Why Self Improvement Scares Us into Status Quo

If you were fat and then turned skinny, what would happen to your life? If you were a drinker and stopped what would you do with the sober time? If you were a cigarette smoker and quit, how could you drink?

If you can’t walk up stairs and then could run five miles what would your opportunities be? If you have no passions and found a few, could you handle the enthusiasm?

The reptilian brain is millions of years old. Like a pair of wary eyes, it looks out on the world for something that might eat it. Sitting under a rock feeling safe satisfies one of our most basic needs. There is safety in not changing. We fear change because the reptilian brain only has two responses to change, fight or flight.

But man has developed the limbic brain and the cortex. The limbic brain is our emotional center; the cortex our intellectual center. The prefrontal cortex can coordinate a fearful thought and turn it around into a rational thought. It can give the message that the object of fear won’t really hurt us.

It gets more supportive the more we challenge it and succeed. The more we overcome, the more the prefrontal cortex tells us we can handle. Using my surfing analogies, there is always fear in surfers in stepping to bigger waves. The more we have handled the status quo, the more courage we get to handle something bigger. But there is still fear.

You might say, well surfing is just recreational fun, nothing really important. Yes, but fear is fear. If you get trounced and almost drown, it is no longer just recreation. To go back into the water requires you rationalize the last experience or come up with a very good justification.

Most people don’t really want to lose weight, they just say they do. The proof is in the result. A diet is a false attempt by someone who says they want to lose weight, but doesn’t really. How do we know? Because 95% of the time they fail or go back to their original weight.

Why do smokers or drinkers rarely really quit? Why do abusive people really never change? Why can’t people make that first step to get fit? What is so scary about being different for the better? We are not sure it is for the better.

We have gotten accustomed to a self image. We are comfortable with the negatives. People accept us as we are, why rock the boat. We have very little interest in testing our envelopes or seeing if we could be ecstatically happy or find great gratitude for being alive.

For the most part we have lost a connection with nature. Surfers have more stoke than dry landers. Men get excited over football because it allows them to freely express a lot of emotion. Women love some extra money to shop. (hopefully that’s not too sexist, but picture the joyful emotions)

We have no faith in the fact that if we were healthy, lean, and fit, everyday could be better.  It doesn’t require money or external events. It would be better because we could do almost anything we wanted. There would be a lot more opportunity to explore ourselves.

When healthy and fit, our brain works great. We could read, write, discuss, explore interests with much more interest, perception, and memory. When fit we could go for a walk, a run, a swim, paddle, hike, climb, bike, play tennis, volleyball, or skateboard.

When we are lean we could be more active, feel positive about our appearance, have more respect from our associates or customers, feel healthier, have a higher quality of life, and live longer.

Which brings us down to a real elementary question. Is our biggest fear commitment? Once we set on this path, we are locked into change for better or worse.

The clock is ticking. When you are all done, you can look back and say life as a lizard was pretty good. Or…