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Riley had to learn to resist the urge to “save” Tom from his own ineptitude.
Be Just “Good Enough”
researchers began to realize that parenting perfection didn’t really exist. Every parent had flaws, and trying to eradicate those flaws didn’t work. Instead, parents coped better if they entirely abandoned the hope of being perfect.
According to developmental psychology, the good-enough parent provides their child with love, shelter, and adequate food; they make mistakes, but nothing that causes their children significant trauma.17 They don’t obsess over society’s ideas of what a parent “should” be doing;
balance between their own needs and the unique traits and pass...
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Embrace Mistakes
instead, they try to make amends for it and learn from the experience. Research suggests that it’s the comfortable, self-accepting imperfection of the good-enough parent that helps a child learn how to deal with life’s inevitable setbacks and disappointments.18
When parents discuss mistakes with their children, they create an open line of communication that makes the relationship more resilient and capable
Research also suggests that parents who are comfortable with making mistakes are more accepting of their children’s flaws and screwups as well.19
Live Your O...
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The Laziness Lie has fundamentally warped our sense of boundaries, making many of us believe that other people’s problems are ours to solve. It tells us that if we care for someone, we have to suffer to help them. Unfortunately, we can’t actually fix another person’s problems.
The Laziness Lie guilts us into taking on responsibilities that aren’t ours to carry.
ask ourselves if another person’s problems truly warrant our involvement, and if so, which kinds of involvement.
Questions to Ask before Trying to “Save” Someone: Can they solve this on their own?
Do they want help? Do they want my help? Am I the right person to provide help right now? Can I direct them to seek help from a professional or a close loved one? What are my motives for helping? What will helping cost me?
Ask Yourself Why You’re Trying to Help
why they had felt so compelled to do thankless, unnecessary work for someone who was barely even their friend. Do you believe that if you take care of enough people, Danny mused, eventually someone will notice and finally decide to take care of you?
The Laziness Lie had browbeaten me into hiding every vulnerability and need and left me obsessed with proving my worth to other people. I couldn’t imagine asking for emotional support or care.
By refusing to take on responsibilities that don’t belong to us, we can empower an unhappy person to troubleshoot their own problems. They won’t be happy that we’ve refused to rescue them, but they’ll usually be much better off in the long run.
Instead of: Try This:23 Offering solutions to a person’s problems Ask them how they will solve it: “What do you plan to do?” Trying to make a person’s bad feelings go away Let the person express their feelings without trying to change them. Letting a person vent, cry, or rant for hours without resolution Listen supportively, but suggest a distraction or a break when the person gets “stuck” fixating on the problem. Listening while a person spirals into greater and greater anxiety, sadness, or rage Interrupt them when they start to repeat themselves or escalate. “Let’s focus on the present
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When we stop struggling to meet other people’s expectations, we can finally begin to see ourselves and our own values clearly.
Melungeon,
From a young age, we’re taught to admire the women writers who had to take male pen names in order to be published, and to celebrate the Black inventors and scholars who had to work twice as hard as their white peers for a fraction of the money and acclaim.
The Laziness Lie wants us to believe that the solution to every social problem is casting aside your grievances and getting to work.
In our deeply victim-blaming, Laziness-Lie-loving culture, marginalized people are often told
that they must solve the problem of their own oppression.
In the mainstream, workaholic workplace, nothing is more threatening than “distracting” nonconformity. The very concept of what counts as “professional” behavior is rooted in the desire for social control.
In our culture, lots of people are told that honest expression of their selfhood is distracting or unprofessional.
Disabled people are discouraged from asking for accommodations because it might make them seem “weak” or “lazy.”
The Laziness Lie demands perfection, and it defines perfection in very rigid, arbitrary ways: a body
that conforms; a tidy, presentable life; a day filled with “productive,” virtuous activities that benefit society; a life that has no ...
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We shouldn’t have to struggle to make ourselves palatable, understandable, and small. Resisting these “shoulds” makes us strong, not lazy.
Each of us has an opportunity to push back against the dictates of the Laziness Lie and ask ourselves how we truly wish to live.
To set ourselves free, we have to refuse to meet the expectations that harm us.
Our culture views bodies as tools that exist to be used and objects that exist to win the approval of others.
“Fat” and “lazy” are two terms that often go together. Both are used to pass moral judgment on a person and to express disgust at who they are and how they live.
Both my compulsive overwork and my eating disorder came from my fear of being lazy and my need to constantly prove that I was doing “enough.”
Studies show that when we expose ourselves to diverse images of fat people, our negative stereotypes of them begin to go away.
Remember That Your Body Is Not an Object—It’s You
at the core of the problem is something called “self-objectification.”19 When we view our bodies as objects or “things” that are separate from our minds, we’re engaging in self-objectification.
Research shows that people who routinely think about their bodies as objects report much lower self-esteem than those who don’t, and are much more likely to engage in eating-disordered behaviors.
How do you fight the urge to self-objectify once it’s already there? Well, you can focus on what your body can do, rather than what it looks like.
Being gentle with your body is also important. Listening to your body for signs of pain, discomfort, and hunger can help you feel more attuned
Most of all, you have to work to abandon the fear that being idle or gaining weight is a sign that you’re “lazy.”
creates an arms race of flawlessness, with more and more humanity being smoothed away until the only thing deemed acceptable is an unreal level of perfection.
But we will never catch up to any of those Joneses, because they were never real people in the first place. They’re just facades, designed to keep us busy, distracted, and feeling insecure—because those insecurities keep us both productive and profitable.
Avoid Upward Comparisons
In many ways, the urge to look upward and compare ourselves endlessly to those “above” us is at the heart of the Laziness Lie.
It’s Not Your Job to Save the World
If you care deeply about a variety of social issues, it’s easy to feel that you must sacrifice your own well-being in order to save the world.
