You know what I think is the biggest stumbling block most of face? Inertia. Inertia is the law of physics that says a body stays at rest or in motion until something acts on it. So inertia can be a positive thing or a good thing, because inertia is another name for Momentum really. When we are moving forward, we call it momentum and we call it inertia when we are stuck. However, as the definition says, inertia is the same thing whether in motion or not. It means you continue on the path you are on, until you or someone or something else knocks you off that path.
When we are in a rut, how do we get out of it? We generally shake up our lives in some way. We go buy something, change our clothing style or hair style. We change jobs or join clubs or groups. No matter how we define it, we DO something. It all starts with a decision to take action and than actually taking that action. Otherwise we keep going until something happens to us. That can shake things up too. You can be forced out of your rut, but that method is usually jarring and not in a good way either. That method usually means something bad has happened in your life and you have to react to it.
On the other hand momentum as we normally define it, means we are moving in a positive direction towards our goals. We don’t want to change this. We want to keep it going for as long as possible. In other words, we WANT inertia if we are doing well. The problem with that is that eventually, momentum can turn into inertia. Even when we are doing well and achieving our goals, we want to be careful that we don’t create that rut. Things can become too commonplace and boring. We can take things for granted because we get used to it and just expect things to keep going on autopilot.
Sometimes they do keep going. But when we get too comfortable, the momentum subtly shifts into inertia. Eventually that will feel like we’re in a rut because we’ve lost interest or let things go because we were on autopilot. To keep this from happening, we must be on guard for it. We must keep our momentum, just that. Momentum. To do that we need to keep our work and progress fresh and interesting. We can’t take things for granted. We should always be on the lookout for ways to improve ourselves and what we do.
When we stop looking for improvement, that’s when momentum turns to inertia.
