People try to change but fail many more times then they succeed
Why is that? Nature’s programming has written in our subconscious that we are alive because of what we did in the past, so do more of that and you will remain alive. Trying something new is in direct conflict with this desire to exist, to not die.
The urge to listen to authority and parents stems from their demonstrated ability to survive and our dependence on them for our survival, that is, until the parents or authority has threatened one’s existence.
This desire to adhere to authority permeates all aspects of life, not just parental connections. Listen to your boss to keep your job to make money to pay for food. Listen to the doctor so you won’t get a disease. Listen to your teacher so you won’t be helpless in the world.
This obedience is drilled into our psyche to make sure that we will be here tomorrow, and the next day, for as long as we can. It is a survival defense mechanism.
But, with the advent of technology and social communication skyrocketing, ideas of the status quo are challenged more and more. Someone somewhere can reach an audience of millions with a story that defies the often accepted status quo, such as this one which defies conventional medical research/advice.
The continual exposure to these outlier stories culminates in a conflict with this innate desire to maintain the status quo to live.
Your emotions overtake the body and for a split moment, you have lived the story being told. You have imagined yourself as the hero of the adventure.
With enough of these stories of different people’s experiences, one will begin to desire a change from the norm, to be inspired to change.
I will get in shape/work harder/start my own company/create a better relationship with my family/etc.
At this point, the desire to change has overcome the desire to stay the same.
Inertia has been overcome.
But, just as gravity will always slow an object in motion, so too will there be a friction to slow down and revert behavior back to the previous patterns.
So how does one create permanent change?
In science, the answer is simple. Keep moving. Put more charcoal into that train engine. In life, it too is overcome by continuing to move, to impart more energy in the motion than that which is pushing against that change.
But what does that mean and how can I do it?
The easiest way is to constantly challenge your belief system.
If you knew something today that you didn’t know yesterday, how could you possibly revert to who you were yesterday? Your schema is changed. Your neural pathways are different. You are different.
One mind blowing learning I had is that the earth moves not just around the earth, but in a helical shape as the solar system moves through space.
This means, that no longer are we in the same place on January 1 2015 as we were January 1 1015. We are many thousand miles away. This means that the cycle of the earth around the sun is a different rotational pattern each time.
This means that when you go to sleep, and when you wake up, you will be in distinctly different places in the universe.
What does this have to do with making a change?
This understanding of a helical world creates a paradigm shift in our understanding. It is not that we are constantly doing the same to survive, but rather we revert to actions that we repeated at a certain length of time prior because it has the highest probability to survive.
But, no longer are you in the same place you were before when you made that previous “safe choice.”
The world and solar system are in a different place. It has changed, so the only way to remain constant with your perceived notion of “doing the same” is to also change in the relative degree with which the world/universe has.
So in essence, changing with the world as the world changes is the only way to ensure you are doing the same. Evolving.