Mindset Monday - Stop Lazy Thinking

This is episode 156, the empowered team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, vitality and peak performance coach, Kari Schneider. Welcome, welcome. Happy Monday. Welcome to Mindset Monday. And today we're going to talk about how to stop lazy thinking. Why are we going to talk about how to stop lazy thinking? Because we've talked about stopping overthinking. We've gone through the formula for effective thinking. So if you haven't heard those, go back and take a look at those topics. And now we want to take a look at lazy thinking. And why? Because this is going to be something that we all do. We lazy think all of the time. So what is lazy thinking? Lazy thinking is going to be exactly what it sounds like if we look at the definition of lazy. Lazy is the unwillingness to work or to use energy. And thinking is our ability or this action, this process that considering or reasoning about something, about anything. You combine the two, you go into lazy thinking. It's that lack of willingness to want to think through something or think about something. Instead, we default into old patterns or things that we've thought about in the past. Now I'm right. Now I'm sitting right next to the water on a lake. And this took some intentional effective thinking to create this scenario. Because relying on lazy thinking would have had me be in the exact same spot I always am, go through the same routines, same motions. So it took a little extra energy to do something different. And that's the reason that's exactly why we fall into lazy thinking, is because we're naturally lazy thinkers. Our incredible brains do not automatically do what they're capable of doing. Our brains default to conserving energy. It's the classic motivational triad where we are seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and trying to stay comfortable. Well, our brains are doing the exact same thing, and it applies to thinking as well. And I see this over and over in my life. So this might come up for you in simple things like planning your meals or picking meals for the week. You may just default into the same old things. You may find this in a movie selection you want someone else to pick for you. You might find this in meetings where you know someone else is leading it, so you just are there, but you don't really show up and contribute. You might find this even in arguments where you're talking to someone, maybe it's a loved one, and you fall into that same pattern, the same types of dialogues or back and forth that you have in the past. All of those I consider examples of lazy thinking because it's simply our brain going back into an old pattern instead of considering other options, instead of going into effective thinking. So if you haven't listened to or watched the episode on effective thinking, that one's very powerful and very useful for getting what you want in your life. So we keep falling into these patterns with those examples that I gave. So here are some of the hallmarks so that you can identify whether it's lazy thinking or not. Typically, there's assumptions involved, so we're assuming something about a situation, assuming something about someone else's thoughts. Thinking or assuming something is going to be the same as it always was. So assumption is a hallmark of lazy thinking. Another one is repetition or defaulting to past behaviors, defaulting to past programming, past thinking, past ways of doing things, defaulting into that. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with defaulting because it is a way to be efficient and it is something that we may want to do. However, there's going to be a key hallmark, and it comes with the outcome being one that you don't want. So if you've defaulted into something, the way you know that it's not useful for you in that scenario is that the outcome isn't one that you've wanted or that you want for your future. And another hallmark is, is that someone else is deciding something for you. That's a hallmark of lazy thinking in that there may be a decision there, someone may be asking for your input, and instead of you deciding or consciously delegating, you have someone, oh, you decide, you pick, you pick. You don't put any of your conscious wants or desires into the scenario. So those are typically hallmarks of lazy thinking. So that would be assuming or assumption, repetition, or defaulting to past behaviors and letting others decide for you. And the biggest hallmark of lazy thinking is that you've created an outcome that wasn't what you desired or isn't what you want for your now or your future. So some of the drawbacks that come from lazy thinking, this might be like, well, what's the big deal? You know, this happens time to time. So what? But the hallmarks come directly from the hallmarks. Sorry. The drawbacks come directly from the hallmarks of lazy thinking, and they are misunderstandings. You're going to go through misunderstandings with other people due to lack of discovery, lack of discovery about the scenario, lack of discovery about the other person, lack of discovery about the situation. So Misunderstandings are bound to come up. And most of us don't want misunderstandings in our life or more misunderstandings than we already have. And another one is staying stuck. Anytime we're going into default mode or repetitious behavior, we're more likely to stay in the same place that we've always been. Now, if that's something that you want or I want for my life, then that's perfect, no big deal. But oftentimes we want a different outcome and we may not want to be in the same scenario. So staying stuck is a drawback if we want something different than what, what is happening. And the last thing, and this comes from not putting input in letting others decide for you, is that you don't get what you want. You don't get what you want for whatever that scenario is. It doesn't matter whether it's the work meeting, whether it's the conversation with the loved one, whether it's the meal prep, the movie decision, whatever it is, you actually don't get what you want. When really there was an internal desire in there somewhere. But the lazy thinking didn't allow that to come to fruition, didn't allow that to come to light. The desire is there. What you really want is there, there's something there. It's highly unlikely that you're indifferent in the scenario, but the lazy thinking was holding that back, holding that desire back. So what we want to do is go through. I've got three steps for you and how to start Stop lazy thinking. And they're so simple, but not necessarily obvious. Because lazy thinking is something that is natural. It happens all the time. It's insidious. It creeps into behaviors and scenarios when we don't realize it does. So these three steps end up becoming very powerful in just creating awareness. If you can get back to a neutral space, space in thinking, not overthinking, not lazy thinking, but a neutral space, then you get to bring yourself into effective thinking. Then you can consciously start to create the thoughts and the intention and the awareness. So that's why we want to bring this lazy thinking and the overthinking for that matter, back into more of a neutral space. And these are the three steps to do it. So how to stop overthinking? Number one is going to be to know when you tend to lazy think. So start to reflect. And this is a perfect environment right on the lake to reflect as to when would I naturally lazy think? So I can answer that for sure based on this morning and putting my shirt on backwards. This morning one. When I wake up in the morning, When I wake up in the morning, my brain is still a little sluggish. Like most of us now, most people will wait until making any decisions until they have their morning coffee. I don't drink coffee. I do my morning workout. But prior to my workout and during my workout, my brain is still slow. It's still defaulting into path of least resistance. So I know that when I wake up, I can't be deciding or motivating or making any even decisions on my clothes. I won't even decide on my clothes. That's decided the day before because I can't rely on myself to efficiently do anything when it comes to choosing my clothes, deciding what to train or work out with. All of that is pretty pre decided for me because I know that that's not a good time for me. Another awful time for me is Friday evening, especially if I've had a very full week by the time Friday evening comes along. I'm not banging on all cylinders. I am. I have a bit of decision fatigue or I'm at a space where I want to unwind. And so that's not a time where I'm usually my most creative. Sometimes I am, but often Friday evenings are a slower time for me or a disagreement with my husband. If I have a disagreement with Paul. I consider that a time when I'm lazy thinking because my brain wants to automatically go back to a past conversation. My brain wants to go back to a past scenario and compare it with the current scenario. And that's often not useful for our best communication. So that's a time when I find my brain goes to lazy thinking. During my own workouts, I'll be lazy thinking. I will. If I'm. If I'm training someone else or I'm coaching someone else in any way, I'm not lazy thinking. I'm on point. I'm very focused, very curious. But for my own personal workouts, I fall into this lazy thinking category. Another one is when I'm tired. So you can, you can hear in all of these examples and maybe speculate for yourself where this might be true for you as well, where you might fall into lazy thinking in some of those scenarios as well. Or you may have ones that you're noticing for yourself that you fall into lazy thinking as well. But that is the first step is simply knowing when this tends to occur for you, if you know when it tends to occur. And then you can go to the second step, which is leaning on structure. This is a Term that I learned in the science of creating habits. There are researchers who are very specific on habit creation and I love behavior change science and habit creation science and physiological science. All of those things I study and I learn and I look at the research and one researcher calls it leaning on structure. Because when we tend to go, and my term is lazy thinking, but I think that when we go into lazy thinking, we're not in a space to be able to create our most effective thinking. We're not in a space or energetic level or physiological level to be able to create our best brain power. So if that's the case, the easiest thing to do, and this is what I coach clients on all of the time, is leaning on structure. Don't try to make the decision, don't try to find willpower, don't try to inspire yourself or find motivation when you're feeling in a low space. Instead, lean on your structure, lean on your routine. And that's exactly what I did this morning when I put my shirt on backwards that I got dressed in the dark. I got dressed in the dark because it wasn't as light out, the sun isn't coming up as early, and my clothes were already prepared and so I didn't even go into the bathroom or turn the light on. I put my clothes on before I even got out of bed because they're right there for me. So I leaned on the structure that I've created in my life, which is that I set my clothes out the night before, which is that I have my workout planned weeks in advance because I've trained and planned my entire periodization, my mesocycle. So I'm leaning on structure at times when my brain will automatically go into low level thinking or lazy thinking or repetitious patterns. And in the morning, what I would want to do is just stay in bed or I won't want to decide on clothes. All of those hurdles, all of those hurdles to get to my workout or to get to my workday or my first meeting feel like big steps or big hurdles. So I remove any of the challenge of them and decide it ahead of time when my brain is moving more quickly. So that's number two is leaning on structure and number three is stating your intentions ahead of time, stating your intentions. When you know what you want for your best life. When you know what you want for your best and success, state that intention to somebody else, especially someone who's going to be involved. So if someone's involved in a meeting with you and they are leading the meeting, say Ahead of time. Hey, I'm here in this meeting to support you on that topic. And if you need any backup material, I have it here for you. State that intention. State the intention when you have plans to go out on Friday night that you aren't going to drink on that Friday night because you know you want to get up early on Saturday and you have some commitments on Saturday. State that intention to someone else so you don't have someone decide for you and order a drink for you when you show up to get together. Because then your actual desires, your actual wants are not going to be fulfilled. So state your intentions ahead of time. One time, I remember a few years ago, Paul and I would be so tired when the weekend came and we, we couldn't even decide what movie we wanted to watch. We were juggling all of the kids and all of the sports and all the business and all of the things and all we wanted to do. We didn't want to go out on an active date, we didn't want to talk about too much. We just wanted to sit together and watch a movie. And we couldn't even decide on a movie. So we leaned on structure and we stated our intention to each other because we knew we were going to be exhausted at that time. Not only did we know when we were going to be lazy thinking I hadn't coined that term yet, not only did we know that when we also knew we needed some structure and we also voiced the intention to the other person. So the structure we created was a list. We looked online, we looked at all of the Academy Award winning movies that we'd missed. We made a list of the ones we thought we'd want to watch instead of what was happening, which was we couldn't make a decision, we picked something that we weren't sure or we defaulted to the other person. And then we ended up with an outcome that neither of us liked the movie, we didn't enjoy the time we had, and we felt like it was a waste of time. Instead, we created the structure of a list of movies that we really wanted to see. We both were excited about those movies and, and then all we had to do, we didn't even have to choose on that list. We could pick a number if we needed to. And that served us so that when we were at a time in lazy thinking, we just weren't able to do anything. We still ended up with an outcome that we really wanted instead of falling into a scenario that didn't feel good and we didn't want. So those are to summarize the We've got the hallmarks of lazy thinking, the drawbacks of lazy thinking, and the how to stop lazy thinking. So hallmarks the assumption or the repetition, defaulting to past behaviors, letting others decide for you, and having an unwanted outcome. Those are major hallmarks of lazy thinking. Drawbacks of lazy thinking misunderstandings due to lack of discovery, not trying to be curious, staying stuck in the same space and also not getting what you want, which is a big deal. And then how to stop our lazy thinking? Know when you do it. Know yourself. Get to understand yourself. Really understand what's going on for your brain without making it wrong. My brain is really slow in the morning. That's okay. That happens. And number two, leaning on structure. Create the routines that are going to save you in the times where you just can't make a decision. You can't think or consider or reason in a way that's most effective. And number three, state your intentions to others around you so that they're aware of what you want. When you get to that scenario, you may not be able to think clearly. They've got your back, you've got some accountability or they already know what you want in that given situation. So I hope this serves you in really getting to wrap your own mind around what's going on with your brain. Not from a space of anything wrong is happening, but from a space of creating your most effective thinking. And that's why I went through this a little more in depth with the overthinking, with the creating effective thinking, and with this one as well with stop lazy Thinking. So I want you to have an incredible day. Create the day you want. Create the energy that you want. That's what this is Monday can be all about because it kicks you off into an amazing week. Have a beautiful week everyone. If you are with us in our Empowered Team. We've got some amazing things going on in there, which is a challenge this month. So if you're with us in that, good luck with it. We're here to support you and if you're not, jump on in. Join our team. It's an amazing ongoing coaching group and I think even love it. So have a beautiful rest of your day. Have a powerful week and I will see you on next week's Mindset Monday. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to your usable action steps that optimize results. To join, email us@info powerconditioning.com with subject line team. That's info powerconditioning.com we can't wait for you to be on the team.