Mark Manson

Right.

And everything we've talked about up into this chapter has been like the pleasant way to change.

Right.

Here's how to make a gym habit more fun.

Right.

Like here's how to improve your relationships on autopilot.

Right.

But it takes months and you have to do it for years.

Pleasant experiences don't.

change you nearly at the same rate or intensity that painful experiences do and that is by design right it's like pleasure is nature telling you it's your biology telling you don't change you're doing good like

Stay right here, right?

Pain is your biology telling you you need to change, motherfucker, because this is not working.

So it makes sense that rapid, highly intense change requires highly intense amounts of pain.

to achieve it.

So all of these cases of rapid transformational change, they look different on the surface, you know, mystical experiences, traumatic loss, hitting rock bottom, but underneath them all, there is one sequence that runs through them all.

So the first one is your initial adaptation structure needs to fail in some way.

It has to stop working.

the consequence of it not working is that you experience a lot of pain and suffering right so you're failing to achieve your goals a lot of the things you believe to be true are actually not true a lot of your relationships that you thought were good are actually not good that is what your adaptation structure failing is it's like suffering step two is that there has to be a consequential crisis of meaning you watch your adaptation structure fail and then there's this questioning of like

how could I have been so wrong?

Like, do I know anything?