Momentum from the Funk

After last week’s post, I couldn’t help but to think about how closely the words initiative and inertia are alike. Anyone reading my blog for any significant amount of time understands that part of my background is in physics, and therefore I like to apply the classic Galilean notion of the simple forces involved in a given system. In this instance the simple forces involved fall onto Sir Isaac Newton.

One of Newton’s assertions as a premier physicist, natural philosopher, of the time was that an object at rest tends to stay at rest: Once there, it doesn’t like to go anywhere. Sound familiar? People, I have come to realize, are much the same way. I’ve even heard it stated to go as far as that, after a couple weeks of stagnation, a person’s body chemistry can change to feed their sloth. Furthermore, without some sort of energy applied to the system…without even trying to do something to get out of such a funk…entropy ensues, chaos reigns, and it becomes even more difficult.

About a year ago several events transpired over the course of a few months, putting me into a depression of sorts. I thought it would pass, as certain times it tends to do, however it only got worse. Taking its toll on things, I holed myself up in my little world, tucked away in a comfort zone, and only interacted with the world on an as-needed basis. I hid from the remainder of it.

Fast forward to several months forward: I knew where I was at, I knew where I had been; I realized that I was in a low point in my life and the manifestations of that state of mind had begun to take its toll on things that were close to me and held dear. What did it take?

Energy applied to a system at rest will have a tendency to move it along a prescribed force vector. In other words, a kick in the pants got me going in the right direction—anywhere that was away from my present state of mind at the time. This process to gain momentum found me first reflecting through long and deep sessions of how events would transpire. What I came up with were things that were right under my nose all along, I just needed to watch and to listen, being mindful of opportunities.

Of course, throughout my affiliation in each of these places, tapping into my initiative, momentum has started to gain: Momentum that, I feel, given enough time and energy will result in the ultimate goal of my larger dreams being achieved…the grand scheme of things.

As I said last week, a personal mantra of yours when confronted with the notion of adversity between the “here” and the “there:” “If it is going to be…it is up to me.”