This is all very interesting. It's the first time I've got to the end of a "how to improve your job prospects" pitch.
I love the quotation about Philip Glass.
I have studied music all my life, along with a dozen other disciplines, I know the buzz of playing before an audience, and I learnt as a teenager but, like writers and dancers and artists, only a tiny proportion made a living doing the thing they love.
Having said this, when my mother married my father, she was a professional artist, earning more than he did by far, but it wasn't done for a woman to be the breadwinner.
My father was an artisan, and because I was a poor scholar, I was encouraged to follow him.
However, through talent, luck, and being in the right place at the right time, I landed the job of my dreams.
By the time I was 30, I had formed my own company and was living the dream.
But the dream turned sour, and so I became a writer – I published successful books, but still did the odd job, repairing washing machines, drawing architectural plans for builders, and developing properties, because books didn't pay all of the bills.
I'm over 80 now, I still have my business, and I still have my dream of publishing the rest of my short stories and my incredible adventures.....
Wait, why do you assume Philip Glass was so obviously wrong? Do you know how much money he made as an artist in any given year, and how long it could be expected to continue? The amount of money even very famous artists make is often surprisingly little, and there's a running joke they'd make more literally doing plumbing. He may have beaten the odds, but it seems to me 20/20 hindsight if one says he should have known that sooner. It might not been some "unconscious story", but a very conscious awareness of what pays reliably. Tastes change, fame is fickle, it can all vanish in an instant. But plumbing always needs to be done.
That is, this piece seems to assume "the system" isn't actually reflecting the situation. But it's not clear to me if that's correct or cherry-picked. For example, what about all the people do stop the day job, and then suffer an immediate setback, and are never heard from?
There’s certainly both factors at play with Glass - being an artist IS genuinely precarious financially.
I chose Glass as an example because I find that scene both funny and poignant, and because his story also illustrates something deeper than practical necessity.
Glass worked an extraordinary range of jobs - plumbing, taxi driving, moving furniture - well into his forties, long after his career had taken off.
In his memoir, he reflects on how his upbringing in a Jewish immigrant family in Baltimore shaped this pattern. His father ran a record shop, his mother worked in the library, and they lived with real financial scarcity. He writes:
‘IN A CLEAR WAY, WE ARE BOUND TO OUR CULTURE. We understand the world because of the way we were taught to see.’
That kind of childhood instills something deeper than rational financial planning - it can create a bone-deep fear about survival that persists long after the external circumstances have changed. I see this constantly with clients who grew up with financial instability. They become so anxious about money that they fill every available hour with backup income streams, often to the detriment of pursuing what they actually want to do.
This is also why midlife pivots can be so challenging. It’s not just the practical realities of changing direction - it’s that any significant change hits up against our deeply embedded beliefs about how money works, what constitutes ‘real’ work, and how hostile or friendly the world actually is. My own example would be my parents’ fear and loathing of work, which I inherited, and made it hard for me to even consider that work could be something I enjoyed and found meaningful until I was into my forties.
Well, yes. But it seems a bit of problem to presume, for someone who worries about money, that their worries are not rational, or at least within personal reasonableness. I think of this now myself, as I contemplate whether to retire or not. There's a good chance I'll die with a pile of savings, and people may say I worked for too long. On the other hand, the inverse of that is being very old and unable to work, but with no savings. If I'd rather have the former than the latter, which is indeed shaped by my view of how hostile or friendly the world actually is, it's not clear that's an incorrect view of the world. Sure, there's extremes, but I don't think Philip Glass would be one in terms of absolutely knowing rapidly he'd have enough of a lucrative artistic career never to need a day job. That is, if you grow up poor, you know how bad it is to be poor, so you value not ever being poor very very highly. Maybe much more than someone who has grown up differently. But again, since knowing the financial future is so unclear, even if personal trade-offs are shaped by a person's background, they can still be objectively reasonable in terms of one's feelings about life's risks.
You’re absolutely right, Seth - that kind of anxiety about money is completely rational given certain life experiences. Financial insecurity is very real, and I’m not dismissing that at all.
What I find fascinating is how much our relationship with money, work and security varies from person to person, often in ways that don’t correlate directly with actual wealth. Some people with substantial savings still feel anxious about spending, while others with less feel more comfortable taking risks. A lot of that seems to come down to the beliefs and scripts we inherited - not just about money, but about how safe or hostile the world is, how alone or supported we are, when it’s ‘safe’ to relax, and so on.
I think we’re all carrying multiple, sometimes conflicting beliefs about these things. The traditional script of ‘work until 65 then retire’ isn’t realistic for many of us anymore. My goal now is making sure the work I do in later life is something I genuinely love and find meaningful - maybe less of it, but work that gives life purpose rather than just pays bills.
It’s not about which beliefs are right or wrong, rational or irrational - they’re all there for reasons. But sometimes they can get tangled up in ways that make it harder to make decisions that actually feel good to us, whether that’s about when to stop working or what kind of work to pursue in the first place.
Are we sure he was trapped? Perhaps he loves the hands on practical service to every day life as much as he loves unquantifiable beauty. ‘Do I contradict myself, of course I do, I am large, I contain multitudes’.
I do think what you’ve written about is very real and very important, I myself struggle to shake the old ideas of who I am but I wonder if that’s the case with Glass
He did talk in various interviews about how relieved he was to finally give up his ‘day job’ aged 42, so I’m surmising he didn’t love it *that* much. He has also spoken frequently about how scary driving a cab in NYC was…
Beautiful post. I love your stories and your takeaway and pitch. I think there is so much value to the model you propose.
The effectiveness of the self help you see on social media is entirely based on where each person is in their journey and how skilled they are at turning knowledge into action.
I love how you clarify that if the content isn’t helpful, it’s likely because it doesn’t address what you need. So fundamental and so needed.
Been reflecting a lot on change lately, while simultaneously being in it. It’s pretty much what you said: working with the body first, and then practicing radical awareness to actually notice the old ways of thinking and taking the time to update them.
My feeling is that real change is gradual and happens in increments. Our nervous system needs proof, and a lot of it, that the new ways are safe.
I still haven’t explored psychedelics for the purpose of personal development, and I imagine that the shifts we experience with them would still need a fair amount of time to integrate, right? Or can there also be a shift at a cellular level that acts almost like a rewiring?
Depends on how you’re working with them. For a macro journey there is usually an immediate shift in the days and weeks following - improved mood, energy, increased ability to introduce positive changes into life.
Microdosing however is much more subtle and useful for targeting specific patterns you want to work with.
So there are quite immediate effects - as well as the longer term ones. It’s quite common for people to suddenly make sense of something in a high dose journey months or even years after!
When it comes to creating deep, lasting and sustainable change, I always tell people: safety first. We need to feel safe for the seeds to root and sprout. But many opt for the wrong type of safety - safety that keeps them small and stuck instead of one that helps them grow.
It's about creating a safe container - I like to call it a mental chrysalis like the one holding a "dissolved" potential for a butterfly - where we can let go of our protective mechanism to even start practicing/rewiring. Change has to literally grow through us, in a very physiological sense. And that does not happen through thinking, as all real change is experiential. One of the reasons why psychedelics are so effective - they work on many different layers at the same time - but while this can initiate change, more work needs to follow up.
People are biology, not technology; we can't just download and install a new software.
I enjoyed this post and agree with your argument! But I came here to say that classifying this as a "critique of Atomic Habits" is off base. Sure, we have all heard by now that tech bro hustle culture is not the messiah it claims to be. And certainly, adding random habits to your routine isn't particularly productive. But two tenets of Atomic Habits are (1) that systems, not goals, are the key to change and (2) that habits are most powerful when they are identity-based (eg, defining a new identity before initiating a habit). Those seem to align pretty well with your ideas of bringing awareness to systems and rewriting narratives.
I realize you are suggesting that we go deeper ("I am the type of person who flosses their teeth" is very different from "I am the type of person who rejects toxic work environments"). But I wanted to call it out because ragging on James Clear seems somewhat trendy at the moment and I think your piece would be stronger without that particular reference.
This is absolutely true, I don’t go into great detail about atomic habits apart from saying Glass had issues that the book wouldn’t necessarily solve. I’ll have a look at adjusting the title, fair point.
Would you like a critique of AH, though? It’s an OK book as these books go, but everything is on a conscious level, which is rarely where the identity change happens.
You say Clear talks about identity, but this is at a cognitive level (I’m the kind of person who… - habits define the wo/man, and vice versa) but this doesn’t go anywhere near touching our unconscious life script, often formed when we were tiny and have no recollection of.
Habits don’t tend to shift script, no matter how productive/beneficial.
Lmk if you’d like me to go into more detail in a future article!
Thanks for the response. I think that’s a valid angle that can be helpful for people who seek a deeper level of change. If you were to critique AH more directly, I would be curious to hear your perspective on Clear’s argument that consistency with even small habits, over time, builds a self confidence that eventually shapes someone’s character and identity in a positive way. It would be interesting to contrast his “bottom up” approach with the approach you’re describing, which strikes me as more “top down.” Either way, I agree accessing our deeply set narratives is important work and that we currently don’t have good tools to do that.
Hmmm, maybe a little bit harsh…? I refer to: habit stacking, 1% better everyday, consistency, routine, mindset and system/framework approaches to change. Which is pretty much what Clear espouses, no?
The whole point of the article is that these conscious, cognitive, behavioural approaches don’t go deep enough, because very often what’s holding us back is outside of consciousness and lives in our body and nervous system.
Andy, let’s look at what’s actually happening here.
You’re telling me my approach has ‘more in common with Clear than (I) might realize’ - as if I don’t understand my own work, and can’t read or understand his properly.
Then ‘I just think you’d be more effective…’ - positioning yourself as qualified to advise me on my profession and my writing.
And suggesting I think about my approach ‘as a reframing of the kinds of things he talks about’ - literally explaining my own methodology (somatics, script, psychedelics) back to me in a way that clearly shows you haven’t taken it in.
Not to mention a suggestion I’d be better off reframing my own approach as a homage to Clear, rather than writing about why I don’t think cognitive behavioural approaches go deep enough.
What script belief gives you the authority to assume you know my work better than I do, I wonder?
What’s the life position that says you’re qualified to tell someone how to be more effective at what they do for a living?
This is textbook Critical Parent to Adapted Child - you get to be the wise advisor, I get to be corrected and improved. It’s ‘I’m OK, You’re Not OK.’
The irony is that you’re demonstrating exactly the kind of unconscious pattern-running I’m writing about.
What might Clear advise in terms of new habit formations for you, I wonder? “I’m the kind of man that tells women…”?
OMG. I needed to read this. I've been talking about going freelance for about three years but I'm not doing anything about it. As soon as I start feeling motivated to pitch the feeling fades and I detour to another creative project that ends up staying in my Google Drive.
I'm feeling abundantly creative at the moment but it's coming with a whole load of fear and not knowing how to channel my energy. There's definitely a shift coming and I'm anxious because I don't have a map.
Great post! I love the question “what’s your theory of change?” I’ll definitely be using that.
I literally just wrote a post that describes my journey finding a theory of change that actually works and it lines up really well with what you’ve described here.
The mechanism that I think updates beliefs is called memory reconsolidation. It has three steps: reactivation occurs when you're exposed to cues that bring the original learning (belief) into memory. If that learning no longer correctly predicts outcomes, it triggers a prediction error. Then juxtaposition occurs when the original belief and the prediction error are held simultaneously in conscious awareness. When you follow these three steps, your belief gets updated.
I have a feeling that all the system-level work you outline is probably different ways of triggering this underlying mechanism. I'll definitely be looking into those. Thanks for the post :)
I’ve so enjoyed reading this. Is courage my theory of change? It might be.
I think some of my work and thinking intersects beautifully with yours. Especially where you think about systems, and power, culture and narratives.
Neuroscience and decision making theory, risk and how we respond to uncertainty I think also shapes how we experience the world we live in? What feels like pleasure and what feels like pain, or is familiar or uncomfortable.
I do talk about a mindset in my Be Braver work, but I do also think of it as a how you not a how to. How you understand the systems within you, as much as the one you exist in relation too - and what exists in the space between the two.
I love the idea of courage as a theory AND necessary approach to change.
I think this is exactly why change feels so uncomfortable and unsafe at times - because we're pushing outside our comfort zones, which our nervous systems interpret as dangerous.
But leaning into what our heart knows - what matters to us, what we love, "for the sake of what" - is how we become more intentional rather than just living life on autopilot, simply shaped by whatever life throws our way.
The space you mention between understanding the systems within us and the ones we exist in relation to - that feels like where the real change can happen, BUT only with the courage to do the work which allows us to choose our response, rather than just react from old programming.
I think I we’ve probably worked in similar environments - and like me, you probably think, why are we expecting people to learn the hard way things then can understand about themselves , how to be, which means we can travel easier?
We will never avoid change in the river of life. We are all passing through. And if the world were to suddenly stop changing, or we did - where would that lead us? frozen in time.
There’s freedom, liberation, joy and opportunity to be found in riding the current. Risk are rapids we can spot ahead, uncertainty the river bends where we can’t see ahead, change the steady current that keeps us moving forwards.
Fear it and we cling to shore and get left behind. Courage is learning to trust the current and float towards new horizons?
The great revolution is getting to know our courage so we can let go to of our assumptions about fear and change. The tools of oppression?
Fear the river and we cling to shore, watching life flow past us. Courage teaches us to trust the current and steer toward new horizons.
The great revolution is surely connecting to our courage so we can let go of our assumptions about fear and change - those old anchors that keep us stuck in shallow water. To be free.
And let’s face it, the rivers exist in systems that know the power of an anchor to keep us wedded to river banks so we don’t get too far ahead. Because those in power want don’t want us to get ahead?
As Derek Sivers once said "if more information was all we needed, we'd all be billionaires with 6 packs"...
This is all very interesting. It's the first time I've got to the end of a "how to improve your job prospects" pitch.
I love the quotation about Philip Glass.
I have studied music all my life, along with a dozen other disciplines, I know the buzz of playing before an audience, and I learnt as a teenager but, like writers and dancers and artists, only a tiny proportion made a living doing the thing they love.
Having said this, when my mother married my father, she was a professional artist, earning more than he did by far, but it wasn't done for a woman to be the breadwinner.
My father was an artisan, and because I was a poor scholar, I was encouraged to follow him.
However, through talent, luck, and being in the right place at the right time, I landed the job of my dreams.
By the time I was 30, I had formed my own company and was living the dream.
But the dream turned sour, and so I became a writer – I published successful books, but still did the odd job, repairing washing machines, drawing architectural plans for builders, and developing properties, because books didn't pay all of the bills.
I'm over 80 now, I still have my business, and I still have my dream of publishing the rest of my short stories and my incredible adventures.....
Wait, why do you assume Philip Glass was so obviously wrong? Do you know how much money he made as an artist in any given year, and how long it could be expected to continue? The amount of money even very famous artists make is often surprisingly little, and there's a running joke they'd make more literally doing plumbing. He may have beaten the odds, but it seems to me 20/20 hindsight if one says he should have known that sooner. It might not been some "unconscious story", but a very conscious awareness of what pays reliably. Tastes change, fame is fickle, it can all vanish in an instant. But plumbing always needs to be done.
That is, this piece seems to assume "the system" isn't actually reflecting the situation. But it's not clear to me if that's correct or cherry-picked. For example, what about all the people do stop the day job, and then suffer an immediate setback, and are never heard from?
There’s certainly both factors at play with Glass - being an artist IS genuinely precarious financially.
I chose Glass as an example because I find that scene both funny and poignant, and because his story also illustrates something deeper than practical necessity.
Glass worked an extraordinary range of jobs - plumbing, taxi driving, moving furniture - well into his forties, long after his career had taken off.
In his memoir, he reflects on how his upbringing in a Jewish immigrant family in Baltimore shaped this pattern. His father ran a record shop, his mother worked in the library, and they lived with real financial scarcity. He writes:
‘IN A CLEAR WAY, WE ARE BOUND TO OUR CULTURE. We understand the world because of the way we were taught to see.’
That kind of childhood instills something deeper than rational financial planning - it can create a bone-deep fear about survival that persists long after the external circumstances have changed. I see this constantly with clients who grew up with financial instability. They become so anxious about money that they fill every available hour with backup income streams, often to the detriment of pursuing what they actually want to do.
This is also why midlife pivots can be so challenging. It’s not just the practical realities of changing direction - it’s that any significant change hits up against our deeply embedded beliefs about how money works, what constitutes ‘real’ work, and how hostile or friendly the world actually is. My own example would be my parents’ fear and loathing of work, which I inherited, and made it hard for me to even consider that work could be something I enjoyed and found meaningful until I was into my forties.
Well, yes. But it seems a bit of problem to presume, for someone who worries about money, that their worries are not rational, or at least within personal reasonableness. I think of this now myself, as I contemplate whether to retire or not. There's a good chance I'll die with a pile of savings, and people may say I worked for too long. On the other hand, the inverse of that is being very old and unable to work, but with no savings. If I'd rather have the former than the latter, which is indeed shaped by my view of how hostile or friendly the world actually is, it's not clear that's an incorrect view of the world. Sure, there's extremes, but I don't think Philip Glass would be one in terms of absolutely knowing rapidly he'd have enough of a lucrative artistic career never to need a day job. That is, if you grow up poor, you know how bad it is to be poor, so you value not ever being poor very very highly. Maybe much more than someone who has grown up differently. But again, since knowing the financial future is so unclear, even if personal trade-offs are shaped by a person's background, they can still be objectively reasonable in terms of one's feelings about life's risks.
You’re absolutely right, Seth - that kind of anxiety about money is completely rational given certain life experiences. Financial insecurity is very real, and I’m not dismissing that at all.
What I find fascinating is how much our relationship with money, work and security varies from person to person, often in ways that don’t correlate directly with actual wealth. Some people with substantial savings still feel anxious about spending, while others with less feel more comfortable taking risks. A lot of that seems to come down to the beliefs and scripts we inherited - not just about money, but about how safe or hostile the world is, how alone or supported we are, when it’s ‘safe’ to relax, and so on.
I think we’re all carrying multiple, sometimes conflicting beliefs about these things. The traditional script of ‘work until 65 then retire’ isn’t realistic for many of us anymore. My goal now is making sure the work I do in later life is something I genuinely love and find meaningful - maybe less of it, but work that gives life purpose rather than just pays bills.
It’s not about which beliefs are right or wrong, rational or irrational - they’re all there for reasons. But sometimes they can get tangled up in ways that make it harder to make decisions that actually feel good to us, whether that’s about when to stop working or what kind of work to pursue in the first place.
Are we sure he was trapped? Perhaps he loves the hands on practical service to every day life as much as he loves unquantifiable beauty. ‘Do I contradict myself, of course I do, I am large, I contain multitudes’.
I do think what you’ve written about is very real and very important, I myself struggle to shake the old ideas of who I am but I wonder if that’s the case with Glass
He did talk in various interviews about how relieved he was to finally give up his ‘day job’ aged 42, so I’m surmising he didn’t love it *that* much. He has also spoken frequently about how scary driving a cab in NYC was…
Interesting! Thanks for sharing
Brilliant ❤️ 🔥
Thanks Kylie
Beautiful post. I love your stories and your takeaway and pitch. I think there is so much value to the model you propose.
The effectiveness of the self help you see on social media is entirely based on where each person is in their journey and how skilled they are at turning knowledge into action.
I love how you clarify that if the content isn’t helpful, it’s likely because it doesn’t address what you need. So fundamental and so needed.
Thanks Kathy 💚
Been reflecting a lot on change lately, while simultaneously being in it. It’s pretty much what you said: working with the body first, and then practicing radical awareness to actually notice the old ways of thinking and taking the time to update them.
My feeling is that real change is gradual and happens in increments. Our nervous system needs proof, and a lot of it, that the new ways are safe.
I still haven’t explored psychedelics for the purpose of personal development, and I imagine that the shifts we experience with them would still need a fair amount of time to integrate, right? Or can there also be a shift at a cellular level that acts almost like a rewiring?
Depends on how you’re working with them. For a macro journey there is usually an immediate shift in the days and weeks following - improved mood, energy, increased ability to introduce positive changes into life.
Microdosing however is much more subtle and useful for targeting specific patterns you want to work with.
So there are quite immediate effects - as well as the longer term ones. It’s quite common for people to suddenly make sense of something in a high dose journey months or even years after!
Ah interesting, thanks for the elaborate answer. It’s something I’d definitely be keen to experiment with in the future.
When it comes to creating deep, lasting and sustainable change, I always tell people: safety first. We need to feel safe for the seeds to root and sprout. But many opt for the wrong type of safety - safety that keeps them small and stuck instead of one that helps them grow.
It's about creating a safe container - I like to call it a mental chrysalis like the one holding a "dissolved" potential for a butterfly - where we can let go of our protective mechanism to even start practicing/rewiring. Change has to literally grow through us, in a very physiological sense. And that does not happen through thinking, as all real change is experiential. One of the reasons why psychedelics are so effective - they work on many different layers at the same time - but while this can initiate change, more work needs to follow up.
People are biology, not technology; we can't just download and install a new software.
I enjoyed this post and agree with your argument! But I came here to say that classifying this as a "critique of Atomic Habits" is off base. Sure, we have all heard by now that tech bro hustle culture is not the messiah it claims to be. And certainly, adding random habits to your routine isn't particularly productive. But two tenets of Atomic Habits are (1) that systems, not goals, are the key to change and (2) that habits are most powerful when they are identity-based (eg, defining a new identity before initiating a habit). Those seem to align pretty well with your ideas of bringing awareness to systems and rewriting narratives.
I realize you are suggesting that we go deeper ("I am the type of person who flosses their teeth" is very different from "I am the type of person who rejects toxic work environments"). But I wanted to call it out because ragging on James Clear seems somewhat trendy at the moment and I think your piece would be stronger without that particular reference.
This is absolutely true, I don’t go into great detail about atomic habits apart from saying Glass had issues that the book wouldn’t necessarily solve. I’ll have a look at adjusting the title, fair point.
Would you like a critique of AH, though? It’s an OK book as these books go, but everything is on a conscious level, which is rarely where the identity change happens.
You say Clear talks about identity, but this is at a cognitive level (I’m the kind of person who… - habits define the wo/man, and vice versa) but this doesn’t go anywhere near touching our unconscious life script, often formed when we were tiny and have no recollection of.
Habits don’t tend to shift script, no matter how productive/beneficial.
Lmk if you’d like me to go into more detail in a future article!
Thanks for the response. I think that’s a valid angle that can be helpful for people who seek a deeper level of change. If you were to critique AH more directly, I would be curious to hear your perspective on Clear’s argument that consistency with even small habits, over time, builds a self confidence that eventually shapes someone’s character and identity in a positive way. It would be interesting to contrast his “bottom up” approach with the approach you’re describing, which strikes me as more “top down.” Either way, I agree accessing our deeply set narratives is important work and that we currently don’t have good tools to do that.
Hmmm, maybe a little bit harsh…? I refer to: habit stacking, 1% better everyday, consistency, routine, mindset and system/framework approaches to change. Which is pretty much what Clear espouses, no?
The whole point of the article is that these conscious, cognitive, behavioural approaches don’t go deep enough, because very often what’s holding us back is outside of consciousness and lives in our body and nervous system.
Andy, let’s look at what’s actually happening here.
You’re telling me my approach has ‘more in common with Clear than (I) might realize’ - as if I don’t understand my own work, and can’t read or understand his properly.
Then ‘I just think you’d be more effective…’ - positioning yourself as qualified to advise me on my profession and my writing.
And suggesting I think about my approach ‘as a reframing of the kinds of things he talks about’ - literally explaining my own methodology (somatics, script, psychedelics) back to me in a way that clearly shows you haven’t taken it in.
Not to mention a suggestion I’d be better off reframing my own approach as a homage to Clear, rather than writing about why I don’t think cognitive behavioural approaches go deep enough.
What script belief gives you the authority to assume you know my work better than I do, I wonder?
What’s the life position that says you’re qualified to tell someone how to be more effective at what they do for a living?
This is textbook Critical Parent to Adapted Child - you get to be the wise advisor, I get to be corrected and improved. It’s ‘I’m OK, You’re Not OK.’
The irony is that you’re demonstrating exactly the kind of unconscious pattern-running I’m writing about.
What might Clear advise in terms of new habit formations for you, I wonder? “I’m the kind of man that tells women…”?
“Maybe the author should read the book!” ≠ good faith, imo.
OMG. I needed to read this. I've been talking about going freelance for about three years but I'm not doing anything about it. As soon as I start feeling motivated to pitch the feeling fades and I detour to another creative project that ends up staying in my Google Drive.
I'm feeling abundantly creative at the moment but it's coming with a whole load of fear and not knowing how to channel my energy. There's definitely a shift coming and I'm anxious because I don't have a map.
Fuck around and find out I guess...
Great post! I love the question “what’s your theory of change?” I’ll definitely be using that.
I literally just wrote a post that describes my journey finding a theory of change that actually works and it lines up really well with what you’ve described here.
The mechanism that I think updates beliefs is called memory reconsolidation. It has three steps: reactivation occurs when you're exposed to cues that bring the original learning (belief) into memory. If that learning no longer correctly predicts outcomes, it triggers a prediction error. Then juxtaposition occurs when the original belief and the prediction error are held simultaneously in conscious awareness. When you follow these three steps, your belief gets updated.
I have a feeling that all the system-level work you outline is probably different ways of triggering this underlying mechanism. I'll definitely be looking into those. Thanks for the post :)
The "music" of Philip Glass sucks though.
Try Arvo Pärt.
Also, *Atomic Habits* was so bad I returned it.
One can't fit the square cube in the round hole until one to starts to chip away at the corners.
I’ve so enjoyed reading this. Is courage my theory of change? It might be.
I think some of my work and thinking intersects beautifully with yours. Especially where you think about systems, and power, culture and narratives.
Neuroscience and decision making theory, risk and how we respond to uncertainty I think also shapes how we experience the world we live in? What feels like pleasure and what feels like pain, or is familiar or uncomfortable.
I do talk about a mindset in my Be Braver work, but I do also think of it as a how you not a how to. How you understand the systems within you, as much as the one you exist in relation too - and what exists in the space between the two.
Thanks Caroline, it's good to meet you here!
I love the idea of courage as a theory AND necessary approach to change.
I think this is exactly why change feels so uncomfortable and unsafe at times - because we're pushing outside our comfort zones, which our nervous systems interpret as dangerous.
But leaning into what our heart knows - what matters to us, what we love, "for the sake of what" - is how we become more intentional rather than just living life on autopilot, simply shaped by whatever life throws our way.
The space you mention between understanding the systems within us and the ones we exist in relation to - that feels like where the real change can happen, BUT only with the courage to do the work which allows us to choose our response, rather than just react from old programming.
Great to meet you too.
I think I we’ve probably worked in similar environments - and like me, you probably think, why are we expecting people to learn the hard way things then can understand about themselves , how to be, which means we can travel easier?
We will never avoid change in the river of life. We are all passing through. And if the world were to suddenly stop changing, or we did - where would that lead us? frozen in time.
There’s freedom, liberation, joy and opportunity to be found in riding the current. Risk are rapids we can spot ahead, uncertainty the river bends where we can’t see ahead, change the steady current that keeps us moving forwards.
Fear it and we cling to shore and get left behind. Courage is learning to trust the current and float towards new horizons?
The great revolution is getting to know our courage so we can let go to of our assumptions about fear and change. The tools of oppression?
Fear the river and we cling to shore, watching life flow past us. Courage teaches us to trust the current and steer toward new horizons.
The great revolution is surely connecting to our courage so we can let go of our assumptions about fear and change - those old anchors that keep us stuck in shallow water. To be free.
And let’s face it, the rivers exist in systems that know the power of an anchor to keep us wedded to river banks so we don’t get too far ahead. Because those in power want don’t want us to get ahead?