Mark Manson

Our ability to sit here and talk about our adaptations is just another adaptation, right?

It's just that another set of belief systems that we've developed for ourselves to make our other beliefs a little bit more functional.

Oh yeah.

But there's a limit to it, right?

Insight can only take you so far.

It can't actually make you behave differently.

It can't make you feel differently in and of itself.

So why are adaptations so difficult to change?

Well, the first reason is that they run on autopilot.

So they're automatic.

Like you can't, you don't sit around, you know, and ask yourself, what adaptation should I use in this situation?

Like your body just has already developed that if then pattern and habit.

muscle memory, but within your mind.

The same way you develop muscle memory for like riding a bike or brushing your teeth, like you develop muscle memory around relationships, around conflict, around goals and ambitions, around everything.

I think the other reason adaptations are so hard to change is that there's a little bit of...

an illusion that comes with gaining information so for example like let's say somebody's listening to this right now and like something we've said is like triggered an insight in their mind that dopamine hit of like oh my god i now i understand something i didn't understand before that feels like change

Without changing.

And this is, I mean, this is just the self-help trap in general is like people get addicted to insight because it constantly feels like they're doing work, even though they're not really doing work.

They're not, there's no implementation happening.

And if there's no implementation happening, then nothing is actually permanently shifting or being changed.