Mark Manson

And so I need to be aware, right?

It's like my natural set point is to be quite introverted.

And so my awareness of that allows me to build adaptations in different patterns of behavior around that natural set point.

And that's layer two, which is the adaptation layer.

A lot of what we consider who we are, a lot of our self-definition, our identity, our understanding of ourselves and the world, a lot of our patterns and habits and routines, like these are all adaptations to moderate

our natural personality, and then the environment around us, right?

So simple example is that I was a very introverted kid when I went to university.

I realized that left to my own devices, I'm just gonna sit in my dorm and play video games all day, every day.

I'm never gonna make friends.

I'm never gonna have a girlfriend.

So I had to develop an adaptation, which is an identity of a party guy, a guy who is very social, who went out a lot, who knew a bunch of different people.

And that adaptation allowed me to adapt to my environment to to get my needs met and to become a happier and more well-rounded individual.

So that's layer two.

The third layer is is our actual behavior.

Right.

It's the old maxim.

You are what you do repeatedly.

And the simplest way to change who you are in some ways is to simply change a behavior, to go from somebody who never exercises to somebody who exercises, to go from somebody who never speaks up for themselves to somebody who speaks up for themselves.

And all three of these layers are very deeply interlinked.

They flow in both directions.