The law of physics

You enter the laboratory and see an experiment being conducted. How do you know which science class you’re in?

Well, if the experiment involves something green that wiggles, it’s biology. If it stinks, it’s chemistry. If it doesn’t work, then it’s physics.

I love physics! So much so I took the class twice in high school.

During my time, Physics was double-units, meaning it’s equivalent to two subjects. If you flunked one subject and Physics back then, you’d have to repeat the entire academic year. That’s why my high school friends couldn’t believe I graduated at the top of my class in college. Maybe because Physics wasn’t offered in my college at that time. Let’s talk a little bit about physics. I realized that what’s true for objects in physics can also be true for people. Take Newton’s First Law of Motion for instance.

The Law of Inertia states that an object will continue moving at a constant velocity until an outside force acts upon it. In the same way in life, we will continue to move along a certain path even if it’s not the right one to take, or we would carry on with habits no matter how destructive, unless an outside force intervenes.

Think about it: we know that spending time with the family is important, but we still cram our schedule with numerous business meetings and lengthy golf sessions; we realize we need to read books, attend seminars, and update and upgrade our skills, yet we just keep telling ourselves we’ll get around to it when we have the time. And we know (Oh, how well we know it!) that as we age, lack of exercise, an undisciplined lifestyle, and bad moral choices can be deadly, and yet we still continue with couch-potato-ing, with loading up on cholesterol, and with our keeping vices, while keeping our fingers crossed against sickness and disease.

Some patterns need to be broken. To interrupt our inertia, we need interventions. But momentum is hard to resist.

Ten minutes into a business argument with a friend, I realized I wasn’t really a hundred percent sure with the position I took. But because emotions were running high – both my friend’s and mine – I found myself defending the opposite side of the argument and finding it very hard to stop.

A similar thing sometimes happens when you’re working on something that doesn’t seem to work. You persist, remembering what motivational speakers have said about the power of positive thinking. If you think you can, you can, right?

Right – sometimes. Other times, we need to realize that we may need to slow down, even stop, even change course. After all, there’s a very thin line between being persistent and being plain stubborn.

Slowing down, coming to a stop, changing course while being on a roll – these would come about only with an intervention, when an outside force acts upon us.

Interventions come when you read a book or view a blog or listen to a speaker in a seminar. Interventions can be phrases or full volumes. But, essentially, they’re newfound ideas and principles that are able to make you reconsider your current velocity and consider other options.

I read my Bible every day. It’s my source of interventions. In many occasions, a thought, a word, a verse, a passage would make me stop and reconsider my current self-destructive velocity. Knowing when to stop and change course proves helpful to those who are humble enough to accept change.

This is the best physics law I have discovered. What’s yours?

(Spend two whole days with Francis Kong developing your leadership skills this July 4 - 5 at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel. For further inquiries, contact Inspire Leadership Consultancy Inc. at 632-6872614 OR 09178330723)