The Law Of Inertia

Aloha and welcome to The Secret Art of Huna live. This video’s a little bit late this week. Usually, I do my Facebook or my video on a Saturday. However, I was travelling.

I was coming back from trainer’s training for the One of Many presentation group. We had 29 women and we were teaching them stagecraft, presentation skills, so that they could go out there and teach the One of Many material.

I really like the One of Many view, and the One of Many material, because it’s all about empowering women to become grassroots leaders. Whether it’s in your community or your workplace or your business or your family, wherever that may be, it’s all about getting into leadership and really stepping up as a leader without burning ourselves out or becoming superwomen, which is what, for a lot of people, for a lot of women, anyway, is the way things go.

So there I was, training these women and supporting them – amazing, amazing transformation, amazing courage, really, of women who didn’t want to be out there in front of their peers but they stepped up and they did it and they took all the feedback. It was fabulous, and, it meant that I was travelling on Saturday morning.

And then, which is ironic, given what I’m going to talk about, I got into a kind of inertia. I couldn’t quite decide what it was that I wanted to talk about. Would it be remembrance, because this is the remembrance weekend for the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I, the war that was supposed to end all wars, or would it be something else?

Now, I was inclined to talk about inertia, but, hmm, I wasn’t quite certain. So I got into a state of my own inertia.

The Hawai’ian law of inertia says, it is the natural tendency of a person, thing, or process to remain static in their current state. The amount of mana necessary to create change is in relation to the inertia buildup. And for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

When I first learned all the many assumptions, or laws, of Huna, I didn’t pay too much attention to the law of inertia, it’s a small one, it’s just got a couple of lines. But actually, I’ve come to realise that it’s really, really important, so I thought I’d talk about that today, because it speaks to motivation, and for a lot of us, motivation and procrastination are the sorts of things that we struggle with.

The law of inertia is not really about time, it’s about energy.

What it’s saying is, that the more energy you put into not doing something, then you’ve got to put at least as much energy into making the something happening.

So to give you a for instance, about, oh, must have been, I don’t know, 2011 I think, my teacher in Hawai’i told me that I was ready to go out and teach the 10-day retreat that we teach in Hawai’i over here in the UK.

Outside of Hawai’i we can do it in five days, because we’re not teaching the sacred Hula, that’s the Hawai’ian dance, and that takes about half a day through five days, so we can cut it down.

I didn’t hear it. He said it, I did not even hear it. And I continued along my merry way not running any trainings over here. In fact, I put quite a lot of energy into not running Huna trainings over here.

Earlier this year, I decided that it was time. I really, really was ready, I knew in myself I was ready, I knew my reasons were good. It wasn’t about ego anymore, it was really about, these are important teachings and I want to go out there and share them with people. So I knew it was right.

So I started to put some energy, including money, into Facebook ads and things. Some energy into creating the retreat over here. I thought I’d put enough energy in, but I ignored the law of inertia. Because although I did put energy in, and I did do some Facebook ads and so on and so forth, I didn’t actually get enough people to make the retreat viable.

To give the retreat energy, to give the retreat ertia, if that’s the opposite of inertia, mana and movement. So in the end, it didn’t happen. I ignored the law of inertia.

I ignored the fact that, because I had spent so much time and energy, but particularly energy, time’s not really relevant in this, I’d spent so much energy into not putting the retreat out there, into not doing it, finding excuses, finding reasons why it wasn’t the right moment, why nobody would want to come, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that I hadn’t put enough energy to counterbalance it into actually creating the thing and making it happen.

When we procrastinate, when we sit around and don’t do things, we actually put a lot of energy into the not doing of the thing it is that we’re procrastinating about.

We put a lot of energy into our excuses, our reasons why we can’t do it, our alternative things to do, I don’t have time to do this because. We put a lot of energy into that, so that when we actually do get round to the point when we’re ready to go and do that thing we’re avoiding, whether it’s doing your tax returns, it’s that time of year in the U.K. where people are starting to think about the tax returns, whether it’s doing your tax returns or whether it’s preparing a presentation, like the ladies last week, or whether it’s putting together videos for Facebook.

The more we procrastinate, we think about all the reasons why we’ve got better things to do, then the more energy we’re going to need to actually make the thing happen.

So, that’s the law of inertia.

A very small law, but a very important law, and I would say to you, next time you find yourself procrastinating, next time you find yourself not really getting up and doing whatever it is that you know you need to do, remember, when you finally do, do it, you’re going to need a lot more energy to put into it than if you’d done it when you first thought about it!

So book onto the next Secret Art Of Huna Live Workshop here and let me help you!

Thanks for listening, see you again very soon.

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