Skills Our Ancestors Developed to Stay Alive, Are Now Ruining Our Lives
I woke up this morning at 5:45 am, ready to head out on a 6:00 am bike ride I committed to last night. When I mentioned the ride to my dad, he informed me of the impending thunderstorm and rain predicted for this morning, but I decided that I had already committed and I was going to follow through.
When I woke up, my brain started firing off logical arguments for why I shouldn’t go, “It is a thunderstorm after all, you’re still tired just sleep a little longer, you can always go tomorrow morning when it won’t be raining”. This internal debate is what kept us alive hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were living in caves and hunting mammoths. The reason my brain tries to talk me out of doing something like a bike ride is because it wastes valuable energy for no short term gain. Before our modern society, wasting energy could mean the difference between life and death. Active energy was spent in search of food or reproduction. Today our brains are still wired the same way, but in our developed countries, we no longer need to hunt our food or run from predators.
Evolution has pushed humanity to seek comfort. When we were comfortable it meant we were in no immediate danger. This is why it is so compelling to sit on the couch and eat potato chips (or other high calorie foods). Evolution has also naturally selected against optimistic risk takers. Imagine a person who sees a flooded river and says, “Yea I think we can cross it” or goes out hunting a sabretooth tiger by themselves. Natural selection would favor the person that goes, “Maybe we should find a different place to ford the river” or gathers a group of friends before going out to hunt. The first person has a much lower chance of survival than the second, but this has lead to an innate primal fear to be developed in the current human population. Imagine all of the problems these once necessary survival skills can have on our lives today: a lack of exercise, high levels of anxiety, increased rates of obesity, etc.
We need to override our natural tendencies and push back on our subconscious mind. One way of doing this is by bringing the decisions we make out of the subconscious and into the conscious mind. Author James Clear recommends the “Point-and-calling” method, traditionally used to avoid mistakes in occupational safety by pointing at important indicators and verbally calling out their status. Point-and-Calling raises the level of awareness of a subconscious action to a conscious level. I do this when I leave the house for work every morning, I say aloud while feeling my pockets, “Phone, wallet, keys” to make sure I am not forgetting any of the essentials. By creating a list of our natural tendencies, like sitting on the couch instead of going to the gym or hitting snooze on our alarm, we bring awareness to our actions. Being aware of what we are doing will increase the likelihood that we follow through with our intended plans.
A study1 cited by Clear in his book, Atomic Habits2, showed that creating a plan for exercising greatly increased the likelihood that the participants went to the gym. Researchers in England had three groups track how often they exercised over the course of two weeks. Group one was the control and lived how they normally would, group two and three received a motivational presentation on the health benefits of exercise, but group three formulated a plan for their activity; “I will work out on [Day] at [TIME] in [PLACE]”. There was no statistical difference between the first and second group with 35 and 38 percent of people exercising once per week, showing motivation has little effect on our outcomes. Group three, however, had 91 percent of participants exercise at least once per week. An increase of nearly three times! When we move action from our subconscious to our conscious mind, we have a higher rate of following through.
Why Is It Important to Seek Discomfort?
Let’s rephrase the question, why is it so bad to seek comfort? Well, it’s not, at least in moderation. If all you ever did in life was seek comfort, you’d never leave the couch. Eventually you’d be hooked up to machines that do the breathing for you, using a bedpan, and eating through a tube inserted into your stomach. Doesn’t sound too fun right?
Everyone needs some level of comfort, and that will be different for each person, but more than likely all of us need a little bit more discomfort in our lives. It is important to challenge ourselves and do difficult tasks voluntarily, so when involuntary challenges arise (and they will), we can face them with confidence.
I do a lot of hiking. Four years ago, I started to do more hiking and backpacking on my own. I would stick with trails I was fairly sure I would be able to complete, out of concern for safety (which is really just fear) and fear of failure (natural pessimistic mentality that told us not to cross that flooded river). So I stayed around the ten mile a day length, which was what I was used to hiking with other people. Then one day I got a crazy idea, what if I tried to do a 21 mile traverse, with over 8000 feet of elevation gain. The length, and elevation, were more than double what I had ever done before. I planned it out with plenty of bail points, saying it was incase of bad weather, but really it was because I didn’t think I’d be able to make it the whole way. That day turned out to be one of the best days of my life. I made it the whole 21 miles, faster than I thought I could, and shattered my self imposed limits. I wasn’t in any better shape and it didn’t take me much longer than doing ten miles with friends or family. Now, having done over 44 miles of hiking in a day, I look at ten mile hikes like a walk in the park. My perception has completely shifted.
When you are doing the hardest thing you’ve ever done, it seems insurmountable, but once you do it, everything less than it seems easy. I used to think hiking ten miles was my limit, now I think ten miles is a nice stroll.
Takeaways
- We are programed to seek comfort, be wary of too much comfort.
- Writing things down brings it to the forefront of your mind.
- When you are conscious of things, you make better choices and are more likely to follow through with them.
- Commit to a time and place for beneficial activities, you are three times more likely to do it.
- Achieving hard goals makes everything else seem easier.
- Most of your limits are self imposed. (No, you won’t be able to grow wings and fly, but you probably can run twice as far as your longest run.)
I have started to implement these strategies in my own life. For example, I watch to much YouTube, so I have a sticky note on my door that says, “YouTube” on it, reminding me to not fall victim to the impulse. This is not to say I have deprived myself of YouTube all together, but now I am conscious of how much time I spend on it. Additionally, at the beginning of my week I write on my to do list, “I will workout on [DAY] at [TIME]”. The minimum is three days a week and could be anything from riding my bike, to playing volleyball with friends, to lifting weights. For anyone interested, I will post a follow up in a month to see how things have been going.
Citations:
- Milne S, Orbell S, Sheeran P. Combining motivational and volitional interventions to promote exercise participation: protection motivation theory and implementation intentions. Br J Health Psychol. 2002 May;7(Pt 2):163-84. doi: 10.1348/135910702169420. PMID: 14596707.
- Clear, James. (2018). Atomic Habits: an easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones (PDF ed.). New York: Avery.
