Week 18: You’re Not Lazy: You’re Dysregulated, Underfed, and Overwhelmed

Glen Jensen
May 12
3 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

What if laziness was never the problem?

You’re not lazy.

You’re dysregulated, underfed, and overwhelmed.

As we explored in Week 14 ("You are not uncommitted — you are scattered and misaligned"), what feels like a flaw is often a misread of deeper patterns.

When fatigue masquerades as failure

What If You're Underfed and Undernourished?

We’ve been taught to moralize motivation.

To treat fatigue as laziness.

To wear willpower like armor.

But many of us are simply living in a cycle of nervous system dysregulation, poor nourishment, and quiet overwhelm.

We run on borrowed energy.

Then blame ourselves when it runs out.

This echoes Week 10’s "false stuckness," Week 13’s burnout signals, and Week 16’s reminder that "the body’s wisdom whispers before it shouts."

Why the TL;DR matters

This isn’t just a recap — it’s a Socratic nudge.

In a few minutes, it reframes fatigue not as failure, but as feedback — and asks the right questions to help you see what your nervous system’s been trying to say.

Short on time? Start here. Let it open the door.

Fatigue is a message, not a moral

Low motivation isn’t a character flaw.

It’s feedback.

Your body and mind may be starved for fuel, recovery, or a sense of safety.

Fatigue is not condemnation.

It’s communication.

For years, I misread my own signals.

I leaned on caffeine and sugar as bridges — toward focus, toward productivity.

The bursts felt like power.

The crashes felt like failure.

I thought I was broken.

I wasn’t lazy.

I was borrowing energy my body could no longer afford.

Remember Week 7: "Your patterns are not personality defects — they are survival adaptations."

Fatigue, too, may be an old adaptation, signaling for new attention.

A new response to “I’m lazy”

When the thought "I’m lazy" appears — pause.

Instead, ask:

Am I dysregulated?
Underfed (body, mind, spirit)?
Overstimulated or depleted?

Replace self-judgment with curiosity.

In my own life, I started watching the cravings:

Coffee refills.
Late-night sweets.

They weren’t just habits.

They were distress signals.

Now, caffeine and sugar are occasional choices, not silent dependencies.

I stopped borrowing what I couldn’t repay.

This continues Week 15’s "regulate before reasoning" practice and Week 12’s cue-to-action reframing.

Energy debt: the hidden cost of survival

Imagine spending from an energy bank with no savings.

Caffeine.

Sugar.

Hustle.

They feel like income.

But they are loans — draining your mitochondria and nervous system, leaving you in chronic debt that looks like laziness.

A nod to Week 9’s insight: energy is a renewable resource only when cultivated wisely.

Your fatigue is a message, not a moral.

The body’s quiet wisdom

Your Body Whispers at First, It's Our Job to Listen

“The body always leads us home... if we can find the feet to follow.”— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

In rhythm with Week 16’s reminder: "The body’s wisdom whispers before it shouts."

This week’s challenge

If You Have to Use External Motivation, Eventually It Starts Weighing On You.

Stop managing motivation.

Start nourishing your foundation.

Each time you label yourself "lazy," pause.

Translate it into care.

Into curiosity.

This is how self-leadership begins:

Through nervous system literacy.

Through compassionate energy stewardship.

As Growth Season matures, this practice becomes essential.

Because next week, we zoom out — to examine how systemic momentum, or hustle culture, hijacks your natural rhythms.

Your next step

What Would Happen If The Motivation Came Naturally?

Reflect.
Reframe.
Revisit your patterns.

What if your fatigue wasn’t a failure — but a body finally refusing to sprint on empty?

Next week, we zoom out to trace the deeper pattern:

When momentum becomes a drug.

When forward motion isn’t freedom — it’s compulsion.

Week 19: The Addiction to Acceleration