Life Leveling

It’s time to cover Sloth, the last of the 7 Deadly Sins and the one constantly beckoning our name. If you have interest in viewing my previous posts on the other six deadly sins, then you can Click Here to view the entire collection.

In this post, as the title suggests, we will cover the 3 steps to crushing Sloth, which in turn, will stop you from being a loser. I like to keep things simple, so if you desire to view only a certain section, the post will be divided by these headings: Defining Sloth, Personal Experience, and lastly How to Stop Being a Loser.

I’d highly recommend reading all parts of this post, to make everything more cohesive. With that being said, let’s delve into defining Sloth.

Defining Sloth

“Sloth” or more commonly used, laziness, is the reluctance to work or make an effort (according to Oxford Languages). The biblical meaning is quite similar, it just refers to laziness in terms of relationship with God and following what God commands.

The definition itself is quite straightforward, but understanding why we tend to gravitate towards Sloth is more interesting.

Personal Experience

I am not David Goggins, this may come as a surprise to some, and I apologize, but I don’t enjoy running with broken feet. I would say I am closer to a rock, as I don’t naturally have a very strong drive to be productive.

I should rephrase what I said, I don’t have a natural drive to do things I don’t want to do, which doesn’t always mean not wanting to do things that are productive. What I am doing now (blogging) could easily be seen as a productive activity by many, I would agree.

My laziness is reserved for the unexciting, taking out the trash, cleaning dishes, and working a minimum wage job. At least with minimum wage jobs there’s some purpose, you make money, which in itself, could be working toward saving up for college or something.

Another thing to note, is that I want to be a “good” person. And my definition of a good person, is someone who takes out the trash, cleans the dishes, and does their part in society/for their family. So naturally, by not doing these things, I am a failure by my own definition.

As to why I am the way I am, many things could be said, none of which I want to use as an excuse. As I am far past realizing that excuses don’t do you any good, but looking toward the reasons as to why we are the way we are, could make us realize a thing or two.

In my household, when I would clean, I would be mocked by my family members. It was mostly jokingly, given that seeing me clean was considered an anomaly. But it made me embarrassed, I guess looking back, the reason I was embarrassed had less to do with them and more to do with me.

Not only would I get embarrassed, but I would also then be told something like this “Oh, since you’re cleaning, can you do this after?”. One act of cleaning would lead to an expectation for more, so why in the world would I want to initiate cleaning?

Now this example could just be an outlier and the other times of my laziness had nothing to do with external forces. But one thing I’ve learned through reading about philosophical topics, is that everything seems to be affected by external forces, even when we don’t realize it.

This isn’t to take blame off ourselves, as if you’ve read my previous work, you know I strongly encourage changing your environments to lead to success. This is essentially influencing external forces yourself, giving you some more control.

My internal belief is that struggling with Sloth is really just struggling with motivation (seems obvious, but wait), but I believe a lack of motivation is caused by a lack of personal ethics, essentially, feeling a lack of purpose for doing something.

With that being established we can tackle the necessary steps of crushing Sloth, through addressing these problems.

How to Stop Being a Loser

1. Reflect: Why do you “want” to do this task? Why does doing this task matter? When you want someone to do something, you have to convince them. The same applies for yourself, convince yourself or remind yourself of your “whys”. Here’s an example, why do I want to workout? I want to workout because I want to feel proud of myself, I want to be a good example for my future kids, I want to challenge myself by doing difficult things. There are a million different reasons as to why you might want or not want to do something, you have to learn how to really tap into this well of feelings and logic.
2. Strategize: How are you going to make sure you are successful? This might be taking some habit tricks like setting up your environment to encourage productivity. These habit tricks can be learned in a book I read called Atomic Habits (Affiliate Link), this isn’t necessary, but it can definitely be helpful. You could also look into other habits online and hopefully find something that works for you. One last tip is to consider gradually getting into a habit, it’s better to do five minutes of meditation daily, then to want to do twenty and fail multiple times a month. Consistency is key.
3. Do: Thinking about what you need to do is good and all, but you have to eventually do. You’re going to eventually ask yourself a question “should I do *blank*”, in that moment you will be presented with a few options, do it now, do it later, and don’t do it. Obviously, doing it now is the most ideal, doing it later is fine, but you have to be honest with yourself, is this really something you will do later? Lastly is the worst outcome, not doing it. If you can’t convince yourself to do it, then I would say that you need to go back to Step 1 and repeat. You need to find a purpose that you buy, or else you won’t go through with doing it. That purpose could literally just be to challenge yourself, become a more disciplined person, or best of yet in my opinion, to be a good person. Think through the cause and effect of doing and not doing something, if you don’t do the dishes, who gets stuck with it? Your mom who is coming back from work and is exhausted? Are you really okay with that?

Conclusion

If you find this information to be obvious, I would question if it’s so obvious, why do you continuously fail? So often, we want things to be more complicated than they actually are, that’s because we don’t want to take responsibility or we want someone to hold our hand and make everything magically easy.

I hate to say it, but easy is not the name of the game. Whether you succeed or not will come down to how well you master the fundamentals, I don’t believe it’s about how many or who has the best “life hacks”.

A trick can still only get you part way, the rest is on you. Find your why, consider using tools to help, and lasty, make sure you “do”. I would really love to hear your feedback in the comments as a valued reader, I want to hear about your experiences with Sloth and what you’ve found helpful in your journey to crush it. Take care of yourselves 🙂