If you happen to be watching Netflix at the time, this belief is likely to ruin your fun. Perhaps you get up, put on your shoes, and begin to run—yet as soon as you do, you find yourself longing to stop, and continue only with effort and some minor degree of suffering.
Rather than summarizing this situation as “I’m just lazy” or “I struggle to stay motivated,” it’s instead productive to think “in addition to my belief that it’s good to run, I apparently also have a belief that it’s good to watch Netflix.” This isn’t just a cute, permissive reframe; it’s what’s actually going on. Some part of you believes that Netflix is exactly the Thing To Be Doing.
At CFAR, we often characterize these internal disagreements as “shoulds.” Given any default action, a should is an urge or a pressure to do something else instead