What Happens When Willpower Runs Out

00:00:00Why do we not do the things we know weshould do?Is that a rhetorical question? Or areyou>> [laughter]>> I was expecting you to answer, Drew. Iwas expecting you toresolve a 2,500-year philosophicalconundrum.Why don't we do the things we know weshould>> question.>> Why Why do we know we should dosomethingand then not do the thing?>> Right.>> Why I How is that even>> Right. Know exactly what to do.>> Yes.>> Information must not be the problem or Idon't know.>> You know, it's interesting. I don't knowif you remember this, but I actuallystarted writing a book called Why Don'tI Do It. And the entire book was Thegoal was to answer this question. Like,why do we not do the things that we knowwe should do?Like, how is it that our behavior getsdivorced from our knowledge to such alarge extent?And that that book itit Anyway, I didn't end up writing it.But I did do some interesting researchfor that book when I was writing it. Andthis problem is as old as civilization,obviously.Um the Greeks referred to this asacrasia, andthey took it very seriously as aphilosophical problem. Like, it didn'tmake sense to them that you knowsomething is good, why should you becapable

00:01:15of doing anything to thecontrary? Like, whyWhy should there be any resistancetowards doing it?And it's interesting because the the themajor Greek philosophers had They eachhad kind of a different angle at whichthey tried to answer this question.Socratesjust rejected the premise outright. So,in the dialogue Protagoras, he arguedthat it was actually impossible to notdo the thing that you wanted to do. Hesaid that if if you experience adiscrepancy between what you want to doand what you actually do, he just saidyou don't actually want to do it, whichto me feels like a cop-out. That's verycircular, right? It's like, "Well, ifyou wanted to do it, you would." And thething you did is cuz you wanted to. It'slike, well, yeah, that's not veryhelpful, Socrates, but thank you. Thankyou for uhfor your participation.>> It denies the real emotional experienceof the whole thing, too, right?>> Yes, it does. Plato was really the onewho that kind of nailed this. And he hadthis metaphor, he called it thetripartite soul. He basically said thatthe the human soul is divided into threeparts, and the three parts are allwrestling for control at any given time.And those three parts basically boildown to uh kind of our impulses andinstincts, our animalistic side, ouremotions and our passions,

00:02:31and then ourrationality and our higher-leveldecision-making. And it turns outpsychology has largely bornePlato's model to be true. I mean,there's some nuances and a couple littlechanges here and there, but we generallyhave these different parts of ourselves,and they're generally wrestling againsteach other for control. Anybody who hasstruggled to follow through withsomething they want to do hasexperienced this, where youintellectually understandI should get off the couch, I should goto the gym, I should hire a trainer,but emotionally you're like, "Mm, thesepotato chips, they sure do taste good."So, Plato had this metaphor to describethis, which is that our soul, orbasically our psychology,um is like a chariot rider trying tocontrol two horses. So, one horse is ouranimal instincts and our urges, and theother horse is our emotions and ourpassions. The chariot rider, which isour rationality, his goal is to uhcontrol the horses and point them in thecorrect direction. But the interestingthing about this metaphor is that itshows us that ultimately feelings arewhat drive our actions and ourdecisions. And when it comes to changingourselves, to trying to be a new person,ultimately, that is aemotionally-based

00:03:47problem. Likethe reason we don't do things that weknow we should do,is simply because we don't feel like it.It's not that we don't know we should doit, it's because we don't feel likedoing it. The reason you don't[clears throat] get off the couch and goto the gym isn't because you don't knowit's good for you, it's because youdon't feel like doing it. And so,identity change, becoming a new person,is ultimately an emotional process,which [ __ ] sucks because emotions arehard.>> Right.>> They're like They're hard to identify,they're hard to understand, they're andthey're hard to deal with.>> to change.>> It's They're hard to change, and it'shard to do something contrary to youremotions. Right? Like, if I'm angry atsomebody, it's hard to be nice to them.If I'm sad about something, it's hard tobe enthusiastic and motivated, right?So,the whole difficulty around change isfundamentally boiled down to this. Howdo you do things that you don't feellike doing?All this is to say is that behavioralchange is primarily an emotionalproblem, not a rational problem. Theinformation is the easy part. You know,as my friend Derek Sivers likes to say,"If change was as easy as moreinformation, we would all bebillionaires with six-packs." But, we'renot.Because the difficulty isgetting our emotions to align

00:05:02with whatwe know is better for ourselves. As thechariot riders in our brains, gettingour horses lined up and pointed in theright direction.Now, most people assume that the way todo this, the way to handle an emotionalproblem, is to just brute-force it. Isto just summon as much willpower aspossible to uh push down any doubts orreservations and just like almost likeabuse yourself until you do the [ __ ]thing.And that can work in bits and spurts,but as we're going to discover,willpower isgenerally overrated and overemphasizedbecause it turns out that the human mindwe are very influenceable andsusceptible to external triggers andinfluences within our environment. Andso, if we're smart about using ourenvironment and and if we're smart aboututilizing the triggers around us, we canactually make it easier to adopt thebehaviors that we want to adopt. So, bythe end of this chapter,everybody's going to understand whysimply knowing what to do andtrying toforce yourself to do it throughwillpower is not an effective solution.We're going to actually give everybodyspecific concrete tools to change theirenvironment to create triggers forthemselves

00:06:17so that the right behaviorsbecome automatic and far easier thanthey would be otherwise.But, to begin, I want to tell a storyabout a checklist and how it saved 1,500lives. So, in 2003, doctors at one ofthe best hospitals in the world wereunintentionally killing their patients.What's worse is that the whole time theyknew what they should be doing. Theyjust weren't doing it.So, the problem was is that a largeamount of patients were dying from whatis called central line infections.So, central lines are simply a catheterthat are that are inserted into a largevein. They're super common in ICUs.They're like basicallyyou see them happen everywhere. But, theproblem was was that the ICU was sochaotic and so crazy that inevitablysome of these steps would be skipped andthen the patients would develop aninfection and then they they would die.So, the doctor Peter Pronovost noticedthis andhe decided to address it. And headdressed it in the moststupidly simple way possible, which ishe created a checklist.It was just a physical piece of paperwith the five steps that all the doctorsand nurses already knew that they shouldbe doing. And then he just made onechange, which is that he gave all thenurses permission that if they noticed adoctor skipping any of the steps thatthey could

00:07:33stop him and intervene. Andwithin 18 months, deaths from centralline infectionsdropped to zero.In fact, this the checklist became sosuccessful that hospitals across theUnited States started adopting iteverywhere. Now, the interesting factabout this checklist is it didn't teachanybody anything they didn't know. Itdidn't force anybody to do anything theyshouldn't already be doing.Uh it didn't motivate them or you know,completely change the system.It simply created an environmentalnudge. It basically created a designwithin the environment that made iteasier to follow the protocol than itwas to not follow the protocol. And thisis what we see time and time again isthatpeople change their behavior when itbecomes more painful to not change thebehavior than it becomes to change it.We like to imagine that it's morecomplicated than this, that it there'slike all these I don't know,philosophical, emotional, childhoodtrauma issues associated with it, but atthe end of the day,if you can create circumstancesand situations within your environment,if you can design the world around youto nudge you into a behavior so that itfeels easier than not doing thatbehavior, something as simple as achecklist or a visual reminder

00:08:48or or notputting junk food in the fridge,whatever it is,this is the 80/20 of behavioral change.Now, this is not a sexy or excitingthing. I think what happens is that whenpeople want to change, we tend to thinkof the final order effect of thatchange, right? So, it's like if I wantto get healthier or if I want to fix myrelationships, I'm not thinking aboutthe next meal I'm going to have or thenext date I'm going to go on. What I'mthinking about is like me being marriedwith kids and having a six-pack, right?I'm like my brain is immediately jumping5 years in the future after I've done10,000 different things to make thatoutcome come true. And so,a natural cognitive bias that we have isthat we assume that we need to changemuch more in our life than we actuallyneed to change. It turns out thatnot only are behavioral changeseasily instigated by small alterationsin our environment, like a simplechecklist, but you don't have to changenearly as much as you think you doto create an outsized effectdown the line, 5 years in the future orwhatever. Now, this is a mistake I'vemadea million [ __ ] times. Like, I can't

00:10:03tell you how many times I have convincedmyself that I have to reorient my entirelife. I'm going to start waking up at4:30, and I'm going to go to gym for 90minutes every day, and I'm going tostart meditating for 30 minutes, and I'mgoing tosign 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 3 days, andthen I fail. Whereas, what has actuallyworked for me is something as simple asputting my gym shoes by the front door,so that it reminds mehey, you're supposed to go run, [ __ ]That's why your shoes are there. For meto put my shoes on, it is easier to justwalk out the door than it is to not walkout the door.That has probably done more for me thanlike all of the drastic major changesI've ever tried to make in my life.Every change requires a certain amountof energy,um and it's especially if you'reexerting willpower. There's almost likea budget ofemotional energy that you can dedicateinto something. I mean, what makes thiserror worse, too, is that if you if likeall those changes, right? If you justtook them one at a time, right?Accomplishing the first one will makethe second one that much easier, right?So, it's like if you just address yoursleepsimply by going to bed an hour earlier,waking up an hour earlier,

00:11:18you're goingto be more rested, have more energy,your metabolism is going to functionbetter, so you're going to make betterdecisions, you're not going to be astired during the day, so you're going tohave more energy to, you know, actuallyactually go to the gym when you want togo to the gym, right? So,people should line these up sequentiallyrather than trying to do them all atonce.>> Yeah, but that doesn't feel as sexy,does it? Like like we're looking for thebig change. We're looking for themontage.>> Right.>> Right? I think what people what happensin this stage is people willif you tell them, you know, just focuson one of these. Let's say going to bedearlier or doing a workout every day. Itdoesn't matter what it is, just go dothe work.>> Sure.>> What happens is it starts looking likeyou're kind of just running in circles.It doesn't feel, you know, it doesn'thave that energy behind it, like you'resaying.>> It's boring.>> It's boring. And it's it feels likeyou're running in circles, but if youlike step back a little bit, actuallywhat you're doing is you're kind of likeclimbing the spiral staircase, butyou're looking at it from the top alittle bit, you know? And it looks likeyou're it looks like you're just kind ofrunning in a circle.>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.>> Um so, it's it's slower and it's not assexy, but if you step back and you'relike, "Oh, wait, I'veI've gotten 30 minutes more sleep forthe last month." Like that right thereis a huge, huge uh win. And you probablymaybe you haven't even noticed, butyou're you have better energy.>> Yeah.>> You have better emotional regulation. Umyou are your

00:12:33diet's better cuz you'renot as tired and you're reaching forfood for emotional regulation.>> Yeah.>> The boringness of it or the sexiness oflike some big dramatic change, likethat's a piece of it. I also thinkpeople people have misguidedexpectations in terms of likewhat the result of change should be.Like I I think people imagine that it'sgoing to be like this euphoricpeople cheering, confetti falling fromthe rafters, like you're a new person.Oh my god, you're never going to be thesame again. And that's just not thecase. What change actually feels like isyou start waking up an hour earlier, andyou start exercising 50% more.You feel 20% better day-to-day.You have a little bit more energy everyday. You have a little bit more patiencein your relationships. You make slightlybetter decisions. It's likebarely above the threshold ofperception.>> It's not a ticker tape parade.>> Right.>> Right. There's like no There's noapplause for you. Nobody Nobody's likeshowing up and handing you a a medal ora certificate at your front door. It'sjust like, "Okay, yeah, you're just aslightly more functional human being.Good job.">> I I I also think it comes back tosomething I said earlier, which is likelife is practice.>> Mhm.>> Right? And it's those

00:13:48like those littlepractices you doevery day consistently. And then whenyou do have something like big thatcomes up, you can you do handle it a lotbetter.>> Yeah.>> I've noticed this in my life, I guess,you know, once I did start working outmore and um just get healthier, nowanytime I do have an actual likephysical challenge of something I needto stay up for um I don't get as muchsleep,>> Yeah.>> right? Because I need to take care ofsomething in my life um that's going on,I can handle that a lot better.>> Mhm.>> It Again, that's almost not noticeable,though. You just get better at the thebigger thing because you practice thesmaller version of it over and over andover and over again.>> Right.>> And it's boring as [ __ ] you're right.It's just so boring. And so nobody wantsto do it. It's not sexy.>> Yeah.>> This episode is brought to you byBrain.fm. Have you ever tried to changesomething about yourself and quit notbecause it was hard, but because it wasboring? That's actually one of the mostcommon failure points. Not the start,not the hard part, but the middlestretch where you start doing the work,but you just don't really feel anydifferent. You're the same person on theinside just behaving slightlydifferently. And every day you have tochoose to keep going without any realevidence that it's working out for you.This is why I've been using Brain.fm>> for years. Not just as a productivityhack, but as a way to lower theactivation energy on the work I'm tryingto make routine. It's functional musicbuilt on neuroscience designed

00:15:03to shiftyour brain into a focused state withinabout 15 minutes. So, there's no rampingup, there's no pep talk. You just hitplay and your brain goes. [music] Andthis matters because the days you don'tfeel like doing the thing or the daysthat determine whether you become theperson you want to become. It's backedby a research team, peer-reviewedstudies, and over two decades of work onhow sound shapes our attention. It's theonly audio tool that I found that holdsup when I'm actually trying to getthings done. And help you show up in theboring middle, Brain.fm is giving myviewers 30 days of unlimited freeaccess. So, head to brain.fm/solved.That's brain.fm/solved.>> Now, there's actually two other mistakespeople make around this as well. Thiskind of like trying to make a bigchange, right? One of them, the freshstart effect. Everybody's going to bevery familiar with this, right? The NewYear's resolutions, the birthdayresolutions, the Monday morningresolutions, right? Um maybe the yeah,8:00 a.m. resolution every day. Today'sgoing to be different. Yeah, so it'scalled the fresh start effect. Umbecause that that motivation is real.It's there. Like we're all motivatedaround those, you know, that's itcreates a good little story, a beforeand after story. This was me before.Here's the Here's the start point, andthis is me after, right? The problem isis that we're not actually addressinglike the adaptations underneath that.And we have to do that

00:16:19by just targetingthe behavior, yeah, the single behaviorsthat we've we've been talking about.>> It's funny like that we have a biastowards this. I I actually in goingthrough this right now. So, about 6months ago I injured my foot, and Ibasically had to stop exercising almostcompletely for a few months, and I gotreally out of shape, and of course Ilost a lot of my habits around exerciseand everything. So, I just startedexercising fully, I would say maybe like6 weeks ago again, but I'm I'm reallystruggling to like get my habits back.I've definitely lost the consistencythat I had for a number of years.And it's funny becauseI I was recently thinking just a day ortwo ago. I'm like, "You know what? I'mgoing to do I'm going to do a 30 for 30challenge." Which is basicallydo some sort of exercise or physicalactivity for 30 minutes for 30 daysstraight. Can be anything. It could be awalk around the block. It could be afull-blown workout. It could be a run.It could be like lifting some weights.It could be just stretching and doing alittle bit of yoga, but like I promisedmyself I'd do 30 for 30.And then I looked at the calendar and Iwas like, "Ah, [ __ ] It's May 3rd." Andthen I actually had the thought, "ShouldI wait till the 1st of June?">> [laughter]>> Wait. Wait. Almost 30 more days. Yeah.Yeah.>> Cuz it's just so clean in your brain.

00:17:34It's like, "Oh, if I just doing themonth of May would be such like a nicelittlebookend, right, to this little challengethat I'm going to give myself?" And thenof course I was like, "That's stupid.Just start now.">> It's the sexiness. It doesn't feel assexy.>> Right.>> It's like if I'm going from May 5th toJune 5th, like that's not exciting.>> Yeah. Okay, so the other one though iswhat they call ironic process theory.Okay, we've talked about this a littlebit before I think, but you know,just the quick example is Mark, don'tthink of a white bear.Right?What do you think about?>> Um that white the Coca-Cola bear.>> The white Coca-Cola bear. You'rethinking of a white bear.>> Yeah. Yeah.>> This was Daniel Wegner. He came up withthis, you know, andthe things that we try to suppress andnot do are usually the things that arethe most salient to us and so we justend up doing them or we ruminate on themtoo much that we can't get them out ofour heads. We obsess over them.Um and then we just end up doing themeven more than we were before. So liketrying to stop doing a behavior, a goodway to not stop doing it is to try tonot do it.>> Yeah.>> Like an example of this is really likein the '60s when they put the SurgeonGeneral warnings on the on packets ofcigarettes, you know, it's likeeverybody shows everybody like, youknow, this causes cancer. This is badfor your health. Smoking while pregnant,all of that, right? So something

00:18:49likehalf of the American population back inthe '60s was smoking cigarettes daily.Today it's down to 18%, but you know,millions and millions of people readthose warning labels and nothinghappened there, right? There was therewas like telling you not to do it.>> If it was just information, exactly,we'd all have six-packs.>> to that. So it that is just one of thethe weakest ways I think to to changeum, to just brute force your way into anot doing it.>> You know what's a more recent version ofthat?Did you have to do D.A.R.E. growing up?Yeah.Uh, yeah. So, me too. I don't know if itwas nationwide. I think it wasnationwide.>> it was in the '90s, yeah.>> Yeah, people people who are not '90skids in the United States, there wasthis program called D.A.R.E., which wasdrug awareness something education.But, basically, I mean, it waswell-intentioned, but essentially whathappened is that the US governmentdecided, "We are going to send policeofficers into elementary schools toteach kids about cocaine and heroin sothat they won't do it."And what happened?Drug use among adolescents and minorsskyrocketed over the next 10 or 20 yearsuntil they stopped doing the D.A.R.E.program and then they came down. So,there's a backfire effect to a lot ofthis stuff and and I imagine thatthere's something there's probablysomething in our neurological wiringthat's

00:20:04like, you know, seeing don'tsmoke cigarettesis also in many ways no different thanyour brain seeing smoke cigarettes. Andso, like, both of those messages hit atthe same time. I know I know in NLPthere's some ideas around that like thatthat your brain just kind of ignoreslike the negative modifier of things andso you just uh, it's better to not saysomething instead of to tell people toto not do it. Now, in my book, TheSubtle Art of Not Giving a [ __ ] therewas a section that I called the dosomething principle. And to me, this islike one of the most useful frameworksor tools that I have ever learned in mylife and it came from my high schoolmath teacher.Shout out to Mr. Packwood if he'swatching. So, what Mr. Packwood told us,there was one day we were all taking atest and I think everybody was juststumped cuz all the kids were sittingaround not really writing a whole lot ontheir exams. My teacher said thesimplest thing, but it was like utterlyprofound, which is that he said,"If you find yourself stuck,just start writing the next step of theproblem. Don't try to solve the entireproblem at once. Just write the nextstep of the problem. Just the momentumyou build by writing the next step willgenerate insights and ideas into whatcould come next. And sure enough, it wascrazy. You would just like do the nextstep of the problem

00:21:19and then that wouldsomething about writing that out wouldshow you what the following step shouldbe and so on. And it became much easierto do the problems. Once I got tocollege, I noticed that this applied towriting term papers, right? You startwriting an essay for English class, youget stuck. You're like, well, why don'tI just write one sentence? Just get onesentence, see where that goes. And thenyou write one sentence and pretty soonyou've got a paragraph and then once yougot the paragraph, you're like, oh, Iactually know where this should go now.So, the do something principle appliedto academics, but it turns out itapplies to pretty much everything.See, we assume that to change, you needto feel like doing something differentand then that will lead to the actionsof something different, but it'sactually the other way around. You startwith the action and the action itselfcreates the emotion. We assume thatmotivation is required to generate theaction. It's No, the action is requiredto generate the motivation. So, thenthis raises the question like, how doyou get that first action? How do youHow do you start that change? How do youstart building evidence of that newidentity that you want to adopt foryourself?And the trick is to make that action assmall and easy as possible, right? So,if you want to have a six-pack,don't focus on having a six-pack. Focuson just putting

00:22:35your [ __ ] shoes onand going to the gym.Or if you want to start a meditationhabit, don't think about doing the 7-dayretreat. Just sit down on the pillow for1 minute. Just set a clock for 60seconds, right? And then what happens isyou sit for 60 seconds and you're like,well, I'm already here. I might as welldo 10 minutes. And then you do 10minutes and you're like, well, that wasnice. Why don't I do five more, right?And then then you start building alittle bit of a snowball.>> Mhm. The mistake that everybody makes isthey try to bite off way too muchto begin with. And I think this isbecause when we imagine the change wewant in our life, when we imagine thenew identity we want to have forourselves, we imagine all of thelong-term benefits and consequences of10,000 tiny decisionsinstead of thinking about the one smalldecision right in front of us. You don'tthink about waking up 30 minutes earliertomorrow and maybe like having asmoothie instead of a bagel. What youthink about is like having a six-pack ata beach and like a super hot girlfriend.And that's just that's step 10,000.You're not even paying attention to stepone throughfive, right?So the the the goal is to narrow ourfocus to that first step, generate themomentum, start accumulating

00:23:50evidence ofa new identity by accumulating newbehaviors. Those new behaviors give youthe momentum to continue. And then asyou continue, you start generating newemotional patterns, new experiences, newways of seeing the world and seeing yourlife.>> Okay, so what you're saying is most ofus want that those adaptation layerchanges right away, if not full-blownidentity changes right away.>> Right.>> Right. And then but what we're doing iswhat's cuz we want those emotions tojust be able to fuel us and and move us,right? I think I've experienced this amillion times. So okay.Uh and they call it the overall we'recalling it the overall trap here.>> What it is is when you jump in you wantto change you try to change everythingall at once.>> things simultaneously.>> 10 or more things simultaneously. Youwant to get up early and work out. Youwant to eat right>> Yeah.>> from day one. You want everything tojust be perfect>> to disown half your friends, become avegan, fly to Timbuktu, like everything.>> Right.>> Everything.>> You're trying this identity level changewithout any evidence.>> Without building the the behavioralfoundation underneath that new identity.>> Okay.>> Correct.>> Okay. And so that's just going to you'reyou're fighting an emotional uphillbattle at that point.>> The>> You know, the same waywe talked about how a personality traitis like a center of gravity that youkind of return

00:25:06to naturally, I thinkyour identityis an emotional center of gravity. It'syour default state. Right? So, if you'vespent 20 yearsbeing a couch potato, playing videogames all day,it there's you're going to have to fighta lot of gravity to escape that basin,that emotional basin. The idea that youcan just wake up one day and decideyou're a new person and like go be a newperson, it it's extremely unlikely.>> Right. Okay, so the rest of this chapterwe want to focus on how do you actuallyaccumulate the most effective behaviorsthat will eventually lead to actual realchange at the adaptation layer, maybeeven the trait layer.>> Correct.>> Yeah. Okay. Okay.>> And interestingly, so we didn't talkabout Aristotle earlier, but Aristotle'ssolution for acrasiais was habituation. He said thatbasically, the only way to trainyourself to do the things that you don'twant to do is to find ways to createhabits around it so that it feelsautomatic even when you don't feel likedoing it. And anybody who like is{quote}super disciplined,if you talk to them,how do you work so many hours, right?Like, how do youhow do you get up so early? They don'tthink about it. Because if

00:26:21you have tothink about it every time you do it,you're going to lose momentum at acertain point. So, like James Clear inAtomic Habits has a great framework forthis. He has four different kind ofmandates for adopting any new behavior.He says, number one, make it obvious.Don't like anything complicated, it'syou're probably not going to stick toit. So, likejust make it supersuper super immediate and obvious likewhat you should be doing.The second thing is he says, make itattractive. So, make it feel rewardingwhen you do it. And you can do this in abunch of different ways. You can set upan accountability system. You canyou know, do it with a friend.You can post pictures and put it on[ __ ] Instagram and tag all yourfriends, whatever. The third one is makeit easy, which is what we've beentalking about, right? Find the minimumviable action, remove as much frictionas possible. And then the fourth one ismake it satisfying. Ali Abdaal has agreat take on this, which is he he heactually focuses on making it fun, whichas an ADHD person, I really appreciatethat. Like I love the gamification ofthings and I love like, you know, doingthings with other people and likecreating some sort of whether it'scompetitiveness or cooperation in someway. The way I would apply this, right,is like map out for the next 10 days

00:27:36onesmall cooking task I'm going to do eachnight. Umprep fully beforehand, like buy all thegroceries beforehand,um and then maybe create some sort ofaccountability system, like tell afriend that hey, if I don't do these 10things, like I owe you 100 bucks or Igot to take you to dinner or something.That that would just be one simpleexample of like here's how you wouldeffectively start adopting a newbehavior if you really wanted to.>> Yeah, okay. Okay, so here's my thingabout this stuff though, too. So, all ofthat I think is great for like thehealth behaviors we talk about. Um I'veimplemented these very successfully inmy life. For example, like um I'm thedefault option, I don't keep junk foodin my house. Right, I don't eat junkfood. The workout thing, I have atrigger like middle of the day isworkout time for me. I've just that'sbeen ingrained in my body now. I likeget antsy if I don't go. So, that's kindof it's a little bit of an abstracttrigger, but it works for me. We havebeen talking a lot though about like I Ithink a different kind of change, too.Can we apply that here as well for myavoidance? Yeah. Right, [laughter]right? A lot of the behavioral changethat people talk about are around it'slike health behaviors, which I agree arevery important. And really what you'regetting at is you're sayingI want to go I want to be the type ofperson who does these behaviors, right?I want to be a healthy person. I want tobe a

00:28:51conscientious personultimately. Like that's what I want tobe, right?What about when it comes to like andthat's all very very concrete. We cansee the results. We can see the processeven, too. That's a very concreteprocess with concrete results. But whatabout when it comes to these likethese harder things we've been talkingabout?>> Like intangible, emotional.>> Ourselves, yeah. The entry point for meaddressing my avoidance was like I waslike okay, I'm behaving in a in a inavoidant way. I don't want to behavethat way anymore.>> Yeah.>> And so that's where I started. And itdid lead to like oh, this actually isn'tso bad.>> Right.>> Um it's actually maybe a little bit funto work on this sometimes. It's not thatfun, honestly, but it hasn't been sofar. But I could see myself like oh,let's let's kind of gamify this a littlebit even, too. I could see that. Does itwork that way, I guess?>> I think it can, right? So like in inyour context in a relationship, right?Like you could implement some akin tolike a mood tracker, right? Of likedocumenting say three times a day, likeset a little alarm on your phone likeyou know, 8:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 8:00p.m.Just take 30 seconds and write down howam I feeling in this moment and why am Ifeeling this way? And just do that for30 days.And then schedule sit-downs with yourpartner

00:30:06and just be like this is kind ofwhere I'm feeling and here's what Inoticed about myself, right? And likepractice that self-disclosure that'sprobably not super natural. Talk to anumber of people who have like built-inrelationship rituals like that, right?Where they they have a monthly check-inand they say like this is where I'mfeeling really loved. This is where I'mnot feeling very loved, right? And theylike give each other that feedback veryuh calmly without any sort of judgmentattached to it. There are certainpractices and rituals that you couldprobably implement to like kind ofkind of like the checklist in thehospital, right? Like enforce thosebehaviors because you're you're notnaturally predisposed to do it andyou're probably going to find reasons toavoid doing it unless it's kind ofthrust upon you.>> Yeah.>> Um so I I think it totally can work. I Ithink in your case it's it's thedefinition of behavior you're probablystill seeing it as like>> a tangible action of some kind.>> Yeah.>> Whereas in your case that the behavioractually is the emotion.>> Emotional response to it.>> Okay, yeah. Okay.>> My girlfriend has actually um suggestedcheck-ins and stuff like that. So>> Your girlfriend is a therapist.>> Yeah, and she's>> You have no excuse.>> [laughter]>> and she's all like she's like allexcited, dude.>> Of course she is.>> I'm excited for this and>> Of course she is.>> I've gotten on board with it though,too.>> Yeah. Yeah.>> Okay, so that's that's one example, too.

00:31:21Here, I'll give you another example umthat from my own life as well that's notrelated to all like tangible healthstuff or whatever. It's podcasting. Foryears I've worked with you and I'vealways been behind the scenes and neversaw myself as like somebody who's uh infront of any any front-facing part of ofthe business, right?>> Right.>> And so I kind of just held onto that fora long time.And it hasn't been until I guess alittle bit more recently where it'slike, "Okay, I need to change somethingabout that. This is like I'm committedto this.>> Mhm.>> But I still don't have that strongidentity around it. And so instead whatI've done um is I'm like, "Okay, now Ineed to go figure out how to be a betterspeaker. I need to go figure out how tobe just communicate better in general.Um I need to figure out how to like usemy voice better." Like all the littlethose little behaviors. And they startwith just like a go watch a YouTubevideo and take some notes on it or youknow, and then I'm going to my plan iskind of to progressively get a littlebit more and more into that as I go. AndI'm already feeling like, "Oh, okay,this is actually pointing somewhere.It's going somewhere. There's like therumblings of an identity change evenunderneath of it.>> It's interesting cuz I feel like that'skind of a an example like sometimesidentity lags reality. Yeah. You know,like

00:32:36it's sometimes change happens toyou. It's not something that you do andand this was completely unplanned. Wenever expected you to be on the likeco-hosting the podcast. It kind of justlike>> I wanted to be a producer. That's what Iwanted.>> Yeah, like we kind of just tried it onceand it went really well and so we justkept doing it. And and it's interestingcuz I think my perception of you haslagged reality, right? Likefor a long time I still saw you as likeresearcher, editor, you know, curator,right? And sometimes when newexperiences and new realities are thrustupon us, there's still a lag time foridentity, right?>> Exactly, yeah. And you still have tostart at the behaviors, right?>> Yes.>> You still have to like I don't know ifit's fake it till you make it orwhatever, but you still have to likeokay, now I have to engage in thesebehaviors>> Yeah.>> that are going to lead to that change.So.>> Yeah. It's yeah, it's interesting.What's interesting about adopting newbehaviors as well is that sometimes it'seasier to substitute one habit withanother habit.>> Mhm, okay.>> And you see this come up a lot in likeaddiction recovery groups. You know, alot of a lot of people will actuallyencourage people, you know, if you stopdrinking alcohol, find something elseyou can replace it with. Like even ifit's junk food, even if it's cigarettes,even if it's something else that'sunhealthy, just make it less unhealthy

00:33:51than the thing you're replacing.And I think this makes sense, right? Ifyou view everything as an adaptation,you can't just rip out that adaptationfrom somebody's life. It's moreeffective in many cases to replace theadaptation with another adaptation thatcan provide a similar role for theirlife. It'll make the chances ofsuccessful change much higher.>> Okay, I I wanted to talk about this, sothis is great. UhI have two examples I want to give.First of all, one from my own life whereumfor a long time I was waking up and um Iwas reading the news. I just noticedthat that's the first thing I was doingin the morning.>> awful.>> Okay, but it I you I justified it. I hadthe Economist, they have this Espressoapp it's called and it's just like fouror five paragraphs of what's going onaround the world, right? Okay, so I'mthinking it's harmless, whatever, but itwas wearing on me. And so I was like, Iwant to stop doing that. I need toreplace this with some behavior though.So what I was actually doing, I think isI was getting up, I would meditate, andthen I would read the news. It's liketerrible, like two opposite terribleThat's a terrible pairing, is what I'mtryingSo instead what I started doing is I gotrid of the app, I got rid of theservice. And I replaced it with reading.I think what it was, my adaptation was,oh, I want to get up in the morning andI want like>> You want to feel like you're>> I want to feel like I'm getting into theday, right?>> Yeah,>> I'm starting the day off right orwhatever. And I don't know,

00:35:06having thatinformation, you know, it's like whenyour dad read the newspaper in themorning or something, there's somethingaround that, I don't know. But Ireplaced it with reading, so it waslike, okay, now that's a behaviorI'm reading books that have nothing todo with what's going on in the worldright now, and it's more about ideas,and it kind of gets my mind going forthe day, cuz this is what I do, right?So that was very successful, and andit's like that's helped me a lot, like>> My days go, my mornings go so muchbetter now.>> Yeah.>> Just from that one little substitutionof behavior. I needed something therethough, cuz I tried to just not do it.>> And it's all off.>> It's just I felt off.>> Yeah.>> Yeah. So that's a that was a goodexample. Another one I just heardrecently tooOr I heard it a few times actually.Sam Parr from My First Million podcast,he's an entrepreneur. You know Sam,right?>> Yeah, yeah.>> I didn't know this about him though, hewashe was pretty heavy drinker for a longtime.>> Interesting.>> He decided he was going to quitdrinking. He said he was drinking like20 beers a day or something like that.Yeah, yeah, I was really surprised bythis. And he replaced it with junk food.>> Yeah.>> That's how he quit drinking. He was hereplaced it with junk food. And I'veheard about this like in AA>> I have yeah.>> addiction circles, they usually replacetheir their their substance with sugar.>> Yep.>> that's a very common thing. Theystill smoke cigarettes and eat sugar.>> Yeah, I have a family member who didthat.>> And his his his doctor

00:36:22even told him,yeah, get fat. He's like, seriously, goget fat, we'll take care of that onceyou're done. But right now we just needto get you to stop drinking.>> So, I think there's a lot of situationswhere that is very, uh, very helpful. Isthat always necessary, do you think?>> Yeah, I think it it depends on howingrained the behavior you're trying tochange is.>> Yeah.>> If it's like a very fundamental part ofyour daily routine, um, and if you'relike emotionally dependent upon it insome way, then yes, you probably need toreplace it to some degree with somethingelse. Like and if it's numbing somethingfor you, you probably need to replace itwith something else that's going to numbyou. A lot of what marketing is istrying to insert a product as anadaptation into your life.Right? It's like if you think about likenewspapers, right? Like at some point,somebody, some very smart personrealized that people want to start theirdayfeeling productive.>> Right.>> And so if you can convince them to reada paper every morning, you feel informedand>> Yeah, yeah.>> And then you feel like you're ready toconquer the day. Like it it there's justso much stuff in our life that isultimately the product of themarketers telling us, "Hey, this isgoing to make you more adaptable to yourenvironment, so replace this onebehavior with this other behavior.">> Yeah, yeah. And social media, too.I don't know what you'd replace thatwith. I don't really I'm not on

00:37:37socialmedia that much, so.>> Yeah, I don't know. Video games?>> I Yeah, that's Yeah, that's probably ahealthier one, right? Like at the end ofthe day, um, and then you just keepreplacing it at some point or you stopsomewhere, too, and just accept itthat's that's your level. I don't know,but I I Yeah, I think it's fascinatingbecause you do need something to replaceit with. You You You have thatadaptation and that attachment to it.>> Mhm.>> That's You're absolutely right. Youremove the behavior, you've not touchedthe adaptation at all. You still have tofeed the adaptation.>> Totally.>> Or change it, and it's just easier tofeed it, so yeah.>> Yeah.>> Yeah.>> So, I think it's probably worthdouble-clicking a little bit onenvironmental design. You You mentionedreally briefly not keeping junk food inthe house.>> Right. No, let's dig into that cuz it'syeah.>> People don't realize this, but thestructure of your environment around youis making a lot of your behavioraldecisions for you and it's doing itwithout your awareness or consent.So until you learn how to change thatenvironment in a specific way,you are doomed to follow the path ofleast resistance. It's funny you saidthat like you have trained yourself towork out in midday like one thing that Idid for a long time I have a home gymand and I I noticed that sometimes likeit would be easy to neglect going there.And so what I started doing is I juststarted putting my shoes in the gym.So I couldn't go put my shoes

00:38:52on unlessI went to my gym first and then whatstarted happening was like like well I'min the gym and I have my shoes on.I should probably pick up somethingheavy.>> Right.>> [laughter]>> Right.>> The store can wait.>> Yeah.>> Again it put me in a situation whereit's easier to do the thing than to notdo the thing.>> And that was a minimum viable actionyou're talking about.>> Correct.>> Right? There's nothing more basic thanthat that you could get to.>> Yes.>> Around that too, right? And that's whatI always tell people when they're tryingto like start especially a workoutroutine or something. All you got to doat first especially just optimize forjust showing up. Don't nothing beyondthat. Like absolutely nothing beyondthat. Just show up even if you just goto the gym and sit in there for 5minutes that's a win.>> Yeah.>> That's a minimum viable action rightthere.>> You know it's interesting too because weearlier we talked about identity levelchange being kind of a factor of likeamassing evidence forbeing that new person. I think you canactually build evidence in yourenvironment as well. Steven Pressfieldwhich you and I are both>> Yeah.>> big fan of.>> Friend of the podcast.>> Yeah. Yeah.>> He has this great concept just calledgoing pro which what he does he you knowso he teaches a lot of aspiring writersand aspiring creatives and one of thethings that he teaches them is he saysthat even if you're not professionaleven if you're an aspiring screenwriteror novelist or whatever it ishe says treat yourself like aprofessional.

00:40:08So go out put an office inyour houseorganize your desk like create a filingsystem the same way you would if youwere you were a professional. Scheduletime on your calendar to sit down andand do your craft the same way aprofessional would do. Basically likeadopt all of the behaviors in theenvironment of a professional eventhough you're not a professional becausehis point is that by treating yourselfas a professionalyou will start behaving like aprofessional. It will actually becomeeasier to behave as a professionalwriterthan it is to not behave as aprofessional writer. Because what he'snoticed throughout his career is that somany aspiring writers, they seethemselves like oh well, I'm just youknow, I'm just this aspiring novelistlike nobody's read my stuff. Nobody'sgoing to care. And so they don't take itvery seriously because they assumenobody else is going to take itseriously. And his point is like juststart taking it seriously even thoughyou you haven't actually done the thingyet. And then the behavior will follow.>> Mhm.>> Love Stephen.Um love environmental design stuff.Uh you know, insert the friction whereyou 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 thoughkind of in our industry and

00:41:24just in thelarger culture in general there's likewillpower has become a little bit of abad word.>> Mhm.>> Like oh, don't depend on your willpower,right? It's a depletable resource andyou know, you can't depend on it. It'snot reliable. I agree with all that.That's true. But there's still going tobe times where you need to just gritthrough it and do it. You were you werejust talking about how do we getourselves to do things that we don'twant to do, but we know they're good forus.>> Mhm.>> I think at some point, you know, you'renot going to be able to control yourenvironment completely. You're not goingto be able to like set up yourprofessional office like Stephen wantsyou to and it's not always going to workand you're there's going to be timeswhere you just don't want to do it.>> Yeah.>> And we've done this before too. We'vetalked about like the the pitfalls ofrelying on willpower. Again, I thinkthey're true, but I I think maybe we'vetaken that too far sometimes. We sayit's just just don't even worry aboutit. Just don't even try to do it. Likeyou still have to do hard things thatyou don't want to do at some point,right?>> Yeah.>> Like, how do you how do you actually seethis? Because I'm confused by it a bit,I guess.>> I see willpower is is like the the thetool of last resort, right? It's it'slike the break in case of emergency.Like, if it's your primary tool, you'redone. You're going to fail.>> Yeah.>> But, you're you're absolutely correct.Like, there are going to be days nomatter how well your your environmentset up, no matter how many nudges andlike

00:42:40how much friction you remove fromwhatever your goal is, there going to bedays where you're like, "I really don'twant to do this."Right? And that's the moment wherewillpower kicks in.>> Right.>> And it's like, "Okay,I have to like maintain consistencyhere.">> Okay.>> So, it it does have a place, but likethe goal should be to use it assparingly as possible.>> Right. Yeah, okay. I do like it, too. Ithink you've said this before. I've seenit in several places, I think, but useyour willpower to set up yourenvironment or like when you have it,right? Yeah, that's a good way to to togo about it, too.>> And this is something James talks abouta lot, too, right? He says that youdon't rise to the level of your goals,he says you sink to the level of yoursystems. Generally speaking, when inthat moment when you are supermotivated, yes, that effort is betterchanneled into building a system that isgoing to make the behavior inevitablerather than just doing the behavior alot and for a short period of time.>> Yeah.>> I think it kind of goes back to that,too. Like, life is practice thing aswell. Like, you're you're you'rerepeating it enough thatyou will fall back on those systems andat some point you're going to have tofall back on those systems, and so thepractice of it daily>> Well, and there's there are ways to makethe willpowerwork for you a little bit, right? So,one one of the things we haven't talkedabout yet is is social pressure.>> Mhm.>> Like, the positivity of social

00:43:55pressure,right? So, like, you go to CrossFit.Like, one of the powerful things aboutCrossFit is that it leverages socialpressure to make you work out harder,right? They put you in teams and youlike go for PRs and you compete againsteach other and it's it's super fun,right? So, you get these amazingworkouts because you're surrounded bypeople that you feel like a dick ifyou're if you're the one slacking. Dude,just the other day I went in we just didall bodyweight workouts. I was like, Icould have done this workout at home,but I absolutely wouldn't have Iwouldn't have. Yeah, absolutely wouldn'thave.>> You definitely wouldn't have.>> Yeah, and it's you know, there's thecliches around umyou're the average of the five peopleclosest to and um it there's a lot oftruth to that.>> research behind that.>> Yeah, there's a lot of truth andresearch behind that and it it's um youknow, thegenerally speaking the your your socialrelationships kind of set the standardby which you measure yourself. Um so,when it comes to changing your identityor changing how you see yourself, oneeffective way to do that is to changethe people you associate with and tosurround yourself by people that youwant to becomeand then that will recalibrate how youjudge yourself and what sort of actionsand behaviors you judge as normal andexpected and which ones you don't. Theother aspect that I think

00:45:11can 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 formany years that believed that willpowerwas fundamentally limited. It was atheory called ego depletion. It was verypopular for about 10 or 20 years.Um it has since not replicated and soit's kind of fallen out of fashion. Umbut whether willpower is objectivelylimited or not, umlet's just all agree that willpower is[ __ ] hard.>> Yeah. Yeah, yes.>> And like you do get fatigued at somepoint um unless you're David Goggins.There are certain things that you canuse tokind of grease the wheels of yourwillpower, right? I so I think socialpressure is one of them. You get a lotmore leverage out of your willpower ifyou're like surrounded by people who arerooting for your success or doing thesame thing you're doing. I think anotherthing that like leverages your willpowerand makes it go much, much further isfinding an impactful why behind the thechange you're trying>> Yeah, yeah.>> And this is this is something that'svery fundamental to motivation thatprobably doesn't get talked aboutenough, but like if you aredoing something for very superficialreasonsthe emotional fuelthat comes with

00:46:26wanting to make thatchange is going to run out very quickly.Whereas if the motivation for a majorchange in your life is very deep andprofound, that is going to persist overa long period of time. And so those daysthat you wake up and you don't feel likedoing the thing, you're you're going tobe much more likely to actually get upand do the thing. Uh I had a greatconversation. There's a famous podcasterin the the branding and design worldnamed Chris Do.And it was really interesting. Uh I wenton his show and he for some reason wewere talking about exercise.And he was like, I work out every dayand I have for like 10 years, but I hateit.He said, why is that? And I was like,well, that's interesting cuz most peopledon't continue to do something they hatefor 10 years. Um so I started asking hima bunch of questions about hismotivations or whatever. Short versionof the story is that um he basicallynever exercised his entire life. Um hisfather, I believe either died of a heartattack or had a heart attack at a veryyoung age. He has a lot of heart diseasein his family.When he had his first kid, he suddenlyhad thisrealization of his own mortality andrealized likeoh my god, if I have a heart attack thesame age my father did, my kid

00:47:41will belike 8 years old. Like my kid won't evenbe grown up. He might not know hisfather. And that scared the [ __ ] out ofhim so much that he started exercisingevery day and he never stopped. I lovethis story because it's just such abeautiful like most people when theywant to get in shape, they're like, Ijust want to look good naked." Right?Like>> Yeah.>> Or like, "I want to have good Instagramphotos." And guess what? Like, that's avery temporarymotivation. It's going toIt's not going to last very long. It'snot going to persist on like that likerainy Tuesday morning when you don'twant to get out of bed and you don'twant to go to the gym. You're going togive up because, honestly, who the [ __ ]cares about an Instagram photo? But whenyou want your kids to grow up and have afather, you're like, "Fuck the rain,man. I'm going." There's an intenseamount of power in the purpose, in themeaning behind what we want toaccomplish and what change we want tomake. And if we don't have that strongwhy,uhI think we we're just much more likelyto to be adrift.>> No, 100%. I I mean, I I stumbled uponthis in kind of myum health journey, I guess, because Idid start out I was one of those I justwant to look good naked, yeah, right?And it did not take very long for thatto wear off.>> Never worked for me.>> Yeah, no. Then my parents started havinghealth issues and other people in myfamily

00:48:56as well. And I kind of like got alittle glimpse into my future.>> Mhm.>> Um and and that made me think of, "Okay,I want to be around and I want to bearound for people when I'm older.">> Right.>> Um so I I've even been toying with theidea lately is like, "I want to live tobe 100.">> Mhm, nice.>> There's There's been some old people inmy family, not not men, but women, butthey took care of themselves at least.There's rarely a time where I'm likeexcited to go to the gym.>> Yeah.>> Usually when I get there and I get to goon, I'm like, "I'm glad I did this." Andthere's like I feel rewarded after it. Ialso eat lunch right after it, which isa little, you know, I get my littlereward.>> Nice. There you go.>> Right. But the long-term vision, the whybehind it is much deeper now than it waslike at first, which was just vanity,right? It's more It really is justhealth.>> I I tried to work out for years forvanity.>> Yeah.>> And it never stuck.>> Yeah, no.>> I never got in shape. I never lost mybelly. LikeAnd then I got very unhealthy andI remember when I was 38, I startedhaving chest pains.>> Right. Or no, I was 36. I started havingchest pains andI remember I went to>> The ripe old age of 36.>> Yeah, and I'm and I I have a lot ofheart disease in my family and Iremember I went to I went to acardiologist and you know, I got to likeheart scan and everything. It was fine,but he started asking me about mylifestyle and he he was like

00:50:12uh youknow,"Have you been stressed lately? Have youbeen working a lot? What's your dietlike?" And we just kind of went down theline and it was just horror show afterhorror show after horror show. Told mepretty point blank. He was like, "Look,your current trajectory like you'relikely to have a heart attack by yourmid-50s>> Right.>> if you keep on the same path."That scared the [ __ ] out of me. I waslike, "Nope, not doing that.">> Yeah. Yeah.>> And that was what changed it.>> And but that's notice that's what likethat you start here with the behavior.You have to justify the the identitythat comes along with it at some point,right? And then you have to have a goodstory around that. And that's where thechange kind of comes in with somethinglike this, right? It's like at a a morea more basic fundamental level isyou start with that behavior. I'm doingit for whatever reason. Those reasonsare probably going to change at somepoint and you're going to have to have asolid story around that. It's usuallylike a strong why that you need. Yeah.>> If you think about it, if your identityis really just a story,it's probably a good story cuz you'veheld on to it for a long time, right? Sothe only way you're actually going tosustainably replace that original storyis if you have an equally good or betterstory to tell yourself. Yeah.>> Yeah, I think another example of like agood strong why is when you take on asocial role too, though. And there'sthere's research behind this as well andI've already mentioned this, right? Likebecoming a podcaster, that

00:51:27was a socialrole I had to take on.Um but my identity didn't just appearall of a sudden when I said, "Well, I'mstepping into this role." I had to gothrough the behaviors and I'm stillgoing through the behaviors. My identityis still changing around that. Butthat's like a strong that's a strongwhy. So taking on social roles canactually be a very positive and a enginefor change for people. So like step intothe role that you want, the behaviorskind of have to fall into place at thatpoint.>> It's parents, right? Like I Parenting isone, get married. So many friends whobecame parents and then immediately gottheir [ __ ] together.>> Right. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. And And wetalked about the aging, too, right? Asyou age, you take on different socialroles, and that's why you probablybecome more conscientious, lessneurotic, more agreeable, is becauseyou're taking on different social rolesthat require those things of you.>> Yeah.>> And so, yeah, think about the socialroles that you're you're taking on, andthat's an That's an engine for change.>> It's interesting that likeultimately impacting others might be astronger leverfor changing yourself than trying toimpact yourself.>> I I wouldagree with that wholeheartedly. Yeah.>> Fascinating.>> Yeah.>> So, just to review>> Yeah.>> where we are up till now.What we understand is you>> Yeah.>> us operates in three layers.

00:52:42There's thetrait level layer, right? Which isboth psychological and biologicaltraits. There's our adaptations, whichis the habits,emotional patterns, narratives, identitythat we develop to like adapt to ourenvironment that we're in. And thenthere's our actual behaviors, the thingsthat we do regularly,and the ways that we're known by otherpeople. So, you can't really change yourtraits, or your traits will changegradually, slowly over the course ofyour life, but if you're over the age ofsay, 25 or 30,the ROI on trying to change a trait isnot not high at all. It's probably It'sbetter to simply try to identify andaccept the Understand.>> Right. Yeah.>> Adaptations are what we generallyunderstand as ourselves. And change,like if you want to change your life orchange who you are, generally whatyou're saying is you want to change atthe adaptation layer. So, you want tochange those patterns or habits or uhbelief systems that you've adopted atsome point in your life to adapt to yourenvironment. That adaptation is nolonger functioning well, and so you needa new adaptation to take its place. Theway you create that new adaptation is byadopting new behaviors. Because thosenew behaviors build evidence of a newidentity, and slowly

00:53:57the narrative ofthat new identity begins to replace thenarrative of the old one. Now, mostpeople approach these new behaviorsthrough willpower and motivation, butwillpower and motivation tend to beshort-term. What is much more effectiveis to alter your environment to make thechange inevitable, to find the minimumviable action, remove as much frictionas possible, to adopt a useful socialrole, and find an important why behindthe change that you want to make. This,everything leading up until now, thishours and hours of everything we'vetalked about,let's call this the slow path to change.Because everything we've just described,it is completely doable. You've done it,I've done it. Most people watching thishave done it, but it takes a long time.It takesmonths at minimum, in most cases years,in some cases decades, depending on howdeep-rooted the ad- adaptation is. It'sreliable. It's reliable.>> But it's slow. So, it's the slow,reliable path.>> It's slow, reliable, rep- andrepeatable.>> Right. Right.>> But there is also a category of changethat we still have not talked about yet.And that is the dramatic,massive, instantaneous transformation.Yes, it does exist. You can changewithout the grinding repetition, withoutcarefully designing every aspect of yourenvironment,

00:55:12without gradualimprovements or habituation to newbehaviors.There is such a thing as a dramaticlightning bolt moment.Researchers have documented it. They'veeven identified a process for it. Thecatch isis that you're probably not going towant to do it. What's up, everybody?Thank you for watching. This video isjust one chapter of a much largerpodcast episode about change. where Drewand I cover everything from specificways to change an annoying behavior todeep identity level changes. We'll bereleasing new chapters every few days onYouTube, but if you want to watch orlisten to the full episode right now,click on the links in the description towatch everything on Spotify. And if youlike the show, please don't forget tosubscribe. And if you want to work onthe topic at your own pace, we have afree PDF guide and workbook with all ofthe resources, citations, and exercisesat solvepodcast.com/change.So, I will see you soon.