Is Laziness a Mental Disorder?

Here are few common scenarios that happen to lazy people:

-          You are a busy person and you do not have time to exercise.  You promised yourself that you will wake up every morning at 5:15 to go to the gym or to run. Your alarm goes off, you turn off the alarm and continue sleeping.

-          You promise yourself that you will go to the gym after work. You leave the office, you drive towards your gym but instead of hitting up the gym you end up at home.

-          You promise yourself that you will work out really hard when you are in the gym. You start the warm up with enthusiasm but when you finish the session you realize that your heart rate never went over 120 beats per minute.

Human Brain

In order to understand why some people can keep these promises and why some cannot, we first need to understand basic anatomy of the human brain. The human brain is separated into two cerebral hemispheres, the left and right, which are connected by the corpus callosum (a bundle of neural fibers located under the cortex). According to the left brain/right brain dominance theory, each side of the brain is responsible for a different kind of thinking. While in popular culture the left brain/right brain theory is oversimplified, this oversimplification can help individuals recognize a source of personal weaknesses; thus, these individuals will be able to create a strategy on how to overcome these weaknesses.

In general, the left brain is responsible for reasoning and logic (among other abilities); when you always think about source of a problem, you can rest assured that your left brain is working hard and your right brain is forced to take some time off. Also, the right brain is the home of your creative side. So, when you stop thinking about the source of the problem and you start thinking about the solution to the problem, it means that your right brain has established dominance over your left brain.

So, if you are not the person who jumps up from your bed immediately when the alarm goes and if you recognize yourself in any one of the scenarios from the beginning of the article, you are in desperate need of changing the ways of dealing with your own weaknesses.   

Here is one scenario and a simple strategy that you can easily and successfully implement into your daily workout routine:

-          The alarm goes off at 5:15 am and you want to go to the gym. As soon as you hear the alarm your left brain says: “Stay in the bad, you will have a long day at work, you can work out tomorrow morning”. When this happens, do not fight the left brain with force because you are going to lose that fight. Instead, deploy your right brain’s ability to find a way to fix the problem. When this happens your right brain can say to your left brain: “I will just get up and go to the kitchen to make some coffee but I will not work out today.” Go to the kitchen, make the coffee, and tell your left brain: “You know what, it does not make any sense to go back to bed; I will just go to the gym to see if anybody is there working out right now.” You go to the gym, still sleepy, and say to your left brain: “Since I am here, I will do just a few exercises to break a sweat, but I have no intention of staying here longer than 15 minutes”. After these 15 minutes your left brain will say: “You know what, you have been lying to me since 5:15 am and I have had enough; you do not appreciate me, do whatever you want, you are on your own now”. The right brain will say: “It was about time. Goodbye left brain”.

I think you have a clear picture of how you can easily cheat the reasonable and logical part of your brain.

When I was 17, I was selected to be in the Serbian junior karate team. As part of our training program the other selected team members and I had to undergo battery of psychological tests designed to determine the level of our self motivation. The tests were conducted in the Yugoslavian Institute of Sport by one of the leading European sports psychologists Dr. Ljubica Bacanac. I was very intrigued with these tests because at the time we did not know what the real purpose of the tests was. During one session with Dr. Bacanac I told her that I wanted to be the world karate champion. She said that it is a great ambition to have and that in order to be able to achieve my goal one of things I should do is visualize myself in the finals of world championships with one of the best karate champions ever. She advised me to visualize me beating this champion in an impressive fashion and that I really became the new champion of the world. This was one of the best pieces of advice I have received during my sports career; I have used this visualization technique often and although I never became the world champion, I was able to collect many wins against the winners of medals of the world and continental championships.

The moral of this story is that if you have a problem with keeping your commitment when it comes to your workout routine, you can overcome this problem by visualizing the situation when you are tired, sleepy, and stressed. If you visualize these kinds of situations often, when that exact situation happens, you will feel that you are on familiar territory and will be able to do your workout as you have planned it despite how bad and unmotivated you actually feel.

To answer the question from the title of this article: laziness is a mental disorder but the condition is treatable.