Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello everyone. And welcome to the spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about lazy or laid back, an interesting topic. And I'll be sharing a little bit of my own experiences again with this one. But before we get started, please consider like sharing and subscribing. As you know, that helps YouTube to share this content with more and more people. And also please consider sharing this with your friends and family. As well. So lazy or laid back. So I'm going to tell a little bit on myself again. If you watched the last episode, I kind of told on myself, but I'm going to share my experience with this one and try to give a little bit of a spiritual slant to it as well. So what is lazy mean and what is laid back mean? So let's say laid back first. laid back means from what I experience is someone who is not really bothered by or excited by. The circumstances. So I'm not bothered by what's happening and I'm not really excited by what's happening. I'm kind of like easygoing, easygoing, laid back and so forth. And I put lazy or laid back because I'm going to share a little bit about my experience and maybe some of you can relate to this. So I grew up in a Northeast. Family, as you all know, and we were very action oriented. So everything was all about activity, whether it was the way you spoke or the way you presented yourself or the way you went to school, or you always had to be successful outside. And there was a lot of external action based. success metrics to meet. Everything was always, the possibility of correction was always there. So I had shared one other time about how in my house growing up, if you say the wrong word, expect to be corrected. immediately corrected. No, that's that word. Or if I said the word ain't or use slang, it would be grounds for, severe reprimand. In that environment, that was a level of activity that had to be maintained. So let's say growing up that that's how I grew up. And now I. I end up being in the world and I'm around people who they don't care if they say the wrong word. It doesn't bother them. It doesn't bother them to say slang or whatever, doesn't bother them. So what might I be thinking about them? Another thing that I had growing up was that, like I said, everything was all action oriented. So if you weren't doing anything, you were planning to do something. So somebody would say, well, what are you up to? What are you doing? Are you excited? So there would be an excitement expectation. You were supposed to be doing something, planning something, and emotionally excited about it. So then I go out into the world and I meet people who are not doing something, not planning something, and not excited about it. It was very, very easy for me to start labeling those people as lazy. And it really bothered me there for a while because I didn't understand it would like, especially at work, let's say if somebody was laid back about work and I was being very determined and trying to be proactive and getting things done and then somebody else would be there like I would get upset about that. Now I said we would do a little spiritual aspect of this, but let's try to. Define lazy. I think lazy is a judgment, actually. I don't think it's a legitimate thing to say about someone else, let's say. I think it might be a self diagnosed disease because lazy has a connotation of I don't care and things like that. And the person may care. It may be that they haven't learned how to do something or maybe their attitude is different or maybe their personality is different. So calling somebody lazy or even calling myself lazy is kind of a judgmental word and I don't like to use it anymore. I'm actually more interested in the way the person is acting in the way the person sees the world. Because what I've noticed over time is that I am too much in one way. And then if other people are showing up the opposite, I have the opportunity to learn from them. Now, doesn't that sound good, right? It's not so simple, because. In order to learn from someone who is not as active as me or not as proactive as me or doesn't think as much as me, doesn't plan as much as me, I need to calm down myself enough to be able to respect them and try to understand and appreciate their calmness. Let's say their ability to be peaceful their ability to not be affected or get excited, that actually is potentially a good thing for someone who is almost always in the active stage. But one of the things that I picked up along the way, I don't do it anymore, is to judge people like that. And maybe you can relate to that. The one aspect I want to talk about the internal aspect of that. So let's say I, let's say it was the opposite. Let's say I grew up in a very laid back environment. Nobody expected anything. Everything just went go with the flow. I actually have a friend in the spiritual effort in this spiritual organization, who's actually a senior. And I was talking about how. I'm always like active and trying to get something done and trying to be responsible and trying to plan. And she said to me, wow, that's a lot of work. I just kind of go with the flow. Now in the past, that would have gotten me a little bit agitated and angry because I would have felt like, well, what are you saying that you're better than me or something, whatever that thing that might happen. But what I'm trying to describe now is that when somebody else is different from you. Whatever tendency that I have, if the opposite shows up, the default could be to get upset or angry or agitated about that person, judge that person, feel bad about myself or feel negatively about that person. And I'm going to say in spirituality, those times are an opportunity for us to learn how extreme we are in one area, how overdeveloped I am in one area. It's not easy. Okay. Because the part of me that was reacting doesn't calm down right away. And the last episode was about being peaceful, right? So one of the things that we can do is to work with ourselves to try to get more peaceful. The other thing we can do is to watch other people and learn from them. Like I said, so how do I do that? So I'll give an example. So there's one person that I live with here in my house. I'm not going to say which one it is. Let's say that they would leave. something out or they would not put something away or they would, whatever. I have to decide whether or not I want to go after that thing. You know, I grew up in a house where if something was out of place, you would be told, you know, you, you gotta fix that or whatever. But I have to decide now, is it that important? Do I need to say anything? I can if I want though. The thing is I'm not telling myself not to say something. I'm just exploring the possibility of not reacting to it. So, I hope this is coming through. What am I saying? I'm saying there are parts of our personality that may be overdeveloped. In this case, I'm talking about laziness. Laziness could be overdeveloped too. And then that person might get aggravated if someone's too active and they might get annoyed with them. So if I'm on the laid back side, if I'm on the active side, maybe there's other opposites That can come up for you. But this one is a pretty, is a pretty good one to look at because it's, what do they say? Type A personality versus like type B personality. If you're around people that have a different personality trait or a different way of functioning in life, wouldn't it be good to be able to learn and harmonize with different kinds of personalities? I think so. And I think that when part of my personality is overdeveloped, it eventually causes me pain. Okay. If I'm constantly on the go, I'm not able to rest. If I'm not able to rest, that's not healthy either. One more thing and then I'll leave it there. Obviously so far this is kind of conceptual. Yes, it makes sense. Okay. Somebody else is different. I don't need to judge them. Maybe I can learn from them. Maybe I can learn that maybe I'm too developed in this side. Maybe I can calm down, but in the moment you're going to have to face the negative judgmental reactions that we have about them. I really used to have a lot of judgments about people who weren't as mentally active as me, weren't as excitable as me. I used to feel very uncomfortable around them. I didn't trust them because a lot of reactions were coming up. So in order to learn from people, and this is a good principle for everything, in order to be able to learn from the feedback that you're getting or the people around you, I have to be willing to look at what I am doing now in response to them. Am I afraid of them? Do I resent them? Am I judging them? Do I feel that they're less than me? Do I feel that they're better than me? I have to look at all of that. Once I calm that down a little bit, I can start to learn from them. Now again, I'm not talking about abusive situations. I'm not looking to learn from someone who's abusing me. I'm talking about general things, general differences that maybe cause us a little bit of discomfort. So in my case, now I can say. That 98 percent of the time I appreciate the people in my life that are laid back. It still astonishes me though. Like we have this one person in my department at work, it looks like nothing would be able to make her excited. And sometimes I wish I could be like that. Sometimes when I'm around somebody who's really calm and really controlled, I feel a little bit like maybe. You know, a little uncomfortable, but 98 percent of the time, even if I feel uncomfortable, I can still appreciate, wow, I really appreciate that quality. I wish I could be more like that. Not that I'm bad, but it would be nice. I w I need to learn. It would be nice. That would balance out my personality. I'm only talking about my thing. There are, there are a person, maybe you have personality traits that are overdeveloped and you have people in your life that are the opposite. How do you deal with them? How do you react to them? How do you remember them? How do you feel about them? So back to the original question, lazy or laid back. So we've kind of said lazy is a judgment. I wouldn't necessarily call anybody lazy anymore, even myself. Lazy is kind of like name calling, right? But laid back is the state in which I am not getting excited. I feel at ease. How many of us would like to feel more at ease? I think that there are people around us that can teach us this thing. I know for me it has been that way and I have, like I said, I'm about 98 percent nothing negative comes up anymore. So I'm able to appreciate. And be around people who are different than me. So think about it for your homework this week. Think about it. Do I have people around me that are different than me and then I get uncomfortable? Let me take a look. What is the quality that they're exhibiting that I have a problem with? Oh, maybe I'm the opposite. Maybe I need to look at that. Even that much, that much reflection, that much honest reflection will begin to shift it for you. So I will leave it there and this is kind of a light discussion, but you can use this for any of those personality traits. So remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And so until next time, take care. Transcriber's Name Reviewed.
