The Real Reason Trying Harder Never Works - Part 4 - Change

[00:00:00]Why do we not do the things we know we should do?

[00:00:07]>> Is that a rhetorical question?

[00:00:09][laughter] >> I was expecting you to answer, Drew. I was expecting you to to resolve a 2500 year philosophical conundrum.

[00:00:19]>> Why don't we do the things we know?

[00:00:20]>> A simple question.

[00:00:21]>> Why Why do we know we should do something >> and then not do the thing?

[00:00:26]>> Right?

[00:00:26]>> Why like how is that even >> right? know exactly what to do.

[00:00:30]>> Yes, >> information us must not be the problem or I don't know.

[00:00:33]>> You know, it's interesting. I don't know if you remember this, but I actually started writing a book called why don't I do it? And the entire book was the goal was to answer this question like why do we not do the things that we know we should do? Like how is it that our behavior gets divorced from our knowledge to such a large extent? and that that book it it anyway I didn't end up writing it but I did do some interesting research for that book when I was writing it and this problem is as old as civilization obviously um the Greeks referred to this as aia and they took it very seriously as a philosophical problem like it didn't make sense to them that if you know something is good why should you be capable of doing anything to the contrary like why why should there be any resistance towards doing it and it's interesting because the the the major Greek philosophers had they each had kind of a different angle at which they tried to answer this question. Socrates just rejected the premise outright. So in the dialogue Pagoras he argued that it was actually impossible to not do the thing that you wanted to do. He said that if if you experience a discrepancy between what you want to do and what you actually do, he just said you don't actually want to do it, which to me feels like a copout. That's very circular, right? It's like, well, if you wanted to do it, you would, >> and the thing you did, it's cuz you wanted to.

[00:01:57]>> It's like, well, yeah, that's not very helpful, Socrates, but thank you. Thank you for uh for your participation.

[00:02:04]>> It denies the real emotional experience of the whole thing, too, right? Yes.

[00:02:07]Yeah, it does. Plato was really the one that kind of nailed this and he had this metaphor. He called it the tripartite soul. He basically said that the the human soul is divided into three parts and the three parts are all wrestling for control at any given time. And those three parts basically boil down to uh kind of our impulses and instincts, our anim animalistic side, our emotions and our passions and then our rationality and our higher level decision-m. And it turns out psychology has largely borne Plato's model to be true. I mean, there's some nuances and a couple little changes here and there, but we generally have these different parts of ourselves and they're generally wrestling against each other for control. Anybody who has struggled to follow through with something they want to do has experienced this where you intellectually understand I should get off the couch, I should go to the gym, I should hire a trainer, but emotionally you're like these potato chips, they sure do taste good. So Plato had this metaphor to describe this, which is that our soul or basically our psychology um is like a chariot rider trying to control two horses. So one horse is our animal instincts and our urges and the other horse is our emotions and our passions. The chariot rider which is our rationality. His goal is to uh control the horses and point them in the correct direction. But the interesting thing about this metaphor is that it shows us that ultimately feelings are what drive our actions and our decisions. And when it comes to changing ourselves to trying to be a new person, ultimately that is a emotionally based problem. Like the reason we don't do things that we know we should do is simply because we don't feel like it.

[00:03:54]It's not that we don't know we should do it. It's because we don't feel like doing it. The reason you [clears throat] don't get off the couch and go to the gym isn't because you don't know it's good for you. It's because you don't feel like doing it. And so identity change, becoming a new person is ultimately an emotional process, which [ __ ] sucks because emotions are hard, >> right?

[00:04:13]>> They're like they're hard to identify, they're hard to understand, and they're hard to deal with. It's hard to change.

[00:04:19]>> It's they're hard to change. And it's hard to do something contrary to your emotions, right? Like if I'm angry at somebody, it's hard to be nice to them.

[00:04:27]If I'm sad about something, it's hard to be enthusiastic and motivated, right? So the whole difficulty around change is fundamentally boiled down to this. How do you do things that you don't feel like doing? All this is to say is that behavioral change is primarily an emotional problem, not a rational problem. The information is the easy part. You know, as my friend Derek Civers likes to say, if change was as easy as more information, we would all be billionaires with six-packs. But we're not because the difficulty is getting our emotions to align with what we know is better for ourselves as the chariot riders in our brains. Getting our horses lined up and pointing it in the right direction. Now, most people assume that the way to do this, the way to handle an emotional problem is to just brute force it. is to just summon as much willpower as possible to uh push down any doubts or reservations and just like almost like abuse yourself until you do the [ __ ] thing. And that can work in bits and spurts. But as we're going to discover, willpower is generally overrated and overemphasized because it turns out that the human mind, we are very influencable and susceptible to external triggers and influences within our environment. And so if we're smart about using our environment and and if we're smart about utilizing the triggers around us, we can actually make it easier to adopt the behaviors that we want to adopt. So, by the end of this chapter, everybody's going to understand why simply knowing what to do and trying to force yourself to do it through willpower is not an effective solution. We're going to actually give everybody specific concrete tools to change their environment, to create triggers for themselves so that the right behaviors become automatic and far easier than they would be otherwise. But to begin, I want to tell a story about a checklist and how it saved 1500 lives. So in 2003, doctors at one of the best hospitals in the world were unintentionally killing their patients. What's worse is that the whole time they knew what they should be doing. They just weren't doing it. So the problem was is that a large amount of patients were dying from what is called central line infections. So central lines are simply a catheter.

[00:06:50]They're that are inserted into a large vein. They're super common in ICUs.

[00:06:54]They're like basically you see them happen everywhere. But the problem was was that the ICU was so chaotic and so crazy that inevitably some of these steps would be skipped and then the patients would develop an infection and then they they would die. So the doctor Peter Provenos noticed this and he decided to address it. He addressed it in the most stupidly simple way possible which is he created a checklist. It was just a physical piece of paper with the five steps that all the doctors and nurses already knew that they should be doing. And then he just made one change, which is that he gave all the nurses permission that if they noticed a doctor skipping any of the steps that they could stop him and intervene. And within 18 months, deaths from central line infections dropped to zero. In fact, this the checklist became so successful that hospitals across the United States started adopting it everywhere. Now, the interesting fact about this checklist is it didn't teach anybody anything they didn't know. It didn't force anybody to do anything they shouldn't already be doing. Uh, it didn't motivate them or, you know, completely change the system.

[00:07:59]It simply created an environmental nudge. It basically created a design within the environment that made it easier to follow the protocol than it was to not follow the protocol. And this is what we see time and time again is that people change their behavior when it becomes more painful to not change the behavior than it becomes to change it. We like to imagine that it's more complicated than this that there's like all these I don't know philosophical emotional childhood trauma issues associated with it. But at the end of the day, if you can create circumstances and situations within your environment, if you can design the world around you to nudge you into a behavior so that it feels easier than not doing that behavior, something as simple as a checklist or a visual reminder or or not putting junk food in the fridge, whatever it is, this is the 8020 of behavioral change. Now, this is not a sexy or exciting thing. I think what happens is that when people want to change, we tend to think of the final order effect of that change, right? So, it's like if I want to get healthier or if I want to fix my relationships, I'm not thinking about the next meal I'm going to have or the next date I'm going to go on. What I'm thinking about is like me being married with kids and having a six-pack, right? I'm like, my brain is immediately jumping 5 years in the future after I've done 10,000 different things to make that outcome true. And so, a natural cognitive bias that we have is that we assume that we need to change much more in our life than we actually need to change. It turns out that not only are behavioral changes easily instigated by small alterations in our environment, like a simple checklist, but you don't have to change nearly as much as you think you do to create an outsized effect down the line, 5 years in the future or whatever. Now, this is a mistake I've made a million [ __ ] times. Like I can't tell you how many times I have convinced myself that I have to reorient my entire life. I'm going to start waking up at 4:30 and I'm going to go to the gym for 90 minutes every day and I'm going to start meditating for 30 minutes and I'm going to uh sign up for this new program that costs $1,000. And I try to do it all at once and of course I do it for three days and then I fail. Whereas what has actually worked for me is something as simple as putting my gym shoes by the front door. So that it reminds me, hey, you're supposed to go run, [ __ ] That's why your shoes are there. For me to put my shoes on, it is easier to just walk out the door than it is to not walk out the door. That is probably done more for me than like all of the drastic major changes I've ever tried to make in my life. Every change requires a certain amount of energy. Um, and it's especially if you're exerting willpower, there's almost like a budget of emotional energy that you can dedicate into something. I mean what makes this error worse too is that if you if like all those changes right if you just took them one at a time >> right >> accomplishing the first one will make the second one that much easier right so it's like if you just address your sleep >> simply by going to bed an hour earlier waking up an hour earlier you're going to be more rested have more energy >> your metabolism is going to function better so you're going to make better decisions you're not going to be as tired during the day so you're going to have more energy to you know actually actually go to the gym when you want to go to the gym. Right. So, people should line these up sequentially rather than trying to do them all at once.

[00:11:37]>> Yeah. But that doesn't feel as sexy, does it? No. Like like we're looking for the big change. We're looking for the montage. Right.

[00:11:43]>> Right. I think what people what happens in this stage is people will if you tell them, you know, just focus on one of these. Let's say going to bed earlier or doing a workout every day. It doesn't matter what it is. Just go do the workout.

[00:11:54]>> What happens is it starts looking like you're kind of just running in circles.

[00:11:57]Mhm.

[00:11:57]>> It doesn't feel, you know, it doesn't have that energy behind it like you're saying.

[00:12:01]>> It's boring.

[00:12:01]>> It's boring.

[00:12:02]>> And it it feels like you're running in circles, but if you like step back a little bit, actually what you're doing is you're kind of like climbing the spiral staircase, but you're looking at it from the top a little bit, you know, and it looks like you're it looks like you're just kind of running in a circle.

[00:12:14]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:14]>> Um, so it's it's slower and it's not as sexy, but if you step back and you're like, "Oh, wait. I've I've gotten 30 minutes more sleep for the last month."

[00:12:22]Like, that right there is a huge huge uh win. And you probably maybe you haven't even noticed, but you're you have better energy. You have better emotional regulation. Um you are your diet's better because you're not as tired and you're reaching for food for emotional regulation. The boringness of it or the sexiness of like some big dramatic change that like that's a piece of it. I also think people people have misguided expectations in terms of like what the result of change should be. Like I I think people imagine that it's going to be like this euphoric >> people cheering, confetti falling from the rafters, like you're a new person.

[00:13:01]Oh my god, you're never going to be the same again. And that's just not the case. What change actually feels like is you start waking up an hour earlier and you start exercising 50% more.

[00:13:14]You feel 20% better dayto-day. You have a little bit more energy every day. You have a little bit more patience in your relationships. You make slightly better decisions. It's like barely above the threshold of perception. It's not a ticker tape parade, right? There's like no there's no applause for you. Nobody nobody's like showing up and handing you a a medal or a certificate at your front door. It's just like, okay, yeah, you're just a slightly more functional human being. Good job.

[00:13:43]>> I I I also think it comes back to something I said earlier, which is like life is practice, >> right? And it's those like those little practices you do every day consistently and then when you do have something like big that comes up, you can you do handle it a lot better. I've noticed this in my life, I guess, you know, once I did start working out more and um just get healthier.

[00:14:04]>> Now, anytime I do have an actual like physical challenge of something, I need to stay up for um I don't get as much sleep because I need to take care of something in my life um that's going on.

[00:14:12]I can handle that a lot better.

[00:14:14]>> Again, that's almost not noticeable, though. You just get better at the the bigger thing because you practice the smaller version of it over and over and over and over again. And it's boring as [ __ ] You're right. It's just so boring and so nobody wants to do it. It's not sexy.

[00:14:27]>> Yeah.

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[00:15:40]Now, there's actually two other mistakes people make around this as well. These kind of like trying to make a big change, right? One of them, the fresh start effect. Everybody's going to be very familiar with this, right? The New Year's resolutions, the birthday resolutions, the Monday morning resolutions, right?

[00:15:54]>> Um maybe the Yeah. 8 a.m. resolution every day. Today's going to be different.

[00:15:59]>> Yeah. So, it's called the fresh start effect. Um because that that motivation is real. It's there. Like we're all motivated around those, you know, it's a it creates a good little story, a before and after story. This was me before.

[00:16:11]Here's the here's the start point and this is me after. Right. The problem is is that we're not actually addressing like the adaptations underneath that.

[00:16:18]And we have to do that by just targeting the behavior. Yeah. The single behaviors that we've been talking about.

[00:16:24]>> It's funny like that we have a bias towards this. I I actually am going through this right now. So >> about 6 months ago, I injured my foot and I basically had to stop exercising almost completely for a few months and I got really out of shape and of course I lost a lot of my habits around exercise and everything. So I just started exercising fully. I would say maybe like 6 weeks ago again. But I'm I'm really struggling to like get my habits back.

[00:16:50]I've definitely lost the consistency that I had for a number of years. And it's funny because I I was recently thinking just a day or two ago. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to do I'm going to do a 30 for30 challenge, which is basically do some sort of exercise or physical activity for 30 minutes for 30 days straight. Can be anything. It could be a walk around the block. It could be a full-blown workout. It could be a run.

[00:17:14]It could be like lifting some weights.

[00:17:15]It could be just stretching and doing a little bit of yoga. But like I promised myself I'd do 30 for 30. And then I looked at the calendar and I was like, "Ah [ __ ] It's May 3rd. And then I actually had the thought, should I wait till the 1st of [laughter] June?

[00:17:29]>> Wait, wait almost 30 more days. Yeah.

[00:17:31]Yeah.

[00:17:32]>> Because it's just so clean in your brain. It's like, oh, if I just doing the month of May would be such like a nice little bookend, right, to this little challenge that I'm going to give myself. And then of course I was like, that's stupid.

[00:17:46]Just start now. It's the sexiness. It doesn't feel as sexy, right?

[00:17:50]>> It's like if I'm going from May 5th to June 5th, like that's not exciting.

[00:17:53]>> Yeah. Okay. So, the other one though is what they call ironic process theory.

[00:17:59]Okay. And we've talked about this a little bit before I think, but you know, just the quick example is Mark, don't think of a white bear, >> right?

[00:18:06]>> What do you think about >> uh that white the Coca-Cola bear?

[00:18:10]>> The white Coca-Cola bear. You're thinking of a white bear, right? This was Daniel Wgner. He came up with this, you know, and um the things that we try to suppress and not do are usually the things that are the most salient to us.

[00:18:20]And so we just end up doing them or we ruminate on them too much that we can't get them out of our heads. We obsess over them. Um and then we just end up doing them even more than we were before. So like trying to stop doing a behavior, a good way to not stop doing it is to try to not do it, >> right?

[00:18:36]>> Like an example of this is really like in the 60s is when they put the uh surgeon general warnings on the on packets of cigarettes. You know, it's like everybody shows everybody like, you know, this causes cancer, this is bad for your health, smoking while pregnant, all of that, right? So something like half of the American population back in the 60s was smoking cigarettes daily.

[00:18:53]Today it's down to 18%. But you know millions and millions of people read those warning labels and nothing happened there. Right. It was there was like telling you not to do it >> if it was just information.

[00:19:03]>> Exactly. We all have goes back to that.

[00:19:05]>> So it that is just one of the the weakest ways I think to to change um is to just brute force your way into not doing it.

[00:19:13]>> You know what's a more recent version of that? Um did you have to do DARE growing up?

[00:19:17]>> Yeah. Uh yeah. So me too. I don't know if it was nationwide. I think it was nationwide.

[00:19:22]>> I think it was in the 90s. Yeah.

[00:19:23]>> Yeah. People people who are not 90s kids in the United States, there was this program called DARE, which was drug awareness something education, but basically I mean it was well-intentioned, but essentially what happened is that the US government decided we are going to send police officers into elementary schools to teach kids about cocaine and heroin so that they won't do it. And what happened? Drug use among adolescence and minors skyrocketed over the next 10 or 20 years until they stopped doing the DARE program and then they came down. So there's a backfire effect to a lot of this stuff. And and I imagine that there's something there's probably something in our neurological wiring that's like, you know, seeing don't smoke cigarettes is also in many ways no different than your brain seeing smoke cigarettes. And so like both of those messages hit at the same time. I know I know in NLP there's some ideas around that like that that your brain just kind of ignores like the negative modifier of things and so you just uh it's better to not say something instead of to tell people to not do it. Now in my book the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] there was a section that I called the do something principle and to me this is like one of the most useful frameworks or tools that I have ever learned in my life and it came from my high school math teacher. Shout out to Mr. Pacwood if he's watching. So what Mr. Pacwood told us there was one day we were all taking a test and I think everybody was just stumped because all the kids were sitting around not really writing a whole lot on their exams. My teacher said the simplest thing but it was like utterly profound which is that he said if you find yourself stuck just start writing the next step of the problem.

[00:21:03]Don't try to solve the entire problem at once. Just write the next step of the problem. just the momentum you build by writing the next step will generate insights and ideas into what could come next and sure enough it was crazy. You would just like do the next step of the problem and then that would something about writing that out would show you what the following step should be and so on and it became much easier to do the problems. Once I got to college, I noticed that this applied to writing term papers, right? You start writing an essay for English class. You get stuck.

[00:21:34]You're like, "Well, why don't I just write one sentence? Just get one sentence, see where that goes." And then you write one sentence and pretty soon you've got a paragraph. And then once you got the paragraph, you're like, "Oh, I actually know where this should go now." So the do something principle applied to academics. But it turns out it applies to pretty much everything.

[00:21:52]See, we assume that to change you need to feel like doing something different.

[00:21:56]and then that will lead to the actions of something different. But it's actually the other way around. You start with the action and the action itself creates the emotion. We assume that motivation is required to generate the action. It's like no, the action is required to generate the motivation. So then this raises the question like how do you get that first action? How do you how do you start that change? How do you start building evidence of that new identity that you want to adopt for yourself?

[00:22:25]And the trick is to make that action as small and easy as possible, right? So, if you want to have a six-pack, don't focus on having a six-pack. Focus on just putting your [ __ ] shoes on and going to the gym. Or if you want to start a meditation habit, don't think about doing a 7-day retreat, just sit down on the pillow for one minute. Just set a clock for 60 seconds, right? And then what happens is you sit for 60 seconds and you're like, "Well, I'm already here. I might as well do 10 minutes." and then you do 10 minutes and you're like, "Well, that was nice. Why don't I do five more?" Right? And then then you start building a little bit of a snowball.

[00:23:01]>> The mistake that everybody makes is they try to bite off way too much to begin with. And I think this is because when we imagine the change we want in our life, when we imagine the new identity we want to have for ourselves, we imagine all of the long-term benefits and consequences of 10,000 tiny decisions >> instead of thinking about the one small decision right in front of us. You don't think about waking up 30 minutes earlier tomorrow and maybe like having a smoothie instead of a bagel. What you think about is like having a six-pack at a beach and like a super hot girlfriend.

[00:23:35]And that's just that's step 10,000.

[00:23:38]You're not even paying attention to step one through five. Right?

[00:23:43]>> So the the the goal is to narrow our focus to that first step, generate the momentum, start accumulating evidence of a new identity by accumulating new behaviors. Those new behaviors give you the momentum to continue. And then as you continue, you start generating new emotional patterns, new experiences, new ways of seeing the world and seeing your life.

[00:24:06]>> Okay. So what you're saying is most of us want that those adaptation layer changes right away, if not full-blown identity changes right away. Right.

[00:24:14]Right. And then but what we're doing is cuz we want those emotions to just be able to fuel us and and move us. Right.

[00:24:21]I think I've experienced this a million times.

[00:24:23]>> Okay. And they call it the overhaul.

[00:24:26]We're calling it the overhaul trap here.

[00:24:28]What it is is when you jump in, you want to change. You try to change everything all at once.

[00:24:32]>> 10 things simultaneously.

[00:24:33]>> 10 or more things simultaneously. You want to get up early and work out. You want to eat right. Yeah.

[00:24:39]>> From day one. You want everything to just be part of >> disown your friends, become a vegan, fly to Timbuktu, like Yeah. Everything.

[00:24:46]Everything.

[00:24:47]>> You're trying this identity level change without any evidence, >> without building the the behavioral foundation underneath that new identity.

[00:24:54]Correct. Okay. And so that's just going to you're you're fighting an emotional uphill battle at that point.

[00:24:59]>> The you know the same way we talked about how a personality trait is like a center of gravity that you kind of return to naturally. I think your identity is an emotional center of gravity. It's your default state. Right? So, if you've spent 20 years being a couch potato playing video games all day, it there's you're going to have to fight a lot of gravity to escape that basin, that emotional basin. The idea that you can just wake up one day and decide you're a new person and like go be a new person.

[00:25:30]It it's extremely unlikely, >> right? Okay. So the rest of this chapter we want to focus on how do you actually accumulate the most effective behaviors correct >> that will eventually lead to actual real change at the adaptation layer maybe even the trait layer.

[00:25:45]>> Correct.

[00:25:45]>> Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[00:25:46]>> And interestingly so we didn't talk about Aristotle earlier but Aristotle's solution for a CRA is was habituation.

[00:25:56]He said that basically the only way to train yourself to do the things that you don't want to do is to find ways to create habits around it >> so that it feels automatic even when you don't feel like doing it. And anybody who like is quote unquote super disciplined >> if you talk to them, >> how do you work so many hours, right?

[00:26:16]Like how do you >> how do you get up so early? they don't think about it, right? Because if you have to think about it every time you do it, >> you're going to lose momentum at a certain point. So like James Clear in Atomic Habits has a great framework for this. He has four different kind of mandates for adopting any new behavior.

[00:26:33]He says number one, make it obvious.

[00:26:35]Don't like anything complicated, it's you're probably not going to stick to it. So like just make it super super super immediate and obvious like what you should be doing. The second thing is he says make it attractive. So, make it feel rewarding when you do it. And you can do this in a bunch of different ways. You can set up an accountability system. You can um you know, do it with a friend. Um you can post pictures and put it on [ __ ] Instagram and tag all your friends, whatever. The third one is make it easy, which is what we've been talking about, right? Find the minimum viable action, remove as much friction as possible. And then the fourth one is make it satisfying. Ali Abdal has a great take on this which is he he he actually focuses on making it fun which as an ADHD person I really appreciate that like I love the gamification of things and I love like you know doing things with other people and like creating some sort of whether it's competitiveness or cooperation in some way. The way I would apply this right is like map out for the next 10 days one small cooking task I'm going to do each night. um prep fully beforehand, like buy all the groceries beforehand. Um and then maybe create some sort of accountability system like tell a friend that hey, if I don't do these 10 things, like I owe you a hundred bucks or I got to take you to dinner or something that that would just be one simple example of like here's how you would effectively start adopting a new behavior if you really wanted to.

[00:28:01]>> Yeah. Okay. Okay. So here's my thing about this stuff though, too. So all of that I think is great for like the health behaviors we talk about. Um I've implemented these very successfully in my life. For example, like um I'm the default option. I don't keep junk food in my house. Yes. I don't eat junk food.

[00:28:18]The workout thing I have a trigger like middle of the day is workout time for me. I've just that's been ingrained in my body now. I like get antsy if I don't go. So that's kind of it's a little bit of an abstract trigger, but it works for me. We have been talking a lot though about like I think a different kind of change too. Can we apply that here as well for my avoidance?

[00:28:36]>> Yeah.

[00:28:37]>> Right. [laughter] Right. A lot of the behavioral change that people talk about are around it's like health behaviors which I agree are very important. And really what you're getting at is you're saying >> I want to go I want to be the type of person who does these behaviors, right?

[00:28:50]I want to be a healthy person. I want to be a conscientious person. Uh ultimately like that's what I want to be, right?

[00:28:56]>> What about when it comes to like and that's all very very concrete. We can see the results. We can see the process even too. That's a very concrete process with concrete results. But what about when it comes to these like >> these harder things we've been talking about emotional >> ourselves? Yeah. The entry point for me addressing my avoidance was behavioral.

[00:29:16]Like I was like, okay, I'm behaving in a in a in an avoidant way. I don't want to behave that way anymore.

[00:29:21]>> And so that's where I started. And it did lead to like, oh, this actually isn't so bad, right?

[00:29:25]>> Um it's actually maybe a little bit fun to work on this. Sometimes it's not that fun, honestly, but it hasn't been so far. But I could see myself like, "Oh, let's let's kind of gamify this a little bit even too." I could see that. Does it work that way? I guess >> I think it can, right? So like in in your context in a relationship, right?

[00:29:43]Like you could implement something akin to like a mood tracker, right? of like documenting say three times a day like set a little alarm on your phone like you know 8:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m.

[00:29:56]Just take 30 seconds and write down how am I feeling in this moment and why am I feeling this way and just do that for 30 days and then schedule sit downs with your partner and just be like this is kind of what I'm feeling and here's what I noticed about myself, right? And like practice that self-disclosure that's probably not supernatural. talked to a number of people who have like built in relationship rituals like that, right?

[00:30:20]Where they they have a monthly check-in and they say like this is where I'm feeling really loved. This is where I'm not feeling very loved, right? And they like give each other that feedback very >> uh calmly without any sort of judgment attached to it.

[00:30:33]>> There are certain practices and rituals that you could probably implement to like kind of >> kind of like the checklist in the hospital, right? like enforce those behaviors because you're you're not naturally predisposed to do it and you're probably going to find reasons to avoid doing it unless it's kind of thrust upon you.

[00:30:50]>> Um so I I think it totally can work. I I think in your case it's it's the definition of behavior. You're probably still seeing it as like >> a tangible action of some kind.

[00:31:00]>> Yeah.

[00:31:00]>> Whereas in your case the the behavior actually is the emotion >> emotional response to it.

[00:31:04]>> Okay. Yeah. Okay. My girlfriend has actually um suggested check-ins and stuff like that. So >> your girlfriend is a therapist. Yeah.

[00:31:09]>> So you have no excuses.

[00:31:10]>> And she's like [laughter] and she's all she's like all excited too. So she's like I'm excited for this.

[00:31:16]>> Of course she is.

[00:31:17]>> I've gotten on board with it though too.

[00:31:18]Okay. Okay. Okay. So that's that's one example too. Here I'll give you another example um from my own life as well that's not related to all like tangible health stuff or whatever. It's podcasting. For years, I've worked with you and I've always been behind the scenes and never saw myself as like somebody who's in front of any any front-facing part of of the business.

[00:31:41]Right.

[00:31:42]>> And so I kind of just held on to that for a long time.

[00:31:45]>> And it hasn't been until I guess a little bit more recently where it's like, okay, I need to change something about that. This is like I'm committed to this, >> but I still don't have that strong identity around it. And so instead, what I've done um is I'm like, "Okay, now I need to go figure out how to be a better speaker. I need to go figure out how to be just communicate better in general.

[00:32:06]Um I need to figure out how to like use my voice better." Like all the little those little behaviors >> and they start with just like a go watch a YouTube video and take some notes on it or, you know, and then I'm going to my plan is kind of to progressively get a little bit more and more into that as I go. And I'm already feeling like, oh, okay, this is actually pointing somewhere. Mhm.

[00:32:26]>> It's going somewhere. There's like the rumblings of an identity change even underneath of it.

[00:32:30]>> It's interesting cuz I feel like that's kind of an example like sometimes identity lags reality, you know, like it's sometimes change happens to you.

[00:32:39]It's not something that you do. And and >> this was completely unplanned. We never expected you to be on the like co-hosting the podcast. It kind of just like >> I wanted to be a producer. That's what I wanted.

[00:32:49]>> Yeah. Like we kind of just tried it once and it went really well and so we just kept doing it. And and it's interesting because I think my perception of you has lagged reality, right? Like >> for a long time I still saw you as like researcher, editor, you know, curator, right? And sometimes when new >> experiences and new realities are thrust upon us. There's still a lag time for identity.

[00:33:13]>> Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And you still have to start at the behaviors, right?

[00:33:16]you still have to like I don't know if it's fake until you make it or whatever but you still have to like okay now I have to engage in these behaviors that are going to lead to that change. So >> yeah it's yeah it's interesting what's interesting about adopting new behaviors as well is that sometimes it's easier to substitute one habit with another habit and you see this come up a lot in like addiction recovery groups. You know, a lot of a lot of people will actually encourage people, you know, if you stop drinking alcohol, find something else you can replace it with. Like even if it's junk food, even if it's cigarettes, even if it's something else that's unhealthy, just make it less unhealthy than the thing you're replacing. And I think this makes sense, right? If you view everything as an adaptation, you can't just rip out that adaptation from somebody's life. It's more effective in many cases to replace the adaptation with another adaptation that can provide a similar role for their life. It'll make the chances of successful change much higher. Okay, I I wanted to talk about this. So, this is great. Uh I have two examples I want to give. First of all, one from my own life where um for a long time I was waking up and um I was reading the news. I just noticed it.

[00:34:24]That's the first thing I was doing.

[00:34:26]Sounds awful. Okay. I you I justified it. I had the economist. They have this espresso app it's called and it's just like four or five paragraphs of what's going on around the world, right? Okay.

[00:34:35]So, I'm thinking it's harmless.

[00:34:36]Whatever. But it was wearing on me and so I was like, I want to stop doing that. I need to replace this with some behavior though. So, what I was actually doing, I think, is I was getting up, I would meditate, and then I would read the news is like just terrible, like two opposite terrible a terrible pairing is what I'm saying. So instead, what I started doing um is I got rid of the app. I I got rid of the service um and I replaced it with reading. I think what it was my adaptation was, oh, I want to get up in the morning and I want like >> you want to feel like you're >> I want to feel like I'm getting into the day, right? I'm starting the day off, right? Or whatever. And I don't know, having that information, you know, I was like when your dad read the newspaper in the morning or something, there's something around that. I don't know. But I replaced it with reading. So it was like, okay, now it's a behavior. I'm reading books that have nothing to do with what's going on in the world right now. and it's more about ideas and it kind of gets my mind going for the day because this is what I do, right? So, that was very successful and and it's like that's helped me a lot like my days go my mornings go so much better now just from that one little substitution of behavior. I needed something there though cuz I tried to just not do it >> and it just I felt off.

[00:35:40]>> Yeah.

[00:35:40]>> Yeah. So, that's a that was a good example. Another one I just heard recently too um >> or I've heard it a few times actually um Sam Parr from uh My First Million podcast. He's an entrepreneur. You know, Sam, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:52]>> Um I didn't know this about him, though.

[00:35:54]He was uh he was a pretty heavy drinker for a long time.

[00:35:58]>> Interesting.

[00:35:58]>> He decided he was going to quit drinking and he said he was drinking like 20 beers a day or something like that.

[00:36:03]Yeah. Yeah. I was really surprised by this. And he replaced it with junk food.

[00:36:06]>> That's how he quit drinking was he replaced it with junk food. And I've heard about this like in AA >> addiction circles are usually replace their their their uh substance with sugar.

[00:36:16]>> You know, that's a very common thing.

[00:36:17]They still smoke cigarettes and eat sugar.

[00:36:19]>> Yeah. I have a family member who did that >> and his his his doctor even told him, "Yeah, get fat." He's like, "Seriously, go get fat. We'll take care of that once you're done." Um, but right now, we just need to get you to stop drinking.

[00:36:30]>> So, I think there's a lot of situations where that is very uh very helpful. Is that always necessary, do you think?

[00:36:36]>> Yeah, I think it it depends on how ingrained the behavior you're trying to change is. if it's like a very fundamental part of your daily routine.

[00:36:44]Um, and if you're like emotionally dependent upon it in some way, then yes, you probably need to replace it to some degree with something else. Like, and if it's numbing something for you, you probably need to replace it with something else that's going to numb you.

[00:36:57]A lot of what marketing is is trying to insert a product as an adaptation into your life, >> right? It's like if you think about like newspapers, right? Like at some point somebody some very smart person realized that people want to start their day feeling productive >> and so if you can convince them to read a paper every morning >> feel informed and you feel yeah >> and then you feel like you're ready to conquer the day like there's just so much stuff in our life that is ultimately the product of of marketers telling us hey this is going to make you more adaptable to your environment so replace this one behavior with this other behavior.

[00:37:31]>> Yeah. Yeah. Social media too. I don't know what you replace that with. I don't really I'm not on social media that much. So, >> yeah. I don't know. Video games.

[00:37:41]>> That's Yeah, that's probably a healthier one, right? Yeah. Like at the end of the day. Um and then you just keep replacing it at some point or you stop somewhere too and just accept that that's that's your level. I don't know. But >> I Yeah, I think it's fascinating because you do need something to replace it with. You you you have that adaptation and that attachment to it >> that you're absolutely right. You remove the behavior. You've not touched the adaptation at all. You still have to feed the adaptation.

[00:38:03]>> Totally.

[00:38:03]>> Or change it and it's just easier to feed it. So, yeah.

[00:38:06]>> Yeah.

[00:38:06]>> Yeah.

[00:38:06]>> So, I think it's probably worth double clicking a little bit on >> environmental design. You you mentioned really briefly not keeping junk food in the house. That's like >> No, let's dig into that cuz it's Yeah.

[00:38:17]People don't realize this, but the structure of your environment around you is making a lot of your behavioral decisions for you and it's doing it without your awareness or consent. So until you learn how to change that environment in a specific way, you are doomed to follow the path of least resistance. It's funny you said that like you have trained yourself to work out a midday. Like one thing I did for a long time, I have a home gym >> and uh and I I noticed that sometimes like it would be easy to neglect going there. Um and so what I started doing is I just started putting my shoes in the gym. So I couldn't go put my shoes on unless I went to my gym first. And then what started happening was like like well I'm in the gym and I have my shoes on.

[00:39:00]>> I should probably pick up something heavy.

[00:39:02]>> Right. [laughter] Right. The store can wait.

[00:39:04]>> Uh again it put me in a situation where it's easier to do the thing than to not do the thing.

[00:39:09]>> And that was a minimum viable action you're talking too. Right. Correct.

[00:39:12]There's nothing more basic than that that you could get to. Yes. Around that too. Right. And that's what I always tell people when they're trying to like start especially a workout routine or something. All you got to do at first especially just optimize for just showing up.

[00:39:24]>> Don't nothing beyond that. Like absolutely nothing beyond that. Just show up. Even if you just go to the gym and sitting there for 5 minutes, that's a win. Yeah, >> that's a minimum viable action right there.

[00:39:33]>> You know, it's interesting too because we earlier we talked about identity level change being kind of a factor of like amassing evidence for being that new person. I think you can actually build evidence in your environment as well. Stephen Presfield, which you and I are both a big fan of, friend of the podcast. Yeah.

[00:39:49]>> He has this great concept just called going pro, which what he does he, you know, so he teaches a lot of aspiring writers and aspiring creatives. And one of the things that he teaches them is he says that even if you're not professional, even if you're an aspiring screenwriter or novelist or whatever it is, he said treat yourself like a professional. So go out, put an office in your house, organize your desk, like create a filing system the same way you would if you were you were a professional. Schedule time on your calendar to sit down and and do your craft the same way a professional would do. Basically like adopt all of the behaviors in the environment of a professional even though you're not a professional. Because his point is that by treating yourself as a professional, you will start behaving like a professional. it will actually become easier to behave as a professional writer than it is to not behave as a professional writer. Because what he has noticed throughout his career is that so many aspiring writers, they see themselves as like, "Oh, well, I'm just, you know, I'm just this aspiring novelist. Like, nobody's read my stuff.

[00:40:53]Nobody's going to care." And so, they don't take it very seriously because they assume nobody else is going to take it seriously. And his point is like, just start taking it seriously even though you you haven't actually done the thing yet. And then the behavior will follow. Love Stephen. Um, love environmental design stuff. Uh, you know, insert the friction where you don't want to do the behavior, remove friction where you do want to. Love all that. That's great. Um, I think there's a little bit though kind of in our industry and just in larger culture in general. There's like willpower has become a little bit of a bad word.

[00:41:30]>> Like, oh, don't depend on your willpower, right? It's a depletable resource and you know, you can't depend on it. It's not reliable. I agree with all that. That's true. But there's still going to be times where you need to just grit through it and do it. You were just talking about how do we get ourselves to do things that we don't want to do, but we know they're good for us.

[00:41:47]>> I think at some point, you know, you're not going to be able to control your environment completely. You're not going to be able to like set up your professional office like Stephen wants you to. And it's not always going to work. And you're there's going to be times where you just don't want to do it.

[00:41:58]>> Yeah.

[00:41:58]>> And we've done this before, too. We've talked about like the the pitfalls of relying on willpower. Again, I think they're true, but I I think maybe we've taken that too far sometimes. Say it's just just don't even worry about it.

[00:42:10]Just don't even try to do it. Like >> you still have to do hard things that you don't want to do at some point, right? Yeah.

[00:42:16]>> Like how do you how do you actually see this? Because I'm confused by it a bit, I guess.

[00:42:20]>> I see willpower as is like the the the tool of last resort, right? It's it's like the break in case of emergency.

[00:42:27]Like if it's your primary tool, you're done.

[00:42:29]>> You're gonna fail.

[00:42:30]>> Yeah.

[00:42:30]>> But you're you're absolutely correct.

[00:42:32]Like there are going to be day no matter how well your your environment is set up, no matter how many nudges and uh like how much friction you remove from whatever your goal is, they're going to be days where you're like I really don't want to do this.

[00:42:46]>> Right? And that's the moment where willpower kicks in, right?

[00:42:50]>> And it's like, okay, I have to like maintain consistency here.

[00:42:54]>> Okay.

[00:42:54]>> So it it does have a place, but like the goal should be to use it as sparingly as possible, >> right? Yeah. Okay. I do like it, too. I think you've said this before. I've seen it in several places, I think. But use your willpower to set up your environment or like when you have it, right? Yes. That's a good way to to to go about it, too.

[00:43:10]>> And this is something James talks about a lot, too, right? He says that you don't rise to the level of your goals.

[00:43:14]He says you sink to the level of your systems. Generally speaking, when in that moment when you are super motivated, yes, that effort is better channeled into building a system that is going to make the behavior inevitable rather than just doing the behavior a lot for a short period of time.

[00:43:31]>> Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to that too, like life is practice thing as well, like you're you're you're repeating it enough that >> you will fall back on those systems and at some point you're going to have to fall back on those systems and so the practice of it daily. Well, and there's there are ways to make the willpower work for you a little bit, right? So, one one of the things we haven't talked about yet is is social pressure, >> like the positivity of social pressure, right? So, like you go to CrossFit, like one of the powerful things about CrossFit is that it leverages social pressure to make you work out harder, right? They put you in teams and you like go for PRs and you compete against each other and it's it's super fun, right? So, you get these amazing workouts because you're surrounded by people that you're going to feel like a dick if you're if you're the one slacking.

[00:44:17]>> Dude, just the other day I went in, we just did all bodyweight workouts. I was like, I could have done this workout at home, but I absolutely I wouldn't have.

[00:44:23]Yeah, absolutely wouldn't.

[00:44:24]>> Definitely wouldn't have.

[00:44:25]>> Yeah.

[00:44:26]>> And it's, you know, there's the cliches around um you're the average of the five people closest to you. And um it there's a lot of truth to that.

[00:44:34]>> There's some research behind that.

[00:44:35]>> There's a lot of truth and research behind that. And it's um you know the generally speaking the your your social relationships kind of set the standard by which you measure yourself. Um so when it comes to changing your identity or changing how you see yourself, one effective way to do that is to change the people you associate with and to surround yourself by people that you want to become. And then that will recalibrate how you judge yourself and what sort of actions and behaviors you judge as normal. and expected and which ones you don't. The other aspect that I think can make willpower way more effective. So without getting way inside baseball, which I know you and I could do, there there was a school of thought for many years that believed that willpower was fundamentally limited. It was a theory called ego depletion. It was very popular for about 10 or 20 years. Um it is since not replicated and so it's kind of fallen out of fashion.

[00:45:31]Um, but whether willpower is objectively limited or not, um, let's just all agree that willpower is [ __ ] hard.

[00:45:38]>> Yeah.

[00:45:39]>> Yeah. Yes. And like you do get fatigued at some point. Um, unless you're David Gogggins, there are certain things that you can use to kind of grease the wheels of your willpower, right? I So, I think social pressure is one of them. You get a lot more leverage out of your willpower if you're like surrounded by people who are rooting for your success or doing the same thing you're doing. I think another thing that like leverages your willpower and makes it go much much further >> is finding an impactful why behind the change you're trying to >> and this is this is something that's very fundamental to motivation that probably doesn't get talked about enough but like if you are >> doing something for very superficial reasons the emotional fuel that comes with wanting to make that change is going to run out very quickly.

[00:46:29]Whereas if the motivation for a major change in your life is very deep and profound, that is going to persist over a long period of time. And so those days that you wake up and you don't feel like doing the thing, you're you're going to be much more likely to actually get up and do the thing. Uh I had a great conversation. There's a famous podcaster in the the branding and design world named Chris Doe and it was really interesting. Uh I went on his show and he for some reason we were talking about exercise and he was like I work out every day and I have for like 10 years but I hate it.

[00:47:04]>> He said why is that? And I was like well that's interesting cuz most people don't continue to do something they hate for 10 years. Um so I started asking him a bunch of questions about his motivations or whatever. Short version of the story is that um he basically never exercised his entire life. Um his father I believe either died of a heart attack or had a heart attack at a very young age. He has a lot of heart disease in his family when he had his first kid. He suddenly had this realization of his own mortality and realized like oh my god if I have a heart attack the same age my father did my kid will be like 8 years old. Like my kid won't even be grown up.

[00:47:44]He might not know his father. And that scared the [ __ ] out of him so much that he started exercising every day and he never stopped. I love this story because it's just such a be like most people when they want to get in shape, they're like, I just want to look good naked, right? Like >> or like I want to have good Instagram photos. And guess what? Like that's a very temporary motivation. It's gonna it's not going to last very long. It's not going to persist on like that like rainy Tuesday morning when you don't want to get out of bed and you don't want to go to the gym. you're gonna give up because honestly, who the [ __ ] cares about an Instagram photo? But when you want your kids to grow up and have a father, you're like, "Fuck the rain, man. I'm going." There's an intense amount of power in the purpose and the meaning behind what we want to accomplish and what change we want to make. And if we don't have that strong why, uh I think we we're just much more likely to to be a drift.

[00:48:37]>> No, 100%. I I mean I I stumbled upon this in kind of my uh health journey, I guess, because I did start I was one of those I just want to look good naked.

[00:48:47]Yeah. Right. And it did not take very long for that to wear off.

[00:48:50]>> It never worked for me.

[00:48:52]>> Yeah. No. Then my parents started having health issues and other people in my family as well. And I kind of like got a little glimpse into my future.

[00:49:00]>> Um and and that made me think of, okay, I want to be around and I want to be around for people when I'm older, >> right? Um, so I I've even been toying with the idea lately is like I want to live to be a hundred.

[00:49:12]>> Nice.

[00:49:12]>> There's there's been some old people in my family, not not men, the women, but they took care of themselves at least.

[00:49:17]There's rarely a time where I'm like excited to go to the gym.

[00:49:20]>> Usually when I get there and I get to go and I'm like, I'm glad I did this and there's like I feel rewarded after it. I also eat lunch right after, which is a little, you know, I get my little reward.

[00:49:27]>> Nice. There you go.

[00:49:28]>> Right. But the long-term vision, the why behind it is much deeper now than it was like at first was just vanity, right?

[00:49:35]Yeah, it's more it really is just health.

[00:49:37]>> I I tried to work out for years for vanity and it never stuck.

[00:49:42]>> No, >> I never got in shape. I never lost my belly. Like >> and then I got very unhealthy and >> I remember when I was 38, >> I started having chest pains or no, I was 36. I started having chest pains and I remember I went to >> the ripe old age of 36.

[00:50:00]>> Yeah. And I and I I had a lot of heart disease in my family. And I remember I went to I I went to a cardiologist and you know I got a like heart scan and everything. It was fine, but he started asking me about my lifestyle and he he was like uh you know, have you been stressed lately? Have you been working a lot? What's your diet like? And we just kind of went down the line and it was just horror show after horror show after horror show. Told me pretty point blank.

[00:50:22]He was like look your current trajectory like you're likely to have a heart attack by your mid-50s right >> if you keep on the same path. That scared the [ __ ] out of me. I was like, "No, not doing that."

[00:50:33]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:34]>> And that was what changed it.

[00:50:35]>> And but that's notice that's what like the you start here with the behavior.

[00:50:38]You have to justify the the identity that comes along with it at some point, right? And that you have to have a good story around that. And that's where the change kind of comes in with something like this, right? It's like like at a a more a more basic fundamental level >> is >> you start with that behavior. I'm doing it for whatever reason. Those reasons are probably going to change at some point and you're going to have to have a solid story around that. It's usually like a strong why that you need. Yeah.

[00:51:01]>> If you think about it, if your identity is really just a story, it's probably a good story because you've held on to it for a long time, right? So, the only way you're actually going to sustainably replace that original story is if you have an equally good or better story to tell yourself.

[00:51:16]>> Yeah. Yeah. I think another example of like a good strong why is when you take on a social role too, though. And there's there's research behind this as well, and I've already mentioned this, right? like becoming a podcaster. That was a social role I had to take on. Um, but my identity didn't just appear all of a sudden when I said, "Well, I'm stepping into this role." I had to go through the behaviors. And I'm still going through the behaviors and my identity is still changing around that.

[00:51:39]But that's like a strong that's a strong wise taking on social roles can actually be a very positive and strong engine for change for people. So like step into the role that you want. The behaviors kind of have to fall into place at that point.

[00:51:52]>> It's parents, right? Like I >> parenting is a great one. Getting married.

[00:51:55]>> I have so many friends who >> became parents and immediately got their [ __ ] together.

[00:52:01]>> Right. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. And and we talked about this in aging too, right?

[00:52:04]As you age, you take on different social roles and that's why you probably become more conscientious, less neurotic, more agreeable is because you're taking on different social roles that require those things of you. Yeah.

[00:52:15]>> And so yeah, think about the social roles that you're you're taking on and that's that's an engine for change. It's interesting that like ultimately impacting others might be a stronger lever for changing yourself than trying to impact yourself.

[00:52:28]>> I I would agree with that wholeheartedly. Yeah.

[00:52:32]>> Fascinating.

[00:52:33]>> So, just to review, >> yeah, >> where we are up till now, >> what we understand is you >> Yeah.

[00:52:40]>> Us operates in three layers. There's the trait level layer, right, which is both psychological and biological traits.

[00:52:48]There's our adaptations, which is the habits, emotional patterns, narratives, identity that we develop to like adapt to our environment that we're in. And then there's our actual behaviors, the things that we do regularly um in the ways that we're known by other people.

[00:53:05]So you can't really change your traits or your traits will change gradually slowly over the course of your life, but if you're over the age of say 25 or 30, the ROI on trying to change a trade is not not high at all. It's probably it's better to simply try to identify and accept the >> understandations are what we generally understand as ourselves. uh and change like if you want to change your life or change who you are generally what you're saying is you want to change at the adaptation layer. So you want to change those patterns or habits or uh belief systems that you've adopted at some point in your life to adapt to your environment.

[00:53:44]That adaptation is no longer functioning well and so you need a new adaptation to take its place. The way you create that new adaptation is by adopting new behaviors because those new behaviors build evidence of a new identity and slowly the narrative of that new identity begins to replace the narrative of the old one. Now most people approach these new behaviors through willpower and motivation. But willpower and motivation tend to be short-term. What is much more effective is to alter your environment to make the change inevitable to find a minimum viable action remove as much friction as possible to adopt a useful social role and find an important why behind the change that you want to make. This everything leading up until now this hours and hours of everything we've talked about, let's call this the slow path to change because everything we've just described it is completely doable.

[00:54:34]You've done it. I've done it. Most people watching this have done it, but it takes a long time. It takes months at minimum, in most cases years, in some cases decades depending on how deeprooted the adaptation is.

[00:54:49]>> It's reliable.

[00:54:50]>> It's reliable, >> but it's slow. So, it's a slow reliable path.

[00:54:53]>> It's slow, reliable, and repeatable.

[00:54:55]>> Right. Right.

[00:54:55]>> But there is also a category of change that we still have not talked about yet, and that is the dramatic, massive, instantaneous transformation.

[00:55:05]Yes, it does exist. You can change without the grinding repetition, without carefully designing every aspect of your environment, without gradual improvements or habituation to new behaviors. There is such a thing as a dramatic lightning bolt moment.

[00:55:22]Researchers have documented it. They've even identified a process for it. The catch is is that you're probably not going to want to do it. What's up everybody? Thank you for watching. This video is just one chapter of a much larger podcast episode about change where Drew and I cover everything from specific ways to change and annoying behavior to deep identity level changes.

[00:55:44]We'll be releasing new chapters every few days on YouTube. But if you want to watch or listen to the full episode right now, click on the links in the description to watch everything on Spotify. And if you like the show, please don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to work on the topic at your own pace, we have a free PDF guide and workbook with all of the resources, citations, and exercises at solve podcast.com/change.

[00:56:07]So, I will see you soon.