Newton’s first law of motion is often stated as:
An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
This is as true for human nature as Newton found it to be true for physical objects. A person at rest tends to stay at rest and a person in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. So what do I mean by this? Well, one relevant example would be how people approach their work. It is often easier to continue working once you have started working and it is often more difficult to begin working if you have been sitting on the couch watching TV for an hour (trust me).
But this also applies to the discussions above about how difficult it can be to change one’s habits. If you have been doing things a certain way for a long time, inertia suggests it is easier to continue doing them that way than to introduce a different or alternative way of doing things. However, once you get things moving, momentum can shift in your favor.
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“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”
-Harry S. Truman
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