Mark Manson

And it's really like the flat earth belief, very much an adaptation to allow them to get some of their basic needs met.

Like they are probably very neurodivergent.

They're probably some like extreme personality traits going on.

A lot of them probably have a lot of a lot of embedded trauma and like they are just not super functional and in the day to day world.

But something about this belief system and coming together online around it like allows them to feel accepted and admired and appreciated and.

special and some degree of status or whatever but it is the documentary is extremely well done because it's just the way he shows their stories and and how they describe themselves like it is so clear that they they're they're just lonely and they just want to feel like they're doing something that matters and that's a hell of an adaptation yeah yeah so there's a version of working on yourself that is perfectly designed to feel like progress and

but it produces no progress.

And this is why you're still stuck.

It's not because you don't understand yourself,

It's because understanding yourself and changing yourself are two completely different skills.

Interestingly, there's some research around how change actually takes place.

This is very common in the clinical psychology world.

So Prokaska and Di Clemente have a model.

It's the five-stage model of change.

So there's pre-contemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance, and relapse.

And pre-contemplation is basically the moment

before there's conscious awareness of an issue right it's just you're like something's off something's off but you don't know what and you keep doing a thing and you don't know why and it's you're not sure what the problem is contemplation is you think you've identified the problem i think i know what why you know why do i keep doing this this is what i need to change action is when you try to change it maintenance is

Making sure that that action is sustainable over a long period of time, because as we're going to discover is that change itself is hard.

Maintaining change is exceptionally hard.

Most people are able to change their behaviors quite often.