Our mind has to force our body to get out of bed. Inertia also teaches us that the amount of force needed to move an object depends on the mass of that object. To complicate things, our mental state can seep into our physical state making the object heavier, and thus requiring more force, and will, to budge it.

Let’s take the example of a depressed person who has to get out of bed to go to work. The body- the object - wants to stay in bed, tucked under the covers. It needs to be forced to get out of bed. You are not just going to roll out of bed onto the floor. The alarm clock can go off three or four times, but that will not get you out of bed. Your roommate or partner can yell from the other room that it is time to get up, but that doesn’t get you out of bed. The impetus to get your body moving has to come from you, and you alone.

When you are depressed, that requires a hell of a lot more force than your typical person. What factors could make your body heavier, and more difficult, to move? I hate my job. I don’t like a  particular co-worker, or I hate them all. I have a big presentation or inspection today. It is raining and miserable outside. All these things make it harder to get out of bed. It will require great mental force to get your body moving.

That has got me thinking that life, and every decision, might boil down to one simple question, “Is it worth it?” The more something is worth it, the easier it is to put things in motion. In the above example, one has to ask what are the benefits of getting up and going to work. The obvious answer is you need the money. But money is not always enough. If you are lucky enough to work in a profession that you love to do, it will be easier to get out of bed. If you like your co-workers, you are eager to go see them and see what’s new, so it is easier to get out of bed.

Now, let’s say you are in bed, and the alarm clock goes off. You don’t have to go to work today and you are meeting some friends this morning to go to the beach. Your mental state is good, better than if you had to go to work. You feel lighter, and therefore it is easier to get out of bed. You ask yourself, “Is it worth getting out of bed?” The answer is yes. You are going to have some fun. You are going to be with people you enjoy.

In a seriously depressed person, everything is not worth it. It feels like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. Going to the beach is not worth it. I’ll probably get sunburned. Did you see the story of the shark attack? The beach will probably be too crowded.

If you are like me, even making money is not worth leaving the house. Sometimes it feels like a crane couldn’t pick me up out of bed. I am in a situation now where I have gone through my life savings and am accumulating debt, and I still can't get my mind and body to move and get a job in order to survive. Now that is serious inertia.

The flip side of inertia is that an object will stay in motion until acted on by an equally powerful force. The lesson to be learned here is that the hardest thing to do is to get the ball rolling. Once it is rolling, it becomes easier. Just get it in motion.

This also teaches us that the first step is the hardest. It could be deciding to make a career change. It could be going to the gym. It could be going to do the dishes. It could be writing an article for your blog.

I find this to be so true about me when it comes to doing the treadmill. I will go days and days, even weeks, telling myself that I want to lose my belly, that I need to exercise. I have a treadmill in my home. Yet so often I can’t get the motivation to get up and walk one room over, take the laundry off the handles of the treadmill, and get on it and go.

But, when I do get myself to do it, when I do get myself to take that first step and lace up my sneakers, I find myself pushing myself hard. I may start out just wanting to take it easy and do five minutes, then I wind up doing ten, maybe even twenty, and sometimes thirty. And I feel better about myself after. Then the next day, I do the same. The ball is rolling. I get into the habit. “Is it worth it?” Yeah, I feel great after. I see results in the mirror and on the scale.

But once I stop seeing results in the mirror, or I start seeing the scale read the same thing day after day…

Inertia not only applies to sitting on the couch. It also applies to life in general, especially in choice of jobs. My life partner, Erin, works as a second grade teacher. She works in a school district that is over an hour away from where we live. Obviously, there are several school districts in the area where we live which would be much closer. But she got her first job out of college in the area where she is now, and has stayed there for about twenty years. An object will stay in uniform motion in a straight line...

I stayed at my job as a restaurant manager for the same company for over thirty years. I didn’t leave until external forces, namely my grief and depression after my mother dying, forced me to change direction.

So, I appreciate my friend sending me the article about inertia. A year and a half later I decided to watch some YouTube videos on the subject. And only now have I decided to write about it. Talk about inertia, right? But once I started, I got into a zone and wrote 1500 words. And I felt better after, like I accomplished something, however small, today.

So, yes, I am still a victim of mental, and physical, inertia. I admit it, wholeheartedly. I already told you about my need to get a job to survive, financially, yet I can't get myself to do it. I have put on about thirty pounds since I left work. I go through phases where I work out, but not many, and not enough. Sometimes I watch what I eat, but then I ask myself, “Is it worth not eating those cookies?” And I answer in the negative. I'm working on it.

But I can still preach. The hardest thing to do is take that first step. Every journey, no matter how long, begins with a single step, right? So if you are not happy about something in your life, build up the courage, and will, to do something, anything. Make that straight line change its course by acting to knock it off its course, otherwise nothing changes. What did Einstein say the definition of insanity was again? Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. If nothing else, I acknowledge to myself that it took courage to admit I had a problem and to seek help. And to leave my job. I stopped the course of the straight line. I took the first step. Now I need to take the second, and third, and fourth...

The other thing to remember is that the first step doesn’t have to be a leap. Make small attainable goals for yourself. Don’t be like me and stop doing the treadmill because you went three days without losing a pound. Believe in the process. Don’t try to lose 50 pounds in three months. Instead focus on losing two or three pounds per week. Before you know it, after 10 weeks you have lost 20 or 30 pounds.

Small things add up, just keep moving. If you do only twenty sit-ups per day, you will see the beginnings of a six-pack in a couple of months. If you only do two sets of ten bicep curls every other day, you will begin to show off your "guns" before you know it. Just keep moving.

Maybe allow yourself to eat ice cream twice a week, instead of every night. When people try to go cold turkey is when they fail, and then they really feel like shit because that is what depression is all about - feeling like a failure and feeling like shit.

Maybe teach yourself one phrase in Spanish every night, then maybe you'll be able to get by when you take that vacation to Madrid next year.

Again, the point is to keep moving. Keep doing something. Keep improving yourself. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic. You don't have to go run a marathon, but maybe talk a walk every day around your block. You don't have to read War and Peace, but maybe flip through a newspaper (what is that?) every day. Do a crossword or a word search. Do something. The point is little things add up. You may not see the progress every day, but in the long haul you will.