People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals – that is, goals that do not inspire them. | Tony Robbins
The list of America’s laziest cities came out last week and the deep south was well represented! Jackson, Mississippi topped the list. Also on the list are the place I most recently lived (Nashville) and my current home (Birmingham). This probably explains why it is so hard to keep a fitness center in business around here!
Of course, the lazy list measured the physical activity of residents. What if we measured the creative thinking activity of people? Would you make the lazy list? Many people would because thinking creatively is hard. It’s easier to keep doing what we’ve always done with hopes that the outcome will be different this time. That’s simply another way to say, “I’m too lazy to think differently.”
How many individuals and organizations are paralyzed by a fondness for strategies they inherited from previous generations? How many people believe that doing what people did forty years ago will produce similar results today? When I was young, my father was a milkman. I remember riding with him and delivering milk in glass bottles to Styrofoam coolers on front porches. That business died with the advent of the supermarket. When I was in the Navy, every mathematical calculation performed in Nuclear Power School was done on a slide rule; calculators were not allowed. Some things needed changing.
If you want to achieve something different, set goals that motivate you to get in the game. Powerful goals will force you to reevaluate your priorities. Powerful goals will cause you to take control of your life. Powerful goals will allow you to say no to something good so you can say yes to something great. Powerful goals will take you somewhere you’ve never been. Laziness leads to the same place over and over again.
Take a look at your life. Are you at the starting line waiting for the gun or are you floating along in an inner tube? If you keep coming back to the same place, you might be on the lazy list. There’s a reason water parks call it the “Lazy River.” Think about it.
What keeps you on the lazy river?
