Psychology of People Who Changed Their Life Overnight

00:00:00So, up until this point in the episode,we've covered what we'll call the slowway of growth. You identify yourpersonality traits, you understand yourown adaptations, you deduce thebehaviors that are most targeted towardsthe adaptation you want to change, andthen you build a series of habits andsystems to help you implement thosebehaviors, and then eventuallyeverything will change over the courseof months, maybe even years, dependingon how deep that adaptation is in yourconsciousness. But, this isn't whatanybody wants to hear. No Nobody That'sa lot of work. Nobody buys a book orgets this far into a podcast becausethey're like, "Yeah, I want to spend thenext 18 months like slowly chiselingaway at myself." The thing that isalways sold to people and that everybodygets excited for is this idea ofspontaneous massive transformation. Andthis does happen, but I think it happensin the circumstances and in a way thatmost people don't expect, and if theyreally understood it, they would not beexcited to do it. So, for fulltransparency,this sort of like instantaneous massivetransformation, I've really onlyexperienced it once in my life, and ithappened when I was about 19 years old.So, a little bit of background, when Iwas a teenager, I waspretty lazy, spoiled, entitled,

00:01:15depressed a lot of the time, smoked alot of pot. I wanted to be a musician,but I didn't really have the work ethicto like succeed as a musician. Turns outbeing a musician's extremely difficult.And I was kind of just floating throughlife, and I was in music school. It wasnot going well. I was pretty sure I wasgoing to drop out. I had a really goodfriend by the name of Josh, and Josh wasmuch more extroverted than I was. He wasvery charismatic. He was a year or twoolder. So, like he was a good friend,but I kind of looked up to him, maybe aslike an older brother type figure. Hereally helped me get get out of myshell. And so, it was the summer after Ihad decided to drop out of music school,but I didn't know what I was doing next,and he and I were just hanging out allsummer. We were partying together. Hewas inviting me to a bunch of cool stuffaround Dallas and I would drive up thereand I would stay with him and you know,we were just having a really nice summertogether. And he invited me to this lakeparty. It was kind of this apartmentcomplex built on the side of a smalllake just north of the the Dallas-FortWorth area.And we didn't know anybody there. Ithink he knew like one person there. Butwe just kind of showed up and I don'tknow, like Josh was always this guy hecould just show up to any party and likeimmediately make friends with everybody.So we just showed up and started talkingto people and it was going well. It wasfun. It was it was pretty cool. And

00:02:31nextto the swimming pool, this was likemid-July so it was super hot. Next tothe swimming pool there was like amaybe a small cliff 20 ft highoverlooking the lake and after a fewhours people started jumping off thatcliff into the lake. I had actuallywandered away for a short period of timebut basically came back out and therewas just like police and ambulances andfire department everywhere and the partyhad stopped. And I was likeholy [ __ ] what's going on? And so Istarted walking around and I'm like,wow.Okay, this seems pretty serious. Likesomebody got hurt, something happened.I looked around likegirls are crying everywhere, likenobody's talking.And so I start looking for Josh and I'mwandering through the crowds, wanderingthrough the police cars and theambulances [clears throat] andeverything and I can't find him.And aftermaybe two or three minutes it like dawnson me. I'm like oh [ __ ] Maybe he's theperson that something happened to.And so it turned out that he had decidedto jump off the cliff. The coronerslater said that his legs had cramped uplikely from dehydration fromthe heat, drinking all day,some drugs. His parents later told methat he was a terrible swimmer, which Ihad no idea. So basically

00:03:47he jumped intothe water, legs cramped up, couldn'tswim well. It was starting to get darkand so when he started crying for help,and he went under water, nobody couldsee him, and nobody could find him. So,he died that day, and it kind ofit shattered my entire life, really, inthat moment. Up until that moment, I Iwould say that while there wereobviously like problems in my childhood,I had never really dealt with any sortof hardship orhad to confront my mortality in anymeaningful way, orhad been forced to have any sort ofperspective on like how lucky I was, andhow fortunate I was, and how much time Iwas wasting, and how much of mypotential I was wasting. And And likeJosh's death like reallyit just forced me to sit with myself fora couple monthsand re-evaluate everything that I caredabout, and really question all of my ownbehavior. Because there was a very realsense of like that could have easilybeen me. And I think anytime somebodyexperiences a tragic death very close tothem like that, it it it starts bringingup

00:05:02a lot of those thoughts of like am Iusing my life well? Am I living well? Ithink if you could point to one eventthat hadmore of like where I did a 180 change inmy life, it was probably that one. Iimmediately stopped smoking pot anddoing drugs.I immediately signed up for a bunch ofbusiness coursesat the the college I was attending. Istarted making really good grades. Istopped partying as much. I just reallygot my [ __ ] together. And for the firsttime in my life, like really thoughtabout my potential and what I was doingwith my life, and like set ambitiousgoals for myself, and like really tookmyself seriously, interestingly enough.It's weird, you know, I've talked aboutJosh and this story quite a bitpublicly. It's in my book. It was anawful and tragic experience, but likeit was one of the most important thingsthat ever happened to me. And that isthe fast way to change.>> Correct.>> And this is why I don't think peopleactually want the fast way to change.Even if it doesn't involve a tragedy,there's actually a few ways it canhappen.None of them are particularly pleasant.>> [laughter]>> Or or like easy-going.

00:06:18I think there's a a real falseimpression that's been generated by theself-help industry that instantaneoustransformation, kind of this euphoricepiphanythat happens at a weekend seminar, thatit's like a party, that it it feels likea celebration. It's this out-of-bodyexperience, and you go home and justeverything's great, and you're never thesame again.I think that's a myth. And we'll getinto the psychological reasons in thisin this chapter. It largely has to dowiththe nature of that instantaneous change.It requires a certain amount ofcollapse of everything that you've knownand understood prior.>> So, for you, it was a very clear beforeand after, is what you're saying. Youjust you you had your life before it,then you had your life after this onepoint. It all hinged on that. And youhad a very clear, almost break, I wouldsay. And there's like an identity shiftthere. A lot of your adaptations, Iwould say, probably shifted quite a bit.>> I would sayalmost all of them.>> Almost all of them. Okay. Okay. Yeah,we'll dig into that a little bit more,but>> Yeah. It was yeah.>> There was like some sort of foundationalquestioningof everything. Even, let's say I hadgone and done 100 hours of therapy,

00:07:33right? And like me and the therapist dugthat deep to to get to that layer. Idon't think it's something that you cannecessarily simply intellectuallyquestion, or at least not over a shortperiod of time. Like I do think thereneeds to besome sort of intense life experiencethat goes along with it. But let let'sget into the science of it. The scienceitself is interesting, and then alsowhat's interesting is how little sciencethere is on it.>> Right. Right.>> It's just crazy cuz this is like one ofthe most fascinating>> It's also common.>> Yeah, and and actually fairly common.It's just incredibly hard to study, aswe'll see.>> Yeah. It's shocking. I mean>> I imagine a large percentage of peoplehave like had some sort of experience intheir life that has felt extremelytransformational in a short period oftime. The experiences themselves are notcommon, but I think across a lifetime itis it's not uncommon. So really the thefirst person to take this seriously askind of a scientific subject was WilliamJames. And William James is interestingbecausehe also went through a sudden 180transformation in his life.But his was was quite a bit differentthan mine. So William James>> he was maybe the most prestigiousAmerican intellectual ever. Definitelyone of the most revered Americanphilosophers

00:08:49ever. He's often called thefather of American psychology. He's justhugely influential. And interestingly,he came from a very prestigious andinfluential family. His brother was afamous novelist. I believe his sisterwas a famous writer as well. So he camefrom this family of absurdly highachievers, and he was kind of the blacksheep. Like hekind of [ __ ] up at everything he triedto dofor like the first 30 years of his life.So originally he wanted to be a painter.His dad highly disapproved of this. Hewas not very good at it. It didn'treally go anywhere, and he kind of justfloundered around into his early 20suntil finally his dad was like, "Youknow what, son? You got to You got todo something with yourself." And ofcourse, like any good father, uh he wentand got him placed in Harvard MedicalSchool.>> Yeah.>> [laughter]>> Wouldn't it be nice>> Just shoved him in there. Yeah.>> Wouldn't it be nice>> Yeah.>> if if all of our fathers, when theydisapproved with us, just made a phonecall and uh got us into Harvard MedicalSchool. So, William James got admittedto Harvard Medical School, and then hekind of just bounced around from programto program. Nothing stuck. He didn'treally like anything he studied. Themedicine at the time, it like made himsqueamish.

00:10:04Apparently, the first time hesaw a cadaver, he fainted.Again, he just felt like a complete andutter failure. It's also worth noting upuntil this point, like, he had suffereda lot of health issues growing up. Hehad eyesight issues. He had severe backpain. He had been ill on and offthroughout a lot of his adolescence. Imean, at this point, he's probablyaround 25. He has had every advantageand privilege handed to him. Nothing hasgone well.All he's experienced is suffering andfailure. And finally desperate, he signsup for this expedition to the Amazon.So, it's basically this like drasticmoonshot sort of project where he'sgoing to go down to South America. He'sgoing to ride a boat down the Amazon andchart all of the unexplored territoriesand stuff that had not yet been charteddeep into inside the Amazon. It's like avery extreme sort of life decision. So,he goes down there, and of course, thisis the 1860s, andto get to South America in the 1860s, asyou can imagine, takes months.He gets down there. He contractssmallpox and almost dies. In fact, ittakes him months to recover. By the timehe gets home, he is depressed to thepoint

00:11:19of being suicidal. And he'sjournaling at this point, and he'sjournaling about how horrible his lifeis and how awful everything is and hownothing has ever gone right.And he starts writing down thoughts ofending his own life. And so in hisjournal he made an agreement withhimself. He said,"For the next year,I willtake responsibility for everything in mylife, and I will put all of my effortinto improving my life as much aspossible.And if at the end of the year nothinghas gotten better, then I give myselfpermission. It's I at that point I havetried everything." And what isinteresting is that something in thatjournal entrycracked something open in him becauseup until that point he was very much theproduct of the influences around him,right? He has brilliant siblings who aredoing amazing things. He's supposed togo to Harvard. He's supposed to do thisamazing expedition. Like nothing he wasdoing was really for himself.And in that moment in his journal hegave himself permissionto just do something for yourself, tojustown your own decisions and try to makelemonade

00:12:35out of whatever lemons life ishanding to you in that moment. And muchlater he wrote that he attributed thisthis moment, this journal entry was thething that turned it around for him.That was his180° pivot point in his life where thetrajectory switched. And of course hewent on and became William James and youknow, all the things that I said earlierabout him. And that experience wouldlargely influence the the school ofthought that he became known for, whichis pragmatism, which is this idea thatyou should adopt the beliefs that aremost useful to you and most helpful toyou. Now the cool thing about James isthat once he did get into psychology, henoticed that there was nothing in theliterature that described what he wentthrough.You know, kind of this like suddenlightning bolt moment where everythingturned around for him. And so he decidedto research that. Andhe spent a number of years meeting andstudying different people who had hadsimilar experiences.He gave a lecture seriesin 1901 and then that lecture serieseventually became his book called TheVarieties of Religious Experience and Iwould say to this day it's probably hisbest known book. Now what's interestingabout William James' framework aroundthis is that he divided the world upinto two types of people. He said thatthere were the healthy-minded

00:13:50individuals and the healthy-mindedindividuals tended to direct their ownchange slowly over time by alteringbehavior and their own beliefs.Everything we've talked to up until thispoint. But then he said there areanother group of people which he calledthe sick souls.Sounds like a metal band.>> [laughter]>> And he said that the sick souls sufferedintensely, were kind of like thesebroken individualsand it was only under the unbearableweight of their own suffering that theywould have to kind of crack openand have thesemassiveepiphanies and huge transformations thatseemingly happened overnight or happenedover a short period of time. And ofcourse, James couldn't help but noticethat in many of these casesthat kind of crack open moment was oftena mystical or religious experience. Andso a lot of what he wrote around thistopic had to do with people becomingborn again or people having, you know,visions of God or people, you know,having like a deep profound spiritualexperience, becoming one with theuniverseetc. We're going to come back to thatlater in this chapter because

00:15:06that is a huge part of this. Thisepisode is brought to you by Waking Up.Most attempts at changing yourself failbecause you can't talk your way intobeing a different person. You have toactually do something long enough thatthe inside of your head starts tochange, too. And one of the only [music]practices that does this reliably ismeditation. Now, I've been meditating onand off for over 20 years and I've triedevery app on the market, but the onlyone that I've stuck with is Waking Up.It was designed by Sam Harris,neuroscientist and philosopher, and youcan feel that in the app. It doesn'ttreat meditation like a relaxation hack.It's designed for people who actuallywant to understand their own minds, notjust turn them off for 10 minutes.>> [music]>> So, if you want to change somethingabout how you experience your life fromthe inside out, this is a practice thatcan do it. And Waking Up is givingSolved listeners a free 14-day [music]trial. So, if you've gotten anything outof today's episode and want to actuallychange something about how you live inyour own head, this is where I wouldstart. Go to wakingup.com/solved.That's wakingup.com/solved.But, I think what's most interestingabout James's work is that nobody reallypicked upthe baton and ran with it after him. Hedid a lot of work on this in the early20th century, and then it just lieddormant for likealmost a century.

00:16:21And it really wasn'tuntil the 1990s, a researcher namedWilliam Miller picked up this subjectagain and decided to startresearching where William James leftoff, essentially.>> He did pick up and that it was in the'90s. Uh he started getting interestedin this. He was at the University of NewMexico in Albuquerque. And one of thefirst things he did was put an ad in thenewspaper, right? For people Basically,if you've ever had one of theseexperiences where you've had this veryfast, sudden, positive transformation,you uh we want to talk to you. 55 peopleresponded to this ad in the in thepaper, came in, and they interviewedthem. So, there were people who hadbeen, you know, terrible addicts beforethat all of a sudden the next day theyweren't. They were free of theiraddiction. Orseverely depressed. Or something justterrible. All of a sudden they justturned their life around in a day, youknow, and started doing everything theyneeded to do. What they found from thiswas kind of thesebasic characteristics of this experiencethat happened. One of them was that itwas sudden and very unexpected just likeJames and all these other people found,too.Often literally overnight. You know, itit could be maybe a couple days orsomething like that, but usually, youknow, minutes, hours, days at the most.And this sudden rapid change like that.To profound

00:17:36generalized change, too.Like you talked about with yours, likealmost everything seemed to reorganize.And that's everybody described that samething, too.Everything in my life just reorganizedall of a sudden. There's an enduringaspect to it as well. It wasn't justthat oh, I felt this way for a couple ofweeks and then it kind of petered out,you know, like a lot of uswhen we do try to change, that's whathappens. That wasn't the case for them.Another important one, too, is perceivedthat it was externally driven in a way.It came from the outside. This happenedto them. Everybody described thatphenomenon. This is something thathappened to me. I didn't really have anycontrol over this. It just happened tome, okay? So, they came up with a namefor this. They called it quantum change.It's kind of a reference to physics, youknow.>> Like a quantum leap.>> Right, a quantum leap of sorts.It's this sudden enduring lasting changethat just happens. They also found twotypes of this quantum change, too.There's mystical quantum change, whichis kind of what more like James talkedabout this more. It's the religiousexperiences or doesn't necessarily haveto be religious, but some sort of likedeep spiritualit often involves something like a windor light or somethingin the natural world was kind of there.Or or they had a presence with them, atranscendent presence with them of somekind.Then they had the insightful quantumchange there, too. There were somepeople who didn't have that necessarily.It's just something all of

00:18:51a suddenclicked in their brains like oh god,I've been doing this all along and it'sthe exact wrong thing and I just need tochange my entire life and were somehowable to do that. Interestingdifferences, but it doesn't take like aspiritual or otherworldly-nessyou know, force to to cause thisnecessarily. Some people just do it froman insightful vantage point, okay? LikeI said, too, it was it was enduring. So,they did some follow-up work on this.So, it was originally I think it was1994 when they published this and in2004 they they found 30 of thoseoriginal 55 and interviewed them again.And every single one of them said, "Yes,that's still the most important thingthat's ever happened in my life and yes,the changes are still real. They'restill enduring. They're still here. I'mstill that person that that changed."There were hints of people kind ofpoking around this. We've talked beforeabout Dabrowski's theory of positivedisintegration.>> My man.>> Right.>> That's my man. You love him, right?>> That's kind of a similarcategory. Like he found that peoplesometimes just everything disintegratesand then rebuilds all of a sudden too.So, he kind of got at this too.>> Yeah, I mean to to just summarize reallyquick his work. I mean, first of all,what's fascinating about him is that hewas doing work behind the Iron Curtain.So, he was in Eastern Europe, right? Hewas disconnected from Westernpsychology. His theory basicallypositive disintegration like literallymeans what it says, which is that it

00:20:06isa positive result of the disintegrationof your understanding of yourself.>> yeah.>> He studied World War survivors andHolocaust survivors. And what he foundis that the majority of the survivorsthat he interviewedyears later said that it was one of themost important things that had happenedto like it while it was a horribleexperience, it had had an incrediblyprofound positive effect on them. And itwas because it forced this experience ofpositive disintegration. It destroyedall of their assumptions and identity ofwho they were before. And so, that itallowed them to recreate themselves fromthe ground up in a much more healthy andholistic way.>> Yeah, and he kind of described likethese three stages. The disintegrationum phase where the existing selfstructure, like you said, just goesaway. Then there's an emergence of a newconsciousness, a new realization thatyou have, and then a reconsolidation ofthat identity around it. Very similar toeverything that what James saw, whatMiller saw. Very, very similar. Andthere's been some work around this whereit's like, yeah, there'sthese people who have these quantumchange events." Very much matches upwith that as well, too. I just want tohit before we get going though, twocouple of things about this. As you canimagine, this is incredibly difficult.So, what they did is, you know, Millerthey they put an ad in the paper. Andit's had people

00:21:22come tell us about whathappened. They didn't interview anybodybefore one of these happened, right? Andthen measured their personality traitsor anything.>> It's all self-reported. It's all it'sall observational. Yeah.>> You know, every now and then they'll tryto get other people in their life and belike, "Is thisCan you corroborate this?" You know,this change and is it real? And usuallymatches up pretty well. But, it is aretrospective design. There's somesurvivor bias, too. And people are like,"Oh, yeah, I've changed. I'll come tellyou all about it." Where the peoplewho've, you know, probably>> Failed to change.>> won't We don't have a ton of cases likein the literature, either, from this.But, as you said, it's pretty common.>> I feel like if it wasn't common, thenlike just the self-help industrywouldn't exist. Like my sense is thata lot of what is perceived as kind of asudden transformation in a self-helpseminar,it's actually people who arekind of already in this spot and they'rethey're like highly influenceable inthat moment. It's interesting.>> Right. Right. So, with all those caveatsin mind, it's more common than we let onto. We can't predict it very well. It'shard to describe. That's another thingabout it is people are like, "It'sreally hard for me to describe this."And so,you know, getting a good handle on it'sbeen difficult. But, one of the things Idid noticewas thatwhat's really collapsing.

00:22:37So, we'vetalked about this collapse or thisdisintegration or whatever it is. What'sactually collapsing hereare values, okay?People's values change overnight inthese situations, which we did a wholeepisode on values. It's very hard tochange your values intentionally, right?And usually they feel very innate to us.What they found, especially in this likebefore the quantum change, what peoplereported, men would rank things likewealth, adventure, achievement,pleasure, being respected as their topvalues.Women ranked family, independence,career, fitting in, attractiveness. Thatwas before the change happened.After the change though, all of them,men and women, converged on reallyaround just a few things. Spirituality,personal peace, family, inner peace,those kind of like deeper values. So,all of the just a complete valuesreshuffleovernight. And just maybe even just afew minutes, too. So, that adaptationitselfis what shifted. And theneverything else organized around that. Ithink it's worthdouble clicking on the values piece fora moment becausein many ways I do think values are thedeepest form of adaptation. Valuesunderpin all of those other things thatwe talked about. So,the way you prioritize

00:23:53your behaviors,the things that you're motivated to do,the goals that you set for yourself, allof those things are largely dictated byyour values, what you choose to findimportant. Even your emotions arelargely a product of your values. Twopeople can both experience the samething. One gets really happy, one getsextremely upset. Why? Because they havedifferent values. One person sees thesame instance as a good experience, theother one sees it as a bad experience.Similarly, a lot of our ego and identityand belief systems are largely built anddictated by our values. So, it's it'sthe values are kind of like the basefoundational layer of all of ouradaptations. And so, it makes sense thatif you go through an experiencethat causes your values to collapse,essentially causes you toquestion and doubt what you value in thefirst place,everything existing, all the scaffoldingon top of that will just come down withit. So, this experience of quantumchange, of everything just suddenlychanging overnight, I think what has tohappen first is thatthat value structure has tofall apart. And that can fall apart inmultiple ways, right? So, in my case, itwas a traumatic sudden traumaticexperience. You actually see this quitea bit in the literature that

00:25:08there's a concept that we've talkedabout before called post-traumaticgrowth. Everybody's heard ofpost-traumatic stress syndrome. Turnsout post-traumatic growth is actuallyway more common. Most people come out ofa traumatic experience believing thatthey're stronger, that they have moreclarity in their life, that they have astronger sense of what's important tothem and what's not important to them. Amassive sudden negative event can causethat collapse of your values and causeyou to question everything and, youknow, reassemble every your entireadaptation structure.I think another example iswhat's these days known as hittingbottom, hitting rock bottom. And I thinkthat's more of like a William James typestory. Things just have to devolveslowly over a long period of time. Likeyou basically have to watch all of yourdecisions fail, all of yourrelationships fail, all of your goalsand ambitions fail for an extendedperiod of time, and you have to reach apoint of such intense pain and sufferingthat you're like, "Okay, I'm willing tojust start over from scratch. I'mwilling to throw everything out thewindowand adopt any belief that just gets thepain to stop.">> Yeah, that's the arena of addicts,right? This is where you see, you know,hitting rock

00:26:23bottom and they they talkabout how beautiful it can be for for anaddict.>> Yeah, in addiction circles, too, youknow, it's like people will sufferintensely, but they still won't droptheir base assumptions.>> Oh, right.>> still kind of hold on to some of thenarratives and adaptations and habitsthat they have.>> I think we can all relate to that alittle bit.>> Yeah, and then and then it's interestingbecause in addiction circles, like therecovered addicts will say like, "Okay,you still haven't suffered enough. Youhaven't hit bottom yet. Right? Likebottom when you hit bottom, it iseverything is destroyed. Like you havenothing left of yourself, of your life,of anything. And then that's when youcan start rebuilding from a new. Andthen the third way to achieve quantumchange is is through this mysticalexperience. And this could be a suddenspontaneous religious experience.It could also be induced through thingslike psychedelics and meditation. But Ithink what's interesting when you lookat uh what is happening when somebodyhas a very spiritual experience or whensomebody's on a like lot ofpsychedelics,what is happening is that there is egodissolution, right? It's like all ofyour narratives and understandings ofwho you are and what's important kind ofunravel

00:27:39and loosen up quite a bit. Andso that creates an opening where you cankind of rebuild in in its place. I thinkthis is why psychedelic therapy is likereally becoming hot right now because itdoes seem to be a way that you couldpotentially shortcut this a little bitand help people reach this place of likeletting go oftheir stories and their beliefs andtheir values relatively quickly and thenand then helping guide them buildsomething up in its place. So yeah,those seem to be the three ways toinduce quantum change.>> Although still not reliably. I'm I wouldsay.>> Yes.>> I Ithat you will have a higher chanceuh in one of those situations, but it'snot guaranteed.>> Yes. It's very unpredictable.>> Yes.>> Yeah.>> Two of them require an intense amount ofpain, and then the third requires eithersome sort of psychoactive chemical orlike the [ __ ] hand of God moving you.So this is not exactly a repeatableprocess right? That we can likeprescribe to people.>> Well, as you said, yeah, this hashappened once in your life, and for alot of people it doesn't happen at all.And yeah. Yeah.>> Have you ever experienced anything likethis?>> I I don't I've ever experienced likethat real sudden type. I think there arekind of I don't know what you want tocall them, minor uh quantum changes

00:28:54thatmaybe that's an oxymoron, I don't know.My my mom had a health scare last yearum and it wasI it was intense. It was pretty intensefor the whole family. I went and Ihelped as much as I could and um Ialways said I valued family and there Iwas, I was valuing family and andhelping out.I did notice though eveneven at this age, I still had somelingering resentments around my parents,just you know, like people do.>> Who doesn't?>> Who doesn't, right? Yeah, like youwhatever you did this or didn't do thator all of that and I was still kind ofholding on to that. She spent a week inthe hospital. After that week, that wasjust gone. Like all of that was justgone. There's no resentment for whatanything they'd ever done, no matter howterrible I thought it was or traumaticsomebody else might have thought it was.I just let go of all that and that likeit that did reshuffle narratives. Itreshuffled beliefs. It reshuffled a lotof my behaviors and habits around them.Likethat's one of the closer things I thinkI've ever had, yeah, to that. So it'skind of like a more minor one, which Ithink that's that can be more common forpeople. It's usually with relationships,too.>> It's interesting because if you thinkabout what is the evolutionary role ofpain and suffering, it is to get you tochange your behavior.>> Right.>> Right.>> Right.>> And everything

00:30:09we've talked about upinto this chapter has been like thepleasant way to change, right? Here'show to make uh a gym habit more fun,right? Like here's how to improve yourrelationships on autopilot, right? Butit takes months and you have to do itfor years. Pleasant experiences don'tchange you nearly at the same rate orintensity that painful experiences do.And that is by design, right? It's likepleasure is nature telling you, it'syour biology telling you, don't change.You're doing good. Like,stay right here, right?>> [laughter]>> Pain is your biology telling you youneed to change, [ __ ] cuz thisis not working. So, it makes sense thatrapid, highly intense change requireshighly intense amounts of pain toachieve it. So, all of these cases ofrapid transformational change, they lookdifferent on the surface. You know,mystical experiences, traumatic loss,hitting rock bottom. But, underneaththem all, there is one sequence thatruns through them all. So, the first oneis your initial adaptation structureneeds to fail in some way. It has tostop working. And the consequence of itnot working is that you experience a lotof pain and suffering, right? So, you'refailing to achieve your goals.

00:31:25A lot ofthe things you believe to be true areactually not true. A lot of yourrelationships that you thought were goodare actually not good. That is what youradaptation structure failing is.It's like [ __ ] suffering. Step two isthat there has to be a consequentialcrisis of meaning. You watch youradaptation structure fail, and thenthere's this questioning of like,how how could I have been so wrong?Like,do I know anything?>> Is everything I've done meaningless?>> Right. There's a lot of that. That goeson, too, right? Exactly. I would saythis was like what I felt intenselyafter my friend died isI really just sat around for like thenext monthobsessively thinking about like, whathave I been doing for years? Like, I'vebeen wasting my entire life for years.Step three is that there is a forcedreconstruction. They often call this uhthe crisis of step two an existentialvacuum. It's basically there's a a voidof meaning of like where yourunderstanding of yourself and the worldis. And vacuums,they always get filled, right? So, atsome point you start to reconstructmeaning in your life. You start decidingon new values, a new identity, newthings that you want to be in the world.Even though you're deciding these

00:32:40things, this is still not really aeuphoric thing. It's still there's a lotof uncertainty, right? It's like, "Okay,the old me was doing everything wrong.The new me, I have some ideas about howI want to be in the world, but I'venever lived this way before. I've neverbeen this person before, so I don'ttotally know if I'm doing it right. Idon't know if this is actually the way Ishould be." I really experienced thisafter I stopped drinking. There wasdefinitely this extended period of like,"I don't know what I like anymore. Idon't know what type of people I likegoing out with anymore. I don't knowwhat my hobbies are anymore."Right? And so then I was like kind ofjust being like, "Well, I guess I'll bea surfer and see what happens.">> Right.>> [laughter]>> Yeah.>> And then there's this period whereyou're like going out surfing and you'relike, "Do I like this? I don't know if Ilike this. Is this Is this me? Like, amI this person?"And so there's this like just this kindof awkwardteenage phase that happens, I think, asyou kind of reconstruct your identity.And then finally, step four is thereorganization kind of coalesce

00:33:46simultaneously, right? So it's at somepoint everything kind of starts slottingtogether of like new belief systems, newvalue systems, new relationships,new behaviors. These adaptations existin a network, in a web. You can't onlyget new relationships without alsogetting new behaviors and new beliefsand new values, right? Like, all of themhave to change simultaneously.>> Right. And if it is a value that hascollapsed,at that point, if once you find thevalue, like everything is built off ofthat and it's it's fairly clear, right?When you have a a strong value,the behaviors change instantly, thenarratives, the beliefs, everythingchanges right around that.>> It becomes a forcing function. Let's sayyou go through some sort ofuh existential crisis or something or ortraumatic experience and you come out ofit and you decide my family is the mostimportant thing in the world.That prioritization of family, like thatbecomes the lens by which you make allyour decisions, by which you create allyour behaviors, by which yougenerate all your new beliefs.Everything optimizes for that.>> You just told me the steps.>> Yes.>> Right? Why can't we do this on purpose?Why can't we make this happen onpurpose? If we If we

00:35:01know the steps, wecan describe it. We I like I said, we'vejust run through all these frameworks. Ican tell you how it works and everybodydoes goes through these phases, do thesesteps. Why can't we do this on purpose?>> You know, I don't know if we can't,but I it if we can, I think it it we canonly really do it on like a very minorscale. These massive sudden changes,like they I think part of what makesthem so powerful is that they theycannot happen on purpose. Like you said,they have to happen to us because thepart of you that needs to change themost is the part of you that is the mostdetermined to stay the same.>> You can't voluntarily collapse youridentity, right? That's kind of whatyou're saying. Because your identity,its whole job is to have this likecohesive story about who you are. It'sliterally there to say, "No, this is whoI am and I'm not going anywhere." And soif you're deliberately trying to say,"Hey, get out of there," like it's goingto rebel right away, right?>> It's also the thing that's trying to getit out of Like, right? It's a you Yeah,yeah, right.>> Who is trying to get rid of youridentity? Your [ __ ] identity.>> Yeah, he's right. It's the [laughter]dog chasing the tail, right? Like, yeah.Yeah. It's almost like a survivalmechanism, you know, that it's justthat's just not going to happen. You'renot going to destroy your own identityjust by thinking about it or just bytrying really hard to do it. It's justnot going to happen. I think another

00:36:16oneisthe, you know, your valuesclarification. If you're aiming at I'mtrying to change this value, that's alsoa story that you tell yourself and it'slooking for coherence, not truth. And sothe the narratives um all around that,those are there to protect you as well.They're there to um just give your lifea coherent story, no matter what if it'sserving you or not. And so dislodgingthat again, it's it's like a survivalmechanism. We need to make sense of theworld. And sojust trying to pull a random value outof the the mix of all the values and andhabits and beliefs that you have andnarratives and all that, that's veryvery destabilizing. And so again, youjust have the self-protective functionthat's just not going to allow you to dothat.>> Yeah, I feel like the value change pieceof thisI feel like you can't really change morethan one value at a time voluntarily.Right? And then like what we're talkingabout is just like a complete uttercollapse of your entire value system,you know? It's like the entire valuehierarchy just just gets inverted orsomething overnight. That's not going tohappen willingly.>> Right. The closest approaches that we dohave, uh William Miller, um the same guywho who coined the term quantum change,also came

00:37:31up with He was the co-inventorof what they call motivationalinterviewing, which is like a lessintense kind of like deliberate tryingto show people, "Okay, you say you valuethis, but here you're you're behavingthis way. And now let's get in and dothe work in between." It's slow though,it's not You're probably not going toget quantum change out of thatnecessarily. Meditation or anothercontemplative practices can kind of getyou there as well. Very intense, verylong. Um probably years, if not decadesworth of that. So again, not reallyquantum change, but you know, you'reaiming at that. I think psychedelicsmight be the closest thing we have, butagain, it's not guaranteed. It can do alot of things that don't equate toquantum change.>> Yeah. Right. And you probably alsoneed to be in in the presence of like avery skilled>> Yes.>> Yeah.>> therapist yeah, who's used to workingwith people on psychedelics.>> Yeah, you do a lot of prep work. You youdo the experience and you do a lot ofintegration work after. Yeah.>> I've experienced ego dissolution onpsychedelics. Like, I've lost completesense of myself and became one with theuniverse and all this stuff. And I cameout of it thinking that I was like a newperson. I was the same [ __ ] idiot.Like, it I just had new things to laughat. That was pretty much all thathappened.>> Right. Yeah, I think there's a real riskthere of thinking, "I've went throughthis experience, and I've uh look at howmuch I've changed." And you haven't. Ithink that's the risk with psychedelics.So, I would caution>> Can we just

00:38:46like pause for a second? Cuzthat happens all the time. And I think Ithink not just with psychedelics, too. Ithink you see Big change in general,yeah. Yeah, you see it happen. Peopleread a book, and they're like, "Oh mygod, this book changed my life." Andthey're doing the same [ __ ] Like, it'sendemic, particularly in the personalgrowth space. I see it all the time withwith people People become kind ofaddicted to telling themselves theychanged without actually living thechange or implementing the change. Orthere's also a little bit of a dopaminehit of changing something small in yourlife, right? Like, having like a newsmoothie in the morning with a newsupplement, and then like convincingyourself that that has completelyaltered your energy levels for the lastmonth straight, and you're a new personbecause of it. It's narratives like thatthat we want to believe, and because wewant to believe them, we're more likelyto believe them. It's notreal.>> [laughter]>> I The thing around psychedelics, likeyou said, the highly structured, highlyintensive work that you do around It'snot the experience itself necessarily.That's the opening up experience, likeyou talked about the dissolution, theego dissolution, or the the identitydissolution.That's what that's there for. It's allthe work you do before, around, andafter it. Um they've showed this to, youknow, with the terminal cancer

00:40:01patients,Roland Griffiths, um famous researcher,uh who did this work, found that, youknow, if you put them through thispretty rigorous therapeuticprotocol involving psychedelics, okay,that you could really get them to It wasaround end-of-life anxiety. You couldreally get them to um accept it moreand have these big changes and they wereprobably a quantum change at some point.Also in those settings to they interviewpeople or the people around them. Sobefore during and after two to see andthey're like yes this person definitelydid change really did change. But it's aagain it's a highly structured highlyintensive very expensiveprocess and quite painful again too likeI said.>> Yeah it can be scary and I would arguetoo that like you probably need tobe in a certain amount of painfor it to be susceptible to the benefitsof it. One of the things that I run intoall the time out of here is like peopleare doing psychedelic therapy as like a[ __ ] hobby. It's like going to thedoctor and not being injured like>> [laughter]>> Yeah.>> and then being like this doctor changedmy life and it's like dude you weren'tinjured.>> [laughter]>> Do you know Well you want to know whatthe one of the best predictors ofactually coming out with like a powerfulmystical experience through psychedelicsis?>> No.>> Having low expectations.>> So the people who taking

00:41:17it think I'mgoing to get like I'm going for somewisdom or something like that.>> This life change it's going to changeyour life bro.>> what what you said you know you had tohave some amount of pain these peoplethey're they're on their deathbedsfacing cancer. They're like or whatevergive me sure why I have zeroexpectations this this is going to workand for whatever reason that's like oneof the most best the best predictorsthat it actually will work.>> Just from my anecdotal point of viewlike most of the people I've met whohave done it like I can't really seeanything that has changed or anythingthat's different. But I do have onefriend that it it like seems to haveactually made a massive difference in ashort period of time.But again the thing about him is that hewas literally on his last resort like hewas dealing with some issues thathad been going on for years that he hadgone everywhere right he had gone totherapy he had gotten marriagecounseling he had gotten psychiatricmedicine he had tried all he triedeverything and he was just like on hislast leg and he was like[ __ ] it. Let me try this. And then thatwas the thing that broke through forhim, right? So, it's almost like he wasprobably pretty close to bottom to beginwith.Um so, maybe it might even be that thethe psychedelics just accelerate theprocess that's if it's already inmotion, which is probably true of like

00:42:32the self-help seminars thing, right?Like I I think there probably are peoplethat do seemingly have quantum changesat self-help seminars, but they areprobably people who are near or alreadyat bottom when they attend. And they'rejust like[ __ ] it, what do I have to lose?>> That's actually what they found, too, inthe in the little research that they'vedone. Like Miller has found that it'sactually not as sudden as you wouldthink. There's actually this whole bigperiod that builds up to it and justgets to a breaking point at some point.And for whatever reason all the factorscome together and produce it. So, that'sthat's actually very important. So,there's usually a building up periodthat comes with it.>> That's the how to change your life inone day, kids.>> [laughter]>> You also you recently did a YouTubevideo on this. I encourage people to gocheck this out, too, but yeah.>> Yeah, so in that YouTube video I reallydo take a stab at like, okay, if you canintentionally force this in your life,like here's probably how you would doit. I have this whole idea runninganti-vision and this like exercise andprocess you go through. It's ultimatelyto get that really profound lightningbolt moment, you probably don't want togo through what it takes to get it. Andand if you do go through what it takesto get it, you deserve to have it.>> Essentially.

00:43:47[laughter]>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh so, probably not theconclusion people were hoping for, buthere at the Salt podcast we're not inthe business of telling you what youwant to hear. So, up until now we'vewe've covered all of the mechanisms andprocesses of changing yourself, how tochange your life. There's one moreaspect to this topic we we have nottalked about yet and it isarguably the most important aspect ofchange and how to change your life. Andthat is the cost and the maintenance ofchange. What are you going to have togive up to change and how much effort isit going to take to sustain the change?I think a lot of people unreasonablywant to change and not give anything upand that's why they don't change. So, inthe next chapter we're going to talkabout what is the price of change andhow do you know if you're willing to payit?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

00:45:02pace, we have a free PDF guide andworkbook with all of the resources,citations, and exercises atsolvepodcast.com/change.So, I will see you soon.