Like animals!

My family and I love to hike.  I also love the fact that taking a long walk outdoors seems more outdoorsy when I call it a hike, but that is another story.  On those days when the mornings and evenings are a bit chilly, but the daytime is warm, I love to look for lizards and snakes catching sun on rocks and fallen trees.  They can be tough to find because they don't move too much.  In the wild, it is an animal's natural disposition to expend as little energy as possible most of the time.

When a cold-blooded animal sits motionless on a rock, it is trying to conserve energy and gain heat.  In hot environments, animals find shade and stand still to conserve hydration.

I think this may be the reason that it is so hard for me to walk out the door to get some exercise!  It is a built in mechanism that is telling me to take it easy!  Seriously though, when improvement is needed, no matter how badly, it usually feels more natural to be still and not move.  Even when the desire for improvement is evident, our animal instincts often times tell us to maintain the status quo.  But we are not your average animals!  We have the ability to choose action, even when it feels unnatural.  We are capable of forcing ourselves to be proactive because we can foresee the end results.

Doing nothing may be more comfortable than facing new challenges, but hindsight tells us that facing those challenges beats watching our status quo crumble into failure.