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Reality is fake, Love is the Lie we share, and Easy is Better (sometimes)
Five Plus Newsletter No2
Today we talk about reality distortion, the love delusion, proving we are right and taking the easy path to success. Summary in a haiku:
Sharing distortion,
Love needs reality matched,
Harmony blooms bright.
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1. Evolutionary Reasons for Reality Distortion in Perception
As humans, our perception of reality is not always accurate. We tend to distort reality in our perception, often without even realizing it. While this may seem like a flaw in our cognitive abilities, there are actually evolutionary reasons why we do this.
One reason for reality distortion in perception is our brain's need for efficiency. Our brains are constantly taking in large amounts of information from our environment, and in order to process this information efficiently, our brains use shortcuts, or heuristics. These heuristics can lead to distortions in our perception, as our brains fill in missing information or make assumptions based on previous experiences.
Another reason for reality distortion in perception is our need for self-preservation. Our brains are wired to prioritize information that is relevant to our survival. This means that we may perceive a situation as more threatening or dangerous than it actually is, in order to prepare ourselves for potential danger.
Additionally, our perception is influenced by our past experiences and beliefs. Our brains tend to filter information based on our pre-existing beliefs and experiences, leading to confirmation bias and selective attention. This means that we may perceive information that confirms our beliefs more readily, while ignoring information that contradicts them.
Overall, while reality distortion in perception can lead to inaccuracies, it is necessary. Our brains have evolved to prioritize efficiency and self-preservation, while adapting to past experiences and beliefs. Without this continuous distortion of reality, we would not have survived to this day.
2. Conflict is when our realities diverge
Think about your last fight with someone. What was it really about?
Most fights are not about the explicit topic. They are about the two people’s different realities about an event or action. Person 1 feels Person 2 did something bad, while Person 2 feels they did nothing wrong. Or a variation thereof.
We live in slightly different realities because our perceptions differ. These points of divergence create conflict. When this happens, each of us fights to impose their own reality.
If one wins, the other accepts (or declares to accept) their reality. Or the two parties might come to a compromise where they both adjust their reality to the same middle version.
If they remain with divergent realities, then they grow apart. Collaboration, and the feeling of connection, cannot exist when we don’t inhabit the same reality.
How can you trust someone when you cannot trust they see the same world as you?
3. Love is sharing the same reality distortion
The closer the relationship, the more your realities need to converge.
The store clerk is distant, your Uber driver needs to be slightly closer (if you speak with him/ her), your colleagues closer, your friends closer, and then your love and family closer.
If you and your love partner have different realities, then the relationship is compromised.
You know those couples who finish each others’ sentences? They can do that because they have such a similar model of reality. I’m not saying you need to finish each others’ sentences. But that level of similarity is key to a healthy harmonious relationship.
For this you need regular authentic communication. It is how you adjust the two realities.
And you need to share meaningful experiences. There are things that shape us that cannot be recreated with mere words.
Go share your reality with the one you love.
4. Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is one the of most important mechanisms for reality distortion. It is also the way our brains are wired. It's an evolutionary remnant that once helped us survive in the dangerous Paleolithic. Our brains are constantly scanning the environment for potential threats and opportunities, and when we encounter new information, we evaluate it based on our pre-existing beliefs and assumptions.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and interpret information in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs, while disregarding or discounting evidence that contradicts them. This cognitive bias is more powerful when it comes to social identity issues such as our political beliefs, religious convictions, or discrimination.
Confirmation bias is pleasant. The same brain regions that are involved in processing rewards, such as the ventral striatum, are also activated when we encounter information that confirms our beliefs.
Our brains evolved the tendency to confirm existing beliefs instead of contradicting them.
5. Awful at predicting ourselves
Another effect of our reality distortion is we are awful at predicting our own future behavior. It might sound absurd, but people are bad at predicting their own actions. In business for example it is well known it’s pointless to ask people whether they will buy a new product. Their statements will not match their behavior if the product is launched.
It also explains why everyone says they will do healthy, beneficial actions in the future (like work out, stop eating junk food), but then few actually do them. Few of these people were lying when they predicted their own behavior, we are just bad at it.
6. Start small to finish big
Excerpt from Effortless Habits Blueprint
The mistake everyone makes when adopting a new habit is starting too strong. This will always, always lead to failure.
Why? Because in the beginning you have willpower to motivate you to do the habit. But this willpower is temporary. It only manifests in the beginning, then it fades away. If the habit is not ridiculously easy to do, then when willpower fades, so will the new habit. You will revert to your previous behavior.
We always choose the easy path. That’s a feature of the human mind. One that got us to survive and reproduce, and conquer the Earth.
Even now it’s the wisest choice most of the time.
Think of a marathon. 🏃
It’s 42 km or 26 miles. That’s 55,000-63,000 steps depending on your stride length.
Imagine your goal is to go from a non-runner to running a marathon.
If you were to try to do it all at once, what would happen? You go out and try to run 42 km. You would almost certainly fail. And do yourself serious damage in the process. I doubt your knees would ever be healthy again.
To achieve the goal of running a marathon, the best thing to do on the first day is to go out and run a little. Maybe 500 meters, maybe 1 km. Maybe walk-run 2 km. Then the next day you do it again. And again. In time the distance increases slowly. In one year or two years you will grow as a runner to the level when you can successfully run a marathon. And break nothing in the process.
The marathon example might be extreme. Most of us are not stubborn enough to go from no running to trying to run a marathon. But this example is a perfect illustration of how most of us approach new habits. We try to do it all at once. We go to the gym 5 times in the first week and do super hard workouts. Then we quit on the third week exhausted and sad.
🚀 Starting strong is a recipe for failure. Starting slow is the path to success.
Adopting any new habit rests on making it ridiculously convenient. It must be so easy, you would be embarrassed to tell your friends you are doing it. Think starting with two push-ups at a time, not 100; think of 10 minutes of learning a new skill each day, not 3 hours; think of eating 10 grams of vegetable per day, not making veggies the main ingredient.
B.J. Fogg is a famous professor at Stanford where he founded the Persuasive Technology Lab. This was a series of classes attended by students who then became the founders of many of the most persuasive digital products ever, such as Instagram. He wrote the book on much of what we know about behavior change. After teaching people to make addictive products, he switched to teaching people to intentionally change their own behavior. His book on the topic is called Tiny Habits especially to emphasize that only tiny, ridiculously easy, habits have any chance of success.
Developing the habit to initiate the new behavior is more important than the behavior itself.
The hardest part for new habits is initiating the behavior. It’s harder to go to the gym than to actually do the workout once you are there. This initiation of the behavior is in fact the habit you want to create. The behavior itself will vary in time.
For example for running, the habit is to go out regularly to run. The characteristics of the run will vary: speed, distance, place where you run, how you run, and so on. The constant is that you initiate the behavior of running regularly.
Once you have made the start of the behavior an automatic recurrence, the rest is easy. If you have the habit to run, then you will become a better runner in time. Running itself is the easy bit in this context.
How to make any new habit Embarrassingly Convenient
Crystal Clear
Embarrassingly Easy
Well Prepared
Integrated in Routine
Capable to Do It
Repeat, Repeat
Perceive as Effortless
Temporary Challenge
⚡️⚡️⚡️All of these techniques to make any habit embarrassingly easy, and over a hundred pages worth of behavior change, are detailed in the Effortless Habits Blueprint. Get it with an exclusive subscriber 30% discount.⚡️⚡️⚡️
7. Quote I’m chewing
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
The ideal life is easy when you know what you need,
Victor