The Laws of Physics and Changing Your Life
All shoplifters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No speeding.
No parking without a permit.
Curb your dog.
No littering.
No loitering.

Laws like these are part of our collective experience. Although we sometimes have to make more of a conscious effort to obey them, like when we are driving and choose to obey the speed, we accept them regardless of whether or not we are conscious of their direct influence in our lives. We see laws as an acceptable consequence of living in a civil society and know they ultimately bring order to the society in which we live.

What about the laws we can’t see, like the laws of physics? What influence do they have on us and what principles can we learn from them? I’ve been thinking about physics lately because I read it is the World Year of Physics 2005 (for more information visit http://www.physics2005.org/). When I first discovered it I thought, The World Year of What? I didn’t know a celebration of Physics even existed. Then I started to read a little about physics and this physicist guy named Sir Isaac Newton, and about his Laws of Motion and I was hooked.

Did you know that every time you get up from a chair, pick up a book or do something as simple as moving your pen you are demonstrating Newton’s First Law of Motion? In this First Law Newton states that if there is no net force acting on an object then the object will remain at a constant velocity. If that velocity is zero then the object remains at rest. You might know it better as “an object at rest tends to stay at rest”. Newton was apparently describing me. When I’m at rest I tend to stay at rest for as long as I can. (and hit the snooze button to make sure I don’t stay at rest for too long).

This First Law of Motion basically says that objects tend to keep on doing what they're doing. In fact, says Newton, it is the natural tendency of objects to resist changes in their state of motion. He called this tendency inertia. Say it with me: INERTIA: the tendency to resist changes. I think we’ve all been there. I also think Newton was on to something big.

We typically blame our inaction on many things, such as being tired, not feeling motivated, or whatever we can think of (or whomever we can blame) at the moment. After reading about inertia, though, I think we should place blame where it belongs - on good old, constant, inertia.

Listen to how these excuses sound if we blame inertia: “I’d go for a walk with you but I’ve got this inertia and won’t be able to make it today .” “I’d really like to take that course but I don’t see how I can with all this inertia going on.” “I can’t invite them over. I’ve had inertia all week and the apartment is a mess.” You see, we’re not lazy, tired or unmotivated to change our lives: we are under the influence of inertia. The good news is that there is a remedy for inertia and it’s called net force.

Inanimate objects have it so easy. All an inanimate object has to do is sit there and wait for something to come in contact with it (net force) for it to be set in motion (for example, think of a tennis ball being sent over the net by a racquet). We humans, on the other hand, don’t have it so easy. There is no racquet that is going to propel us into the futures we imagine. For us it is our body that acts as the net force that gets us in motion and moves us in a particular direction, one anti-inertia net force step at a time. Every time we choose to move our bodies we are, quite literally, forces to be reckoned with - or more accurately - net forces to be reckoned with.

In honor of The World Year of Physics 2005 I am proposing that we become net forces in our own lives, get our bodies into motion, start moving in the direction we want to go and living like it’s the first day of the rest of our awesome lives!

After all, what have we got to lose but a little inertia!