PERPETUAL MENTAL LOAFER

There is a time and place to lounge, do nothing, think nothing, and "idle out" with intense and intentional fluff. Any mental health and medical professional, peak performance coach, and rational thinking person will agree that hitting the proverbial pause button and doing this "activity" has its benefits. It's what I call becoming a temporary mental loafer. It's a good thing unless it's how you predominantly live your life. Being a perpetual mental loafer can become a subtle behavior that flies under your cognitive radar and can rob you of your potential and shortchange you of a greater sense of fulfillment. So, how can anyone become aware of this disorder and begin to escape its grab? It requires three disciplines.

First, a decisive decision that you will avoid the trap of being intellectually lazy. A mental loafer becomes intellectually lazy when they stop learning. The desire to learn, grow, and personally develop either diminishes or completely evaporates. They don't challenge or stimulate their intellectual faculties. With the abundant resources available today for someone to read, watch, or hear something of intellectual value, they bypass these resources or trade them in for a steady diet of fluff.

Secondly, stop living or mooching off the dreams, desires, and beliefs of others. Instead, a mental loafer would hop on someone else's bandwagon because it's too much work, too much risk, too painful, and takes too much time to think about, design, and build their wagon. Create your dreams. Foster your desires. Lean into your own beliefs.

Lastly, develop these four antithetic habits to fortify you against any future mental lounging. Practice exercising your mental muscle by meditation, visualization, and creative visioneering at least a few minutes a day. This daily mind training will develop mental stamina plus keep your creative faculties churning. Don't be afraid to ask curious yet tough questions. This forces your mind to seek the answers to the questions through one means or another. And be careful not to settle for quick answers if you're not satisfied with them. Keep digging. Keep asking. Become a prolific note-taker. Note-takers are impact makers. Don't just rely on what you hear, read, or watch, but force your mind to store further what you're learning by writing it down. Stand guard against the negative, self-defeating, energy-draining inner chatter which is always present and available to talk you out of the good you should do. It will sell you on why being mentally idle is what's best. Don't buy into the lies.

While mental loafing has its occasional place, when it becomes part of how you live, you will find that it didn't serve you at all in experiencing a rich and meaningful life.