A lot of what you will be reading in this manual has to do with changing habits - looking at things in a new or different way. There's a good reason for this, and that is the value of being creatively lazy. Most of us don't like to work hard and accomplish little. I enjoy working hard if I am really accomplishing something. Otherwise, I'd rather do nothing at all. I definitely don't like spinning my wheels. Here's the thing: We tackle most tasks in a habituated way rather than searching for the simplest, the easiest and the most elegant way to do things. There is lots of opportunity to spin wheels in the work of recovering from sexual trauma. Before jumping into a project like that, let's take some time to figure things out so that success comes as quickly and as easily as possible.
By way of illustrating the value of laziness, let's pretend that you are asked to add up all of the numbers between 1 and 100. An intimidating request? Hey, I'll even let you use a calculator if you want to! How long would this task take you? How much of your energy would you use? How bored would you get?
I assume that you would apply your learned, habituated thinking to this problem. You would probably add columns of numbers, and then add columns of sums, and so on. It would take you quite a while, even with a calculator - and, it would be a boring experience. Habituated ways of doing things are often boring, tiring and inefficient.
Let's suspend the habituated approach to this problem and seek the creatively lazy solution. The task is to find the sum of the following numbers:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + . . . . . + 97 + 98 + 99 + 100.
Notice that the first and last numbers add up to 101. Notice that the second and second-last numbers add up to 101. And the third and third-last numbers also add up to 101. No kidding. Check it out.
That is, 1 plus 100 equals 101
2 plus 99 equals 101
3 plus 98 equals 101
. . . and so on In the numbers between 1 and 100, there will be exactly 50 such pairs, with each pair adding up to 101. Therefore, by multiplying 50 times 101 you will have the correct answer. (It is 5,050.) With a little creative laziness, it's no sweat. By breaking from habit, we find a method that is fast, elegant and more fun than the traditional way to add numbers that we learned in public school.
It satisfies our philosophy of creative laziness.
In solving the problem of disturbing emotions, we can use up enormous resources of time and energy accomplishing very little. It is worth it to take some time to experiment, to investigate and to break out of habituated, traditional approaches to these problems. There are methods of tackling emotional distress and disturbance which are quicker than others. Just as traditional thinking leads us down an arithmetical path of boredom and excessive expenditure of time and energy, so can traditional, habituated thinking lead us down the same trail, when it comes to solving our emotional problems. We need to get creative and very lazy.
There is no point in going after memories of traumatic experiences, if the end result is just to be able to replay the pain, again and again and again. Why bother? Our goal is the release from pain, not the ability to recreate it endlessly. In order for you to be able to do that, you need some basic knowledge and skills - the right tools for the job. You then need to have practiced with them and to have experienced success with them. Once you have done that, then you can go after the tough stuff, with confidence, skill and effectiveness. So, get lazy.