Lazy and Selfish Be Gone!

"No matter how lazy and selfish we are today, we can will ourselves out of it tomorrow."

-- Julia Keller. In a review of a new biography about Samuel Johnson. Chicago Tribune 10/19/08.

Lucky for us, life presents options. We have choices. We can be lazy and selfish today, work our butts off like Mother Teresa on speed tomorrow, and then go back to being lazy and selfish the day after tomorrow, if we wish. Our own behavior is always within our sphere of control.

Unfortunately, though, willpower has been emasculated in the contemporary public imagination, overcome by talk of "addiction." According to the Revised Standard Dictionary of Irresponsibility, the term addiction can be applied to any behavior in which you overindulge. Thus, shopping can be seen as an addiction, texting can be an addiction, hell, even farting in church could probably be considered an addiction! By succumbing to the paradigm of addiction, we have made our willpower even punier and more impotent.

Face it: We're all lazy and selfish at times. And that's OK. It's just not OK all the time. But just because we're lazy and selfish doesn't mean we're addicted to Lazy Boy Recliners or to eating the last piece of pie when no one's looking. We do not necessarily suffer from either low blood sugar or narcissistic personality disorder. We're just giving our willpower a day off.

The problem is that if you give your willpower too many days off, it evaporates like a the dew on summer grass. Willpower is a psychological muscle, and just like your other muscles, it's use it or lose it!

And so that's where we stand today as a culture -- too many people blaming their less than optimal behavior patterns on external causes because they haven't developed the willpower to align their actions with their own highest interests. Sad really. Letting one of our most powerful tools rust out in the elements rather than using it.

So, today your assignment is simple-- do something unselfish, something above and beyond the call of duty, something that requires the use of that flaccid muscle willpower. Do it not for yourself, but for someone else. And when you do, whether you realize it at the time or not, you, too, have reaped a reward.