Avoiding bad consequences · The Consciousness Path

Avoiding bad consequences

During my introspection in the last couple of weeks, I had the realization that the reason I do most of the things that I do is to avoid bad consequences.

I am constantly thinking: Do I really have to do this or can I just coast along and just do what feels most comfortable.

I tend to only put in as much effort into my activities as is required to not have any bad consequences. For example, with work, I tend to wanna do only as much as is required to not get criticized by others or to not miss deadlines, trying to avoid what I imagine to be the hard, boring labor that would be required to produce excellent results.

I can see that this is not effective and that it creates a lot of inner turmoil, since I am constantly reacting to external circumstances and since I relate a lot of my self-confidence to how effective I am. I can see that I have to externally derive the validation for what I am doing and that I tend to pick the easy and comfortable way instead of shooting for great results. I also tend to procrastinate on tasks and only start doing them when action is required to avoid immediate bad outcome.

All of this is a source of suffering in my life. „Oh I am so lazy, I should be doing more/better work, but I just get myself stuck in a rut.“ It‘s a constant drag on my integrity.

The main question that I have about this is:

How can I become effective without using guilt to push myself to do the work and without using ideals to compare myself to?

Any thoughts? Can anyone relate?

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