Right now in northwest Missouri, it's -8 degrees Fahrenheit (for the rest of the world, -22.2222 degrees Celsius). In other words, it's very cold. My blankets are warm. There's a cat curled up with me. I don't want to leave this warm bed to go to work even though I will spend no more than a minute or so from doorstep to workplace in the cold.
In other words, I suffer from inertia -- a word which came from physics, meaning the inability of an object to change velocity or direction without a force acting upon it. In the human sense, it means the tendency to do nothing or stay unchanged (Wikipedia, 2019). I have to admit it's going to take a force acting upon me to move me out the door today.
What are the forces that move humans? To continue the physics metaphors, we can group these forces into pushes and pulls. In our case, pushes are the repelling factors that relate to necessity and adverse consequences if we don't leave the bed; pulls are the attracting consequences of getting out of bed.
So as I lie here in bed, I think about the pushes -- if I don't get out of bed, I don't meet my classes, my division chair gets mad, my students miss out on class material. I think about the pulls -- if I get out of bed, there's breakfast and coffee and people and time to write. We feel more satisfied by responding to pulls than to pushes -- it's more gratifying to make something of the day than to avoid disaster.
So I climb out of bed, disappointing my cat, and start my day, responding to the pulls more than to the pushes. It's going to be a good day.
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