Do you remember those mornings when you wake up but do not feel like getting out of bed … sometimes for hours? The energy in your body seems to have gone down dramatically. Every moment, whatever you do and however you move, the body feels heavy. Whatever you may be planning to do, the mind and body seem to lack the drive that you dearly need. You feel laziness in everything you do. If this is how it is with you, chances are you are feeling overwhelmed with life!
The good news is, in modern life, most of this has been quite common. So you are not alone! Just look at this stat!
In the past year, 74% of people have felt so stressed they have been overwhelmed or unable to cope.
– Mental Health Foundation’s 2018 study
During and after the Covid 19 pandemic, these numbers may even be higher.
A survey in 2021 by American Psychological Association, shows how this affects 84% of respondents. 47% reported feeling deep anxiety, 44% felt sad and 39% reported feeling strong levels of anger!
This means almost everyone is facing some emotional challenge that comes from feeling overwhelmed with life. We have even covered 15 common signs that most overwhelmed individuals show.
What can cause laziness when feeling overwhelmed with life?
The reasons behind your laziness can be physical or mental in nature.
Here is a list of the top 9 reasons that may be causing your laziness.
1. Overly Challenging Goals
You may have set goals that look daunting and almost impossible to achieve.
A good way to look at it is, you are ambitious and want to make something out of yourself. However, if you are unable to achieve your goals consistently, then a feeling of being a loser or not being up the mark can start creeping in.
This causes you to start procrastinating the same things that you deeply wish to do. Your mind starts saying, “what if I fail again today?” even before you start the activity.
2. Too many things on your mind
When you are overwhelmed, your mind is already under high levels of stress. It lacks motivation.
You tend to have many things on your mind, constantly taking your attention from one thought to another. So you are unable to focus on anything properly.
Generally, we feel good and motivated when we are naturally focused and engaged. But during times of overwhelm, this feeling of being engaged is hard to find.
Naturally, mentally or physically anything you do will feel like an effort. And it can also lead to becoming lazy.
3. Disturbed Sleep
When overwhelm catches you, your nights become tough.
Just when you lie on the bed, your mind gets hyperactive. It takes you from one thought of worry or another.
Disturbed sleeping patterns are commonly seen with those feeling overwhelmed.
So, if you are facing this, it is natural to have minimal energy in your body during the day.
4. No Exercise
Exercising is about doing controlled actions that can create a desirable increase in your strength or stamina.
Exercise is in a way a small challenge that an individual takes. It makes you go beyond your comfort zone.
When you are anxious and overwhelmed, your willpower is diminished. So taking this challenge, especially the first few steps in your exercise routine, can be extremely difficult.
But not doing exercise keeps you in the zone of inaction. In other words, it keeps you lazy!
5. Consuming Junk Food or Irregular Eating
The commonly known response to stress is to eat more junk. When we feel mentally tired and exhausted we tend to eat something.
It is almost like we are feeling a gap within us. We are desperate to get a sudden jolt of good feeling to come out of our anxiety.
If this junk food or eating irregularly continues, it causes us to feel temporarily good but hampers our energy dramatically. It can also start accumulating in the form of fats inside the body. Whenever you eat irregularly, the body may take it as a sign of scarcity and convert most of what you eat into fats.
If you do the one plus one here, you start understanding why this is adding to your laziness!
6. Lack of Iron and other vitamins in the body
Bad eating habits, as well as bad emotional states, can lead to bad digestion of the food you eat.
If you have low levels of iron, magnesium, potassium, or vitamin B or D12, you may feel high levels of fatigue all day long.
A simple thing to do is a routine blood checkup. Then based on the doctor’s advice take the required supplements or eat the right kind of food.
7. Disturbed Daily Routines
During times of anxiety and overwhelm, we often find ourselves in disturbed routines. We are unable to follow the daily routines and activities that happened so naturally to us.
When our routines are disturbed, our brains need to make new decisions continuously. This is because in the normal routine, with the habits you have built, the stress of new decisions is far less on our brain.
Especially with your natural energy levels being on the lower side during stressful periods, the laziness you feel will be a lot higher in your day-to-day life activities.
8. Increased Anxiety and Stress
Times of overwhelm are normally the times of high anxiety and stress as we have already seen.
Your mind and body are in fight or flight mode all the time. You will see yourself becoming hyperreactive at times. Small incidences can trigger your anxiety.
This takes away a lot of mental and physical energy from you, naturally resulting in increased laziness.
9. Fear of missing out & Fear of failure
Both of these fears happen during times of overwhelm.
You are either overwhelmed because you want to do too many things at the same time.
Or you are feeling too much worried about failing which causes analysis paralysis, finally resulting in overwhelm.
Fear of any kind is a natural sucker of energy and motivation. It stops you from taking even the first step during such times.
Carefully looking into these 9 reasons behind the laziness during the overwhelm, can lead you to find some initial steps. Here are a few quick steps you can take.
In the coming week, we will bring a list of effective ways to overcome your laziness.