Mark Manson

Yeah.

Fascinating.

So just to review where we are up till now,

What we understand is you, us, operates in three layers.

There's the trait level layer, right?

Which is both psychological and biological traits.

There's our adaptations, which is the habits, emotional patterns, narratives, identity that we develop to like adapt to our environment that we're in.

And then there's our actual behaviors, the things that we do regularly in the ways that we're known by other people.

So you can't really change your traits or your traits will change gradually, slowly over the course of your life.

But if you're over the age of, say, 25 or 30, the ROI on trying to change a trait is not not high at all.

It's probably it's better to simply try to identify and accept.

Yeah.

Adaptations are what we generally understand is ourselves and change.

Like if you want to change your life or change who you are, generally what you're saying is you want to change at the adaptation layer.

So you want to change those patterns or habits or belief systems that you've adopted at some point in your life to adapt to your environment.

That adaptation is no longer functioning well.

And so you need a new adaptation to take its place.

The way you create that new adaptation is by adopting new behaviors, because those new behaviors build evidence of a new identity, and slowly the narrative of that new identity begins to replace the narrative of the old one.

Now, most people approach these new behaviors through willpower and motivation, but willpower and motivation tend to be short-term.

What is much more effective is to...