Emotional Inertia

A seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that I discovered while on my mission in Veracruz, Mexico, is that of emotional inertia. Usually I experienced this when dealing with contacts, where we would talk to people in the streets, on buses, or anywhere else we happened to be. Sometimes I just didn't want to make any contacts. It took effort. It slowed us down. My resistance to making the mental change in direction needed to start making contacts was strong.

What I learned, however, is that I could use that inertia to my benefit. Once I got moving in any direction - whether that was making contacts, or, in my current situation, doing homework - it was easy to maintain emotional commitment to those actions. Once I convinced myself to do that first contact, the rest came very easily. That's because I had forced a mental change of direction and was now cruising along in contact mode. The real challenge, then, lies in acceleration. A change in direction, whether that be from stationary to movement, or changing the direction of actions already in motion.

I've found that some actions take an ENORMOUS amount of effort to get moving. Once I'm moving on them, though, maintaining the movement is easy. Inertia!

So, the takeaway is this: if you need to do something that you don't want to do, just get it moving, and as soon as you do, you'll likely want to keep moving on it. Accelerate.

-Tw3nty