The Real Reason You Stay Stuck In Life

00:00:00So, I think it'd be cool to start thischapter, Drew, with the story ofAlcoholics Anonymous. Do you know how itstarted?>> No.>> No. So, okay. So, it's actually afascinating story, and it dovetails withso much of the stuff that we've talkedabout so far. So, there was a guy namedBill Wilson. He was a Wall Street guy inthe 1930s, and raging alcoholic. Like,we're talking[ __ ] world champion alcoholism here.Put himself in the hospital multipletimes. Like, literally had doctors lookhim in the face and be like, "You aredrinking yourself to death. You need tostop." He couldn't stop. He couldn'tfigure out how to stop. He triedeverything. It just kept like he justkept spiraling out of control. He losthis job. He lost marriages. He lost hismoney. He lost everything. Yet, he keptdrinking. And then, one day, in 1934, heended up back in the hospital yet again,same hospital he ended up every singletime. And he had Well, he had a quantumchange mystical experience. So, he waslaying there in the hospital bed.Suddenly, he said that that the roomfilled up with a white light, and hefelt this the Holy Spirit blow throughthe room, and he suddenly becameintensely aware of what he was doing tohimself and the future that he wascreating for himself.

00:01:15And amazingly, hegot sober. Like, right then and there,never had another drink. And he becameso profoundlyinspired by this event in his own lifethat he became obsessed withprecipitating it in other alcoholics'lives. He dedicated his life to figuringout how he could replicate thatexperience for other alcoholics. And so,he went back. He read William James'swork. William James was of the beliefthat the only way to defeat addictionwas religion. He didn't see any otherway to to do it. So, then Bill Wilsonstarted Alcoholics Anonymous, thesupport group framework that stillexists today and has helped millions ofpeople kick alcoholism and addiction.But here's the interesting part aboutBill Wilson's story that nobody reallytalks about,which is that yes, he got sober and yes,he helped millions of other people getget sober, but he still struggledintensely with depression. He stillserially had affairs and cheated on hiswife. He would still go out anddisappear for days on end.In many ways, he was still kind of thesame person. And so while the alcoholadaptation got completely removed andreplaced with other adaptations, theunderlying traits

00:02:30of Bill Wilsonpersisted and he never really found away to adapt to them or or deal withthem. Even decades later when LSD wasinvented and they started doing earlyexperimentation on on LSD fortherapeutic use cases,Bill Wilson was one of the first peopleto sign up. So like he was stillsearching for a wayto fix himself, to change himself,even after being sober for 20 years,even after inventing the most successfuladdiction treatment program in history.So this raises a question, which is didBill Wilson really change?>> Well, you kind of mentioned thisalready. Would do do you have to replacethat behavior or that identity withanother one in order for it to be a realchange? Is that a real change? Are youstill you? What constitutes a change? Idon't know. You hear stories like this alot though. You know, people they'llthey'll they'll turn their lives aroundin a lot of ways and thenthey're still they're still them in someway. You know, they still have to find aa way to be themselvesand and live with themselves, yeah.>> Yeah, I think this comes back to theearly point in this episode in thatthere is a certain layer of yourselfthat is just not going to change. Thereis the trait level thatno matter what you do, it's going to bedown there and

00:03:45the best you can do isfind healthier and more functionaladaptations for it.And Bill Wilson seemed to like reallynail fixing the alcoholism adaptation.But he still had all these other traitsthat were causing him problems and henever really found adaptations forthose.>> Yeah, those drives don't go away.There's there's just those arefundamental. I think you're right. Ithink they're trait level fundamentaldrives and desires and>> Yeah, I don't know if you can changethose.>> And well, and it it raises an age-oldquestion particularly around addiction,which is that do you actually defeat anaddiction or do you just re-channel it?Like and and you see this all the time,right? It's like former drug addicts,they become endurance athletes or theybecome obsessive workaholics, you know,or they become junk food addicts orwhatever. It's like often the theaddiction or the compulsion is notdefeated, it is simply just channeledinto a new adaptation that's slightlymore functional and healthy.>> Hopefully healthier, yeah. Yeah.>> To me, the point of of the Bill Wilsonstory is that every story you hear ofchange, right? Every time you get onlineor like watch a movie or an interview,read a memoir and somebody talks aboutthe change in their life,it is always this neatly packaged

00:05:01beforeand after story, right? It's always thislike, I was this person on day one andthenXYZ happened and then I became a newperson on day two. And what's missing inall these stories is the messy,ambiguous middlethat happens. Everything is presented aslike a clean before and after photo asif it's like>> We love a before and after photo.>> Yeah, we all love a before and afterphoto.>> Yeah.>> There is a lot of messiness that goes onin between and and while a lot of thingsdo change, there are certain layers andaspects of ourselves that don't. Andthere's a certain cost and a maintenancethat comes with that change that alsonever really gets discussed.>> There's this researcher named WilliamBridges who was really into this. He wasreally into that messy middle thatyou're talking about. He he spentdecades studying this and trying tofigure out what goes on there. And hecame really to the conclusion thatediting out that that messy middle,that's one of the quicker ways to getpeople to quit, to to stop changing orto not even try because we don't seethat immediate before and after photo.We don't see that right away. And so hesaid, "Actually, what we need to do isfocus on this part." And so he came upwith like these three phases of changebasically. Phase one was the ending, theending of the old you, the oldnarrative, the old

00:06:16value, right?Interestingly though, what he reallyspent a lot of time on in this is likekind of like the grief aspect of thatloss, right? We've talked a little bitabout this before, butwhen you change, you have to leave anold identity behind. You have to leaveyour old you behind.That's painful. There's a sadness thatcomes with it.>> Very much a sadness. Yeah.>> Yeah. You've You've experienced this,I'm sure.>> I've like mourned old versions ofmyself, I I feel like. There's also acertain like I guess kind of mortalitypiece that comes with it as well.>> Yeah, you're like that I'm never gettingthat back. Is it>> Yeah, it's like that that's a period ofmy life that's never going to come back.And while I would never go back there, Ido kind of mourn the fact that it'sover. And and that it's it it's a pieceof me that I'm never going to get toexperience again.>> Even narratives and identities thatweren't healthy.>> No, yeah.>> be very sad to even lose those, too.>> Totally.>> Because that's your story. That's yourcoherent way you'vetold your story and and who you are.>> As you know, I partied my ass offthrough my 20s and I remember when Ifinally settled down and I got marriedand I started focusing on my healthmore, like there was this realization oflikeI'm never really going to have thatagain. Or even if I do, like

00:07:31even if Igo through a midlife crisis and party alittle bit again, like it's never goingto be the way it was when I was like 24or 25. And I don't want to go back, butthere was like a very deep sadness oflike that's over. I'm never getting thatback.>> You're never going to have that kind offun again, you know? Not that kind.You'll have others and>> Yeah. And even if I go to the same partyand do the same drugs and hang out withthe same people, like it's not going tofeel the same.>> Yeah. Yeah. The next phase he got intothough,he called it the neutral zone. I thinkthe overall feeling that of this phasethough is a disorientation that you havearound this.I'm here right now, Mark, actually. I'mhere right now. So go back to myattachment stuff I've been working on.>> Yeah.>> Forever I've been this avoidant. This ishow I've dealt with that part, thesethese difficult emotions was just toavoid them. I have that it's aprotective mechanism. I get that. Thatstory is is fading away. I'm I'm havingto grieve that old me.I don't know what to replace it withright now though. It's verydisorienting. Um I don't have that thatcrutch to fall back on.That story to tell myself that no, no,no, you don't you don't need to getclose to people cuz it doesn't it'sfine. It doesn't matter. But now I'msitting here and I'm now I have toactually deal with all of theseemotions. And all of these all theselike fears

00:08:46that I have and all that.It's incredibly disorienting justbecause you don't have that anchor, thatstory to tell yourself.>> Right. You have to build new new toolsand new [snorts] adaptations.>> That's phase two and that is some youcall it the void too because at thispoint, you know, your again, your lifewas organized aroundthose values that you had. You know, forme it wasI think just remaining safe in a way,you know, I likethat calm that I could get from thateven though it was a detached calm, Istill had a a calm. When you organizeyour life around something like that andthen it's taken away from you.>> Yeah. Obviously, it's that vacuum you'retalking about.>> That existential vacuum.>> I'm just in the process right now, Mark.Nothing's filled it yet and I don't knowdon't quite know yet. But it's yeah, itsucks. It sucks. I'll tell you thatright now.>> It does.>> We'll get to that here in a second toothough, but then you have the thirdphase which is the new beginning. Thatprobably sounds a little more optimisticthan it actually is. To to be to befrank, becausereally what happens is it's more likeyou just realize at some point like,"Oh, yeah, I'm I'm different now." Therewas no like bright light moment wherethis all changed. It was justyou're walking down the street andyou're like, "Oh, I don't feel that wayanymore. And I have this new valuesystem, and that's in place, and this ismy life now." I don't think it's asromantic as people want to

00:10:02want to make it necessarily. I mean, myexperience with thisSo, I I after Josh died, I I spentprobably a goodcouple months. I mean, obviously therewas a very real component of grief thatwas going on, and then I would say I wasprobably in the neutral zone for a fewmonths of like, "What am I doing with mylife?Nothing I've done up to this point seemslike it matters.Who am I going to be? What should I do?"When I try to think back to that periodof likecoming out of that, what did that newbeginning look like? It's interestingbecause you know, I think it's likefinding those first thingsthose first new adaptations that feelexciting, that you feel optimisticabout. You've just gone through thislike multi-month period of like notreally being excited about anything.And so, when you do find that firstthing, then like, "Okay, no, this thiscould be this could be me. This could belike my thing."My recollection is that there is like apretty like intense excitement around itof like or an optimism, I guess. And notjust an optimism, but like an optimismof that that's like being handed a glassof water in the middle of a desert,right? An an optimism you have not feltin a long time.>> Right. [laughter] Right.>> I

00:11:17get that. I I agree with that, too. Ithink a lot of times though, this changeisn't nearly asit's probably not as sexy as a lot ofpeople think. And really what Bridgeshis whole point was that people don'tresist the change necessarily, theyresist those transitions. We hold ontothose old selves, whether they werehelping us or not, whether they werehealthy or not. We'll we'll cling tothem because again, that's it's safe. Weknow it at least. It's there's nouncertainty about it. The phase one thatthe ending, the grieving space, that'sagain, it's disorienting and it's it'sit's painful and we don't know wherewe're going with it. People resist thattransition. Then they resist gettinginto the disorienting neutral zone, too.They've like I have to accept that okay,that old self is gone. Now what? Youcould easily just go back to where youwere. I And then that's usually whatI've done, honestly, up until thispoint. My whole point though about allthis is that pain is not a signalthat you're not growing, right? Whenyou're in the middle of this and it'sand you are disoriented, like I'mfeeling this right now,and I'm having to face a lot of thingsthat Ihave avoided for a very long time. It'spainful. It's very painful.That pain is not an indication thoughthat growth is not happening. It's quitethe opposite. I've turned away fromthat. I've been saying this for years,

00:12:32Mark. I've been saying pain is a greatteacher. I need to take my own medicinehere. What does that actually mean?Because pain Yes, pain is a greatteacher, like you said. It's really theonly thing that gets us to change at theend of the day. So if you want tochange, you're going to have to sit inthat.And it's not fun.It's not easy. This is why most peopledon't change is cuz they don't want tosit with this this pain that you have ofof losing yourself, ofthe end of facing uncertainty, of tryingtotrying to be somebody you're not rightnow.>> That is probably the discomfort of thenew beginning phase as well is that likeit you feel like you're behaving in away that's not totally you. You're likeyou kind of feel like you're faking itor you like question yourself.Likeis this really me?Do I really want to be doing this?>> My avoidance that I've had, it'sprotected me all these times because Idon't got to get close to anybody andthen I don't get close to anybody, thenthey can't leave and it won't hurt. Sothere's a pain in losing the avoidancepart of it, but then there's also I gotto turn towards the pain of this isthat's just a possibility now. And am Ithe kind of person who's going to leaninto that and and try to explore whatthat is and it's going to be very, verypainful. So, it's not only that there'sa lot of pain going on right now. It'slike there's actually a lot more ahead,too.>> Every where you look.The pain train's waiting for you.>> It is.

00:13:47So, yeah. Um I don't know. That's that'swhere I'm at with it right now and uhit's uh it's uhit sucks.>> Yeah.>> It sucks.>> Yeah.>> I I'm not going to sugarcoat it.>> Yeah.>> It sucks.>> Well, you'll you'll make it.>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'll be fine.That's the other thing though, too, islike I know I'll be fine.>> Yeah.>> This episode is brought to you byOutskill. You know, change is funny. Thebigger the upgrade, the more we use itlike the old thing. Take AI for example.Most people will open up Claude, they'llsee like all these options for differentmodels and different versions, and thenthey freeze and just type something inlike they're talking to Google. But Ihave gone through a lot of effort to dothe opposite this year. Now, I'm not adeveloper. I can barely center a divtag, whatever the hell that means. But Iwanted a little tool to automate oneannoying part of my week. So, Idescribed it out loud and Claude codebuilt it. It's aactual working thing and it only took anafternoon. And that's actually the leastimpressive [music] thing that it can do.So, if you freeze when somebody says AIor coding or vibe coding, this one isfor you. Outskill is running a free2-day workshop this weekend. It's calledthe Claude AI Mastery Workshop and itstarts at 10:00 a.m. and ends at 7:00p.m. Eastern. It's a deep dive in theClaude plus more than 10 other AI tools.

00:15:03You'll learn [music] how to buildagents, automate the boring parts ofyour week, and get hands-on with Claudecode. Sign up now and you also get threefree bonuses. 50 secret Claude codesthat turn it into a god-tier tool, afull AI prompt library, and apersonalized AI toolkit builder. AndOutskill has made it free for myaudience. So, if you're serious aboutusing Claude, do not skip this. Grabyour free seat at the link in thedescription. What you learn in 2 dayscould change the next 2 years of yourcareer. Let's talk aboutthe social cost of change.Cuz I think you've summarized well theindividual cost>> Mhm.>> of [snorts] changing yourself, but thereis a social cost as well. It's the factthat like a lot of people in your lifereally signed upfor a specific version of you. And so ifthatthat version of you fit into their worldin a specific way andthey're comfortable with it. And so assoon as you start changing, a lot ofpeople, not everybody, but a lot ofpeoplesometimes they they react poorly. Andthey will try to hold you back indifferent ways.There's this idea of the the crab bucketeffect, which is you put a bunch ofcrabs in the bucket um and they starttrying to climb to get out. As soon as

00:16:18one crab starts to make it, the othercrabs will actually pull it back in.And there is something innate in us. AndI think a lot of this is based in theidea thatif we feel stuck,it feels threatening to see somebody weknow and care aboutactually successfully change themselves.Not just because of what it potentiallysays about ourselves and our owninability, but also I think there'sprobably a fear of abandonment of likeit's like oh if well if Drew figures his[ __ ] out, then like he's going to haveno reason to stick around with me. Andso they become insecure and theyunconsciously try to pull people down.Interestingly, if you look at theresearch on on addiction relapse, someof the most common reasons for people'srelapse is social. It is the peoplearound themtempting them to come back in.>> Right, those old environments, those oldrelationships. Yeah, yeah.>> There is a very real component of thiswhere it's like you need to look at thepeople in your life and ask yourselflike is this person a good influence onme?Are they helping me become thea better version of myself or are theyholding me back in some way? Forwhatever reason this seems to havegotten blown out of proportion on TikTok and Instagram and it feels likepeople are just like cutting people outof their livesjust willy-nilly. Like, "Oh, you don'tlike my new shirt? I'm never talking toyou again." Right? And

00:17:33I think thereneeds to be a pretty high threshold forcutting people out. I also I also justthink it like it depends on the severityof your situation, right? Like, ifyou're a drug addict and all yourfriends are drug addicts, then likeyeah, you should probably go find newfriends. You know, if you're just tryingto be a hashtag fabulous and yourfriends are being Debbie Downers, likeyou probably need a better reason thanto to cut them out of out of your life.I've either just not noticed this in mylife or I've just had really goodfriends and and anytime I've had triedto change they've just been supportivearound it even if it's not their thingor There's kind of two clusters in mylife where I experienced a lot of this.The first one was when I decided tobecome an entrepreneur. When I startedstart business, everybody I went touniversity with was like moving into thecorporate world and like getting nicecorporate jobs.And I abandoned my corporate job andstarted a website. There was a lot ofcondescension.There were some friends who just kind ofstopped hanging out with me. There wasalso a lot of criticism and andcondescension in my family. So that thatwas really tough. And and that was verymuch a aa moment where I was like, "I know thisis right for me and so if people are notgoing to support

00:18:48me in this then likeyeah, it's probably better off thatthey're not you know, in my life." Thesecondcluster in my life that this happenedaround was whenuh my book took off. And I think thiswas much moreit was an insecurity thing. I thinkthere were a few people in my life thatwhen suddenly I'm I'm making a bunch ofmoney andachieving a certain amount of like fameand success. Like things got weird.>> Yeah. Right.>> I I think it's any any friendship orrelationship where there was like kindof a status game, it really brought thatstatus game to the surface. It's notthat I like lost a bunch of friendshipsaround that period, but it just it justmade made things weird with a number ofpeople.>> Most of my friends have been verysupportive right like when I quitdrinking, not that they were bigdrinkers to begin with. I guess maybethat was part of it is that you know,theya a normal amount of drinking that theywere doing and they're like, "Yeah, youwant to don't want to drink, fine.That's fine." I think another thingthough too is thatI've never tried to like shove it backin people's faces too. I think that'ssomething we need tokind of highlight is that when you aregoing through these changes youlike do be a little bit considerate ofother people's where they're at. They'renot at the same spot as you. See a lotof people change and then they thinkeverybody should be doing this, right?

00:20:03That's going to ruffle some feathersthat don't need to be ruffled. Yeah.>> Let people do their thing.>> I think it's worth saying too likeespecially if you experience a quantumchange, like there isa real tendency to kind of becomeevangelical. Growing up in Texas, I Ihave a number I know a number of peoplewho became born-again Christians andit's actually a pretty well-knownI mean if you grew up around in in thosesorts of communities, it's well-knownthat like the the people who are likethe pushiestwith religion are the born-againsbecause they see how it saved them andthey assume that everybody else needs tobe saved too, right? So, I've definitelyseen that with psychedelics in the last5 years or so. Like there's a number ofpeople I know whonever did psychedelics and then they didit they did it in their 30s or 40s andit was very profound and impactful forthem and now they like don't shut the[ __ ] up about it and likeare literally pushing drugs on people.>> [laughter][gasps]>> And I feel like I'm always just the wetblanket who's like, "Hey dude, time out.You realize you're like pushing illegalnarcotics on>> [laughter]>> like unsuspecting people who don't knowanything about this. And that that is agood point that it can go both ways,right? It can be the people around youcan be jealous, they can be insecure,they can be like a little bit resentful,

00:21:18but also you can kind ofget high on your own supply.>> Yeah.>> And start thinking everybody needs to doexactly what you did and every everybodyshould see the world the way you see itand it's like that's not really the caseeither. Let's talk about another cost,right? So, we've talked about thepsychological cost, we've talked aboutthe social cost.There's also a maintenance cost. There'sjust aI guess it's another psychological cost,but it's it's not uh it's not acute.It's like extended over a long period oftime. It's the fact that the most commonway people fail to change is not thatthey fail to start. It's they fail to beconsistent. They lose track of thechange over, you know, after 2 3 weeksand then they relapse. And you see thisin the data as well in like fitness appsaround New Years. Like it's actuallypretty staggering how many people areable to start a new behavior.It's all equally as staggering how manypeople are likehave failed by February 1st. It's by farthe bigger problem of the two. I thinkthere's a real argument that the biggestreason people fail to change is simplybecause they underestimate themaintenance costsof maintaining a change over a longperiod of time and the the second ordereffects that that change is going tobring, right? It's like it's easy to say

00:22:33you want to quit drinking or you want tolose 20 lb. But when we think aboutthese changes, we tend to only thinkabout the beginning of the change. Wedon't think about 3 months in, 6 monthsin. How isbeing in a new career going to affectyour social life? How is it going toaffect your daily routine? How is itgoing to affect your hobbies andinterests, right? Like all of theseareas of your life are going to beimpacted by that change. But if you'renot setting aside time to think aboutthe maintenance of that change, you'reprobably going to get blindsided by it.Which is, you know, it comes back to thefact that like making a change andmaintaining the change are two differentskills.And most of the content and advice outthere is focused onthe making of the change and very littleis about on the maintenance of thechange.>> But even in the research, too, Mark, wesee that. There's a 2024 systematicreviewof behavioral change studies and allthat. They could only find 19 clinicaltrials that tracked outcomes more than ayear out. So, even like the researchersare just obsessed with like this initialchange phase and not the maintenancephase. It is a big blind spot um acrossthe board. It's also just like what ismaintenance? What is change? Long-termdurable change actually require?And we've just how many hours have wejust spent [laughter]

00:23:49talking about that? So, yeah, like I getit. It's it's difficult, butthe environmental persistence, theenvironmental design that you have todo, that's that's tough, right? Theroles, we've talked about social roles alittle bit in there. You take on asocial role, you have to maintain thatsocial role. You have to maintain allthe second-order effects that come withthat social role, too. Relationships, wejust got done talking about those. Yeah,there's there's a big monkey wrench thatit can throw off change or reinforce itor derail you at some point. Youridentity,where you have to you have to like takeon a new identity, too. That's not easy.Uh James Clear talks about this and ifyou're going to create a new ha- habitof any kind, eventually it has to becomean identity. That's painful, like wetalked about. You know, we talked aboutenvironmental design and trying tocontrol all of this. There's alwaysgoing to be some wild card that comes inand it's going to throw you off. So,you're you're going to have to plan forrelapses or reexposure to oldenvironments or old relationships thatare going tochallenge you and challenge the thedurability of the change that you'vemade. Changechange is hard. We just spent all thesehours talking about this for a reason,though.>> I think fundamentally there just needsto be a mindset shift around this ofmaintenance isthe change. It's relatively easy andexciting

00:25:04to start a change.It's difficult and boring and unsexy tomaintain the change. It's probably justuseful for people to reorient theirperspectiveto see the maintenance of the change asthe actual work. Like that's actuallywhat you're doing and that's actuallywhat you should plan and focus on.Starting a new change is is isrelatively easycomparatively.

00:25:31That was a lot.If anybody is still watching this>> [gasps]>> uh kudos to you. I hope you change yourentire life after this episode.>> [laughter]>> So let let me just summarize reallyquick because we have been through a lotin this in this episode. I mean thisepisode is longer and more thorough thanmost books in this industry.So we talked about the three threedifferent layers of you. The traitlayer, which is just the things that arekind of fundamentally ingrained intoyour biology and your personality andthey arelargely unchangeable especially afterage 25 or 30. And these are actually themost consequential. These are kind ofyour center of gravity of how you'regoing to experience the world, howyou're going to approach things,what you're naturally going to be goodat, what you're naturally going to bebad at, what you're probably predisposedto enjoy, predisposed to hate. The goalwith with your traits is to gainunderstanding and acceptance of them. Isto not fight them. The first[clears throat] fundamental error ofchange is trying to fight against yourinborn traits. It's you know being 5foot 4 and trying to make the NBA. It'slike dude, pick another sport. Thesecond layer is the layer of adaptationand adaptations are the habits, thebeliefs, the emotional

00:26:46patterns, um andthe value systems that result of theinteraction between our personality andthe environment around us. So, ouradaptations are kind of if-then patternsthat we develop unconsciously to help ussurvive and thrive in whatever situationthat we're in. So, adaptations aregreat. We all need them. We all usethem.The danger of them is that it is rarefor an adaptation to be useful ourentire lives. Generally, what you see isthat adaptations that help you at onephase of your life hold you back at alater phase of your life. You have todevelop this like meta skill ofunraveling an adaptation and andreplacing it with a new one oroverriding it with a new one is a moreaccurate way to put it. So, thisoverriding of adaptations, that islargely what people mean when they saythey want to change their lives orchange themselves.But, there are two things that make thisexceedingly difficult. The first one isis that a lot of your adaptations areunconscious. You picked them up when youwere young. You picked them up withouteven realizing it. Maybe it's an oldbelief system that you've had for solong that you forgot you evenadopted it. It's behavioral patternsthat are so natural to you, you don'trealize that they're weird or thatthey're hurting you. The second

00:28:01thingthat complicates it is that ouradaptations are emotionally laden. Weare emotionally invested in ouradaptations. That is part of what makesthem stick. And so, when you try touproot an old adaptation, it is going tobeextremely uncomfortable emotionally.You're going to havea certain amount of pain, anxiety, fear,anger, all of the things that are notpleasant to deal with are going to comealong with it.And then, we have the layer ofbehaviors, right? Our behaviors arelargely how we are understood by thoseoutside of us. And it turns out thatbehaviors are the levers that help uswedge our adaptations out of our system,right? So, if you want to change anadaptation, step one is to change thebehaviors around the adaptation. So,these three layers, we have two chainsgoing in opposite directions. Who youare is at the base layer, it is yourpersonality traits. These dictate whatsort of adaptations you develop foryourself. Your adaptations thendetermine the behaviors that you adoptand exhibit throughout your life, andthose behaviors that you adopt arelargely how you experience your life,how you are seen by others. Conversely,the way you change yourself is you startby changing the behaviors at the toplayer. By changing those behaviorsrepeatedly over a long period

00:29:17of time,you will slowly rewire your adaptations,and by rewiring your adaptations, youwill nudge your traits maybe into aslightly different position so that youwill bemore adaptable and more healthy in yourenvironment. That is the slow path. Thatis the healthy-minded individualapproachto change over a long period of time. Itis not sexy, it is frustrating, itrequires a lot of diligence andpersistence, and being very clever withyour environment and your habits and allsorts of decisions that you make, and itis largely whatyou and I are in the business ofteaching, the entire self-help industryis in the business of teaching, and itis what actually works for peopleconsistently.The problem is is that it's not sexy tomarket. So, what gets marketed is thisinstantaneousmassive life change that happensovernight. And thesequantum changes do happen overnight,but they are not fun, they are notpredictable, and you cannot do them onpurpose. Not a great sales pitch.>> [laughter]>> Because the truth is is that any change,because you are inherently uprooting oldadaptations, old narratives,understandings of who you are and what

00:30:32your meaning in this world is,it is by nature going to be extremelyuncomfortable and painful, and there'sgoing to be a lot of like difficultemotions to struggle through while doingit. So, the reason the slow method worksis that it just spreads that discomfortout over a long period of time to makeit more manageable. The fast methodworks because you have such an intenselytraumatic experience that your psychehas no choice but then to liketear it all down and start from scratch.Regardless of which path you choose oris handed to you, both requiremaintenance, both will have social costsand social fallout.Both require some degree ofenvironmental design to maintain thechange over a long period of time.Ultimately, the only bad strategy tochanging yourself is to work on thewrong layer at the wrong time. At thetop of the episode, we talked about thetwo fundamental errors. Error number oneis trying to change a trait as if it's abehavior, right? Telling myself, "Youknow, I don't want to be such acompulsive ADHD person anymore. Let metry to focus and not play video games 6hours a day." That aspect of myself isnever going to change. A much healthierway to approach that is to say, "I havethese traits about myself. I'm

00:31:47compulsive, I'm ADHD. How can I channelthose traits into a more effective andfunctional path? How can I leveragethose to enhance my life rather than tohold me back?" The second fundamentalerror is to treat behaviors like atrait.Which is to say something like, "Wow, II haven't worked out in the last 3months. I must just be a lazy person.There's nothing I can do about it." Or,"I got a bad grade in math. I must justbe stupid. There's nothing I can doabout it." Both of these are fundamentalerrors and and people get mixed upbecause both things are truesimultaneously. There are aspects ofyourself that you cannot change. Theyare just who you are, and so you have tolearn and accept them and becomecomfortable with them, but there areaspects of yourself that you canabsolutely change anytime you want. Itjust takes a lot of work and diligenceand effort and time. This tension thatundergirds our entire space, which isyou should learn to accept yourselfbecause you are great already as youare.There's nothing to be ashamed of. Thisis true, butyou can definitely be better,[ __ ] So, you should work onyourself and try try to improve at somestuff. That is also true. Both of thesethings are true simultaneously becausethey are operating on different layersof who you are. So, the real question isnot can somebody change? People can

00:33:02absolutely change. People change all thetime.The real question iswhat aspect of yourself needs to changeand what is the best way to address thataspect of yourself? And are you willingto pay the price for that change?Because ultimately, at the end of theday, I think the reason so many peopletalk about changing their lives, wantingto change their lives, wishing theycould change their lives, but notchanging year after year after year,is simply because they want the benefitwithout bearing the cost. They want tohave the six-pack abs, but they don'twant to give up Cheetos and ice cream.Life doesn't work that way.>> They want to have close relationships,but they don't want tobut they don't want to dig>> out there.>> They don't want to deal with all theicky emotions and vulnerability thatcomes with it. Yes.>> 100%. So, this brings me to one finalquestion and it's a question we have notaddressed in this entire episode, but isperhaps the most fundamental andimportant question,which is should you even change at all?Is change even the right goal to have?Because I I genuinely believe that a lotof people who think they should changeor that they want to change,either A, they don't really want tochange or B,

00:34:18it's the wanting the change that isactually hurting them more than thething that they want to change.>> Yeah, there's this really interestingidea from this researcher Tory Higgins.He identified the three selves, okay?And it's a part of what he callsself-discrepancy theory. You have theactual self, like that's who you are,kind of a lot of what we've alreadytalked about, right? You have the idealself, who you want to be. Then he hasthis third um self called the oughtself.It's who you think you should be, right?Whether that's from your family orsociety or culture or school orwhatever. He argues that ideal gaps,where you have a gap between who you areand who you ideally want to be,that those are kind of like promotionfolks, they're very motivational, umvery healthy ways to motivate change.The way not to go about doing it is withall of these ought gaps that that arecreated. We have who we are and who weought to be, who we think we should be.That's where he says all the kind of rubcomes in, all the all the friction, allthe conflict. This is where we startsomething and don't finish it becauseit's actually not who we want to be. Wenever questioned it, we never thoughtabout it. It was just we accepted itfrom everyone around us. We're avoidingfailure at that point, you're avoidingwhat people might think. Both of themmotivate change. His argument is thatthe ought-driven changes

00:35:34though areexhausting, unstable, and ultimatelyjust bound to fail. Because the goal ofthat is is avoidingbeing seen and being seen poorly byother people. And as soon as thatcollapses, as soon as that motivationcollapses, as soon as that comes underthreat, we just abandon it. Whereas ifwe're we're we're motivated by the idealself, that's something we can shoottowards, aim towards. You talked aboutyour entrepreneurship. You're like, "Iknew this is what I wanted to do, so itkind of didn't matter." You weren'tmotivated by the other people in yourlife, even if they were coming at youkind of. That's a case of of wherethat's a very ideal motivated changethat you can sustain both emotionallyand even in just in the long run, you'regoing to be able to do that a lot moreeasily. I just feel like the word shouldis such a potentially damaging word inthe human language.>> should, Drew,>> We like torture ourselves so much withthe word should. So many of our ideas ofwho we should be are not even ours.They're just illusions that we adoptedto please somebody or fulfill some likeweird fantasy that we developed at somepoint. So many of us decide that weshould be the ideal version of ourselveswithout even considering how impracticalthat

00:36:49is, how impossible that is. And theresult is just this weird sort form ofself-abuse that ironically holds us backfrom actually changing and improvingourselves. It reminds me back when I wasdoing a lot of meditation, I had a Zenmaster who one time I was on retreat andhe said very casually, he saidyou are already perfect as you areand you can always be better. Thatalways struck me as a paradox.And doing this episode was the firstthing that resolved that paradox for me.It helped me understandno, the self operates on multiple levelsand one level does demand radicalself-acceptance. Like that is thehealthiest thing you can do foryourself.And only by radically accepting thatlevel of yourself do you free up theother levels to change and become whothey need to become. Like the famouspsychologist Carl Rogers has a similarquote that's that's amazing. He said thecurious paradox is that once I acceptmyself, only then can I change.And I think I've experienced that astrue.I think the science bears that out asbeing true.And even though it it feelscontradictory, it isultimately necessary for anybody whowants to make a meaningful change intheir lives. I'm curious, Drew.As you exist in this

00:38:04neutral space, thislatent spacetrying to figure your life out, what wasthe most impactful thing in this episodefor you? Like what was the biggesttakeaway?>> It really is around the pain and thediscomfort.That's the sign that you're doing itright. That's where you just have to sitfor a while. And this is where thesethings are figured out. This is whereyour adaptations are reworked. This iswhere the new you comes in.It's a painful painful process. Like Isaid, I've been saying for years,pain is a great teacher. I don't thinkthere's any other way to change, atleast not for me. I know it's not forme. I don't I don't respond well torewards. I respond to pain. I've beenpaying lip service to it in a lot ofways. I I have done it in other ways,too, you know, I've created healthyhabits and all of that and and built ahealthy life for myself in a lot ofways, but there's still I think anotherlevel of change that requiresa degree of pain that I have shied awayfrom to this point. Yeah. This helps alot. That that layered system helps alot cuz it's like, oh, I don't have togo straight into like changing who I am,you know? [clears throat] And so, thathelps ease into it a little bit, Ithink, and gives me some more strategiesaround it. Ultimately, at some point,I'm really going to have to face a lotof that.

00:39:19>> Yeah.>> Yeah.>> To bring bring back the point of liketraits versus adaptations, right? Likeyou are probablyI would guess, you are probably at thetrait leveljust somebody who is less emotional thanmost people. Like that's probably alwaysgoing to be true. Like there's nevergoing to be a day where you're like[ __ ] crying your eyes out on a dailybasis. Like that's justthat it that is not in the range ofof exhibited behavior that is probablygoing to come out of you, but there is amuch more functional version of you,right? That is like built morefunctional emotional adaptations on topof the traits that you're working with.>> That's a good point, actually, becauseduring a change, it it's painful, it'sdisorienting, it's discomfort.I also feel incredibly engaged thoughright now. I'm like sinking my my teethinto life a little bit. Like I'm I'mdigging into it a little bit. And it'suncomfortable like I said.You're right, it's not that like highemotional or even low emotional hugerange of everything spilling out of meor anything like that, but it is morelike a like a heightened sense of beingengaged with life. That's a big part ofit and it's that scary and it ispainful,

00:40:35but you're right for forsomebody like me that's kind of thediscomfort I have to sit in.>> Anyfinal words of wisdomfor audience?>> Pain is a great teacher.Pain is a great teacher.I'm exhausted.>> I'm so [ __ ] exhausted.>> you must be really [ __ ] exhausted.This has been my favorite episode towork on so far.>> Cool.>> Hands down. Hands down. The hardest onewe've done.>> Definitely the hardest one.>> Definitely one of the hardest one we'vedone. My favorite one to work on.Hope people like it.>> Awesome. All right, everybody. Thank youfor making it through the marathon. As areminder, we do have a PDF guide forthis episode. If you go tosolvepodcast.com/change,you can download it for free. You canget all of our citations, sources,reading material. You can go through thematerial yourself. Please follow theshow and leave a review wherever youlisten to podcasts. It's actually reallyimportant for us in particular becausewe only do one episode a month andbecause we only do one episode a month,we are not going to pop up on your feedunless you follow the show. The nextepisode should come out the first weekof July. If you love this episode andyou found a lot of value in it, pleaseshare it with somebody you care about,somebody who needs to change. Anythingelse?>> I got nothing, Mike.>> [laughter]>> I got nothing.>> Drew

00:41:50is on empty.Uh we will be back next month. Thank youall. I will talk to you soon.>> [music]>> What's up, everybody? Thank you forwatching. This video is just one chapterof a much larger podcast episode aboutchange where Drew and I cover everythingfrom specific ways to change an annoyingbehavior to deep identity level changes.We'll be releasing new chapters everyfew days on YouTube, but if you want towatch or listen to the full episoderight now, click on the links in thedescription to watch everything onSpotify. And if you like the show,please don't forget to subscribe. And ifyou want to work on the topic at yourown pace, we have a free PDF guide andworkbook with all of the resources,citations, and exercises atsolvepodcast.com/change.So, I will see you soon.