Stasis vs adaptation

As humans everything we do is guided by two fundamental yet contradictory principles. The need to stay the same and the need to adapt to our environment.

It’s our natural tendency to underestimate the power of stasis. We think that we are wired for progress and improvement. We blame ourselves when we can’t learn a new skill, understand the new concept, lose weight, get fit, solve the problem.

We’ve been taught Darwinian theory, even Disney entertains with tales of survival of the fittest.

Yet these stories inspire us because they describe overcoming challenges. What is not always made apparent is that for the most part these challenges are internal. 

Rather than being made for adaptation, we are made for stasis. Survival of the fittest might make a great movie, but in reality, all we care about is survival.

Stasis is about safety. Stasis is about security. Stasis is about survival.

When our environment changes, we can adapt, but the reason adaptation is challenging is because we are designed to stay the same.

This is why new habits take so long to adopt, why it takes so long for a new skill to become easy, why our bodies revert to the way they were before the diet.

We can adapt, but we need to be patient, we need to be consistent, we need to give ourselves time to assimilate our new normal.

Remember the galloping housewife mantra: one percent a day for a hundred days.

All of the galloping housewife's courses recognise this. They are all based on the science of change. They all use our inbuilt psychological a physiological mechanisms to make that adaptation as effortless as it can be.