What are the Forces of Life Inertia?: 4 Forces


Understanding the forces that drive your life are important for achieving your goals and improving overall health and well-being. There are four considered forces of life inertia.

As a general rule the four forces of life inertia are someone’s values, self-esteem, ownership and their emotion. Having set values, a healthy sense of self-esteem, owning what you want for your life and having positive emotions will drive you toward the life and achievements that you want.

In this article we’re going to take a more in-depth look at the four forces and explain what inertia is. We will also discuss what inertia means in relation to psychology, how to change your life inertia and more.

The Four Forces of Life Inertia

Personal Values

Personal needs are what individuals value in order to thrive. We all have some sort of vision of what our life looks like or where it’s going. While that might be a positive or a negative picture for you, your basic values will be involved somehow.

People crave love, connection, comfort and safety (to name a few). All of your values will influence the direction your life flows. If you value safety and financial security, you might set out to make as much money as you can – sometimes without regard for your own passions or preferences.

You might value love and connection and might spend much of your time and energy searching for Mr. or Mrs. “Right”. Perhaps you’ve already found them and your life drives you in a direction toward building a family or the best home life you can.

Whatever your needs or values are, it’s so important to me aware of them and align yourself with them. If they’re in your best interests of course. Personal values are perhaps the biggest motivator when we set out on our own into adulthood.

 life inertia

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Self-Esteem

Having your own approval is everything. When you look in the mirror, do you like the person you see? Are you super critical and beat yourself up for the smallest things? Self-esteem is the commander of the motivation behind where your life is headed. If you don’t have high self-esteem, you might not take certain risks or jump on an amazing opportunity that comes your way.

Having a good sense of self-esteem or not like two job candidates interested in the same role. They both might be just as qualified as the other, however, one of them might hold themselves back out of fear that they’re not qualified enough while the other goes for it.

The beauty (and difficulty) of self-esteem is that you get to decide how yours is. This is an amazing thing because having a strong and healthy sense of self-esteem will create a more passionate, fulfilling life. The opposite is true as well.

A low sense of self-esteem will create a sense of insecurity and inability. Self-esteem, including what you believe about yourself is perhaps one of the most valuable things you can invest your time and money into improving.

Ownership

Owning your life means that you take full responsibility for it. The good and the bad. The beauty of owning your life is that you get to create the life of your dreams, on your terms, however you see fit! The downside is that all of that is up to you and no one is going to cover for you, create your dream life, or undo years of trauma or crappy mindsets that you might be stuck in. It’s all on you. Exciting, isn’t it!?

Some people are well supported and emotionally nurtured as children. They are taught to have a good sense of self-worth, direction and self-awareness. They are able to head off into adulthood knowing what they want and that they are fully capable to achieve their goals while tackling anything that life might throw at them.

And then there are people who might not be so fortunate. They have a limited sense of what’s available to them, childhood traumas, perhaps a lackful mindset when it comes to money and resources and they might not be sure who exactly they want to be or where they fit in this big old world.

If you’re the later, I’m happy to report that it doesn’t matter how you “used to be”. You can create the life and mindsets of your dreams regardless. In fact, I’ve found that although I had blessings where others did not, my disadvantages in life have actually served me the best. I was given a unique perspective which helped me develop my mindsets and is helping me become the person I was meant to be.

It’s a constant work in progress but it’s so incredibly rewarding – and actually kinda fun!

Life is a game. You’re going to win if you believe in yourself and deal with your underlying limiting beliefs. Also, life isn’t fair and that’s just how it goes.

Creating the life, personality, mindsets, bank account, relationships, confidence and whatever else you want is all up to you and that is a wonderful thing! Look your B.S. straight on and decide that you’re future self won’t let you down. Chose that and own it every single day.

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Emotions (Emotional Well-being)

Many people are more emotionally stunted than they realize. This is okay (as many of us have legitimate reasons why), however, it’s important to take responsibility for yourself and go the distance to work your emotional muscles.

If you have unhealthy relationships with certain emotions, trying to function at your fullest potential will be impossible. Let’s say you were taught to hide your anger as a child. Maybe you were punished for being mad or were afraid of the consequences for creating any sort of conflict.

Stifling these types of emotions will not allow you to explore them and understand what they mean to you. Even worse, people tend to subconsciously delegate meanings to experiences like that from the not-so ripe age of 7 years old or so.

Using anger or frustration as an example, if a child was punished for showing emotions like that, they might equate those emotions to punishment, lack of affection and/or lack of love. This is where limiting beliefs come into play.

Someone who has experienced this will subconsciously carry all of this into adulthood. They might find themselves in an abusive relationship because they are so vulnerable and unable to speak up for themselves properly because they feel afraid or invalid.

life inertia

Whatever the case may be, understanding your own personal relationship with your emotions and being willing to unravel any trauma is important in order to move forward in life. Emotions greatly influence all of the forces to life inertia. They can make or break you.

Along with self-esteem, taking control of your emotions and nurturing yourself to a healthy emotional state are vital creating the life you desire and deserve. Working on your emotional intelligence can help develop all aspects of your emotional strength.

What is Inertia?

Inertia in it’s basic form is when something stays unchanged. The term implies that the object will continue in it’s unchanged state and there might be resistance to anything that attempts to change it. While this is typically in reference to some type of material object, the concept is applied to human life.

Life inertia is the course that someone’s life is on. The forces of life inertia are the drivers behind the set course that an individual’s life is taking. Understanding the forces for your own particular life are important in order to accomplish goals, work through trauma and create the best version of yourself.

What does Inertia Mean in Psychology?

In psychology, inertia refers to they way you perceive things and the direction that takes you in life. Beliefs and mindsets that impact mental and emotional health have a huge impact on determining the outcome of out lives.

How to Change Your Life’s Inertia?

In order to change your life’s inertia someone must be willing to do the following…

  1. Identify what you need/value in life
  2. Fortify your sense of self
  3. Make the necessary changes and take action
  4. Take out your emotional trash

Here is a better breakdown of how that applies to life.

Identify what you need/value in life (and pursue it!)

If you aren’t happy with how your life is going then you’re most likely not possessing that things that you find valuable. Whatever you want for yourself, sitting around waiting for life to drop it in your lap will get you nowhere.

Get very specific on what you want and focus on getting it. Your mind is a powerful tool. Ask yourself questions like “How can I meet the love of my life?”. Or “How can I create a 6 figure business that will allow me to travel the world?”.

The answer might not come right away but the point is to focus your thoughts and efforts on what to want instead of wallowing in the fact that it’s currently not present in your life.

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Fortify your sense of self

Time for a pep talk! When I started building up my own self-esteem I started talking to myself as if I were talking to a close friend. Someone I loved and admired. Someone I thought could take on the world and get anything she set her mind to.

And why not? We think others are so capable of achieving anything they want but when it come to ourselves we shy away and act like our desires are supposed to be locked up in a box, never to be pursued, let alone assumed as our own.

The more I talked to myself, the more I looked forward to it. Sometimes it was in the car on my way to work, sometimes it’s in the shower (and yes, I’m usually talking out loud lol).

If your poor sense of self-esteem can inaccurately create itself from some dumb thing a guy said to you in middle school or whatever, then you can absolutely create a positive sense of self with some intension and self-love.

Talk yourself up – don’t wait for others to do it. And please, please, please don’t EVER joke about yourself in a way that puts you down or discredits you in any way. I know it’s all in jest but words matter. “You are what you eat” is just as true as you become how you speak about yourself.

Your positive words are like the best, most delicious/nutritious food money can buy to your soul/emotional self. Don’t fill up on cheap junk food.

Make the necessary changes and take action

Now that you know what you want and are all hopped from your pep talks, take action! Make an action plan and start right away. It’s not going to be perfect and you’re not going to have it all figured out yet but that’s absolutely okay.

In fact, I’d argue that learning as you go is the whole point of the journey anyway. Make a plan, practice building yourself up (mind, body and spirit) and go after your goals with the confidence of a 4 year old in a superman costume. You can do anything.

Take out your emotional trash

As mentioned before, understanding your emotions (and any emotional baggage) is so important. Take some time to sit with your emotions and identify any pain points. Dragging emotional issues out into the light is painful but so necessary in order to heal.

Talking to a professional therapist can help jumpstart this progress. For some, it takes years to identify underlying limiting beliefs let alone unravel them and lay them to rest. Working with a counselor will expedite your progress and offer a fresh perspective.

mblblogger

Hi, I'm Marissa! I'm passionate about mental and emotional health and want to share what I've learned over the years with others! I've seen first hand how mental health struggles can cause serious issues within relationships, work life, daily productivity, self-worth and more! I truly believe that we owe it to ourselves to bring more awareness to these life changing topics. Start your mental/emotional health journey by learning more today!

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