Status quo

Inertia has two distinct parts. The first is that objects in motion will continue their motion toward the same unless there is a force that changes the motion. The second one is that objects that are at rest will remain at rest unless they are acted upon a force. The Status quo is about the second part. It is all around us as the first part. People, their bodies, and organizations all want to protect their status quo. Even the people who should be the most rational, scientists, suffer from it. Changing the status quo is hard, but not impossible.

Status quo, bodies, and minds

Your body and mind both tend to preserve the status quo. Your body wants to keep its temperature within a certain range and wants to keep fluids in balance. Status quo helps your body to function in optimal ways and to prepare for any threats that might get in your way. When the temperature rises, your body starts to sweat more to keep its temperature within the range. This happens to many other functions and other temperature changes or changes inside your body. Your body is full of balancing feedback loops that focus on keeping its status quo. Otherwise, your body would collapse and the death would occur fast.

Your beliefs and identity have status quo. Your thoughts also depend on it. Your mind keeps producing the same answers to questions day after day. It rarely produces any new thoughts even when they are important or necessary. It is even rarer that your mind destroys your old thoughts about the situations you normally confront.

Science and status quo

You might believe that scientists are the most rational people. You might think that they are willing to get rid of their old assumptions and change their views after you have given them evidence that they were wrong. This rarely happens in real life. For example, it took centuries or even millennia to approve the fact that earth is not the center of the universe. Science is changed by the crazy ones who are willing to endure to prove themselves right when people with old theories abuse them. Scientists are humans and they have egos and psychological biases.

Once scientists have made their conclusions about their research, they will toss out most evidence against their theories. They cannot objectively see their results after they have made their conclusions. They are willing to preserve their status quo at almost any cost. You will not easily find a scientist who is willing to destroy his theories even though the evidence shows them wrong. What you will find are scientists who disapprove of all people who can convince others that they were wrong. These people are the last ones who will change their minds. Their egos cannot handle contrarian evidence. This does not mean that science is bullshit. On the contrary, it means that the process is working. This resistance is part of the due process.

How to beat it

The longer the status quo has worked, the harder it is to break it. And the harder it is, the more effort and wisdom you need to overcome it. Willpower will not get you far. You can use it and beat the status quo for a short time, but eventually, you will succumb back to your previous situation. You have to use your path of least resistance and increase it bit by bit to overcome the status quo in your current environment. You have to start the change with minimal steps. If you increase steps too fast, you will fail. Then, you have to start again, but it will be a bit harder. The effort you have to put to reach the next step will increase. When you use incremental steps long, you can reach the critical mass needed to change and get in a position where the change will happen.

Even though the path least of resistance is key to change the status quo, there are few other ways you can make the change easier. In other words, you can make the resistance smaller. Use your psychological tendencies to weaken the resistance. You can cheat yourself with them to put more effort to overcome the status quo. If you can change your environment to overcome the status quo, do it. You can increase the availability of the triggers that will move you in the right direction. This is easier when the environment has changed. Sometimes the only way you can make the change is to change your environment. This is important especially with addictions.

Until next time!

-TT

PS. Do you consider yourself a helpful person? If you found anything useful in this text, please teach it to your friends.

Covid-19 and evolutionary point-of-view

You can think about the Covid-19 pandemic from the evolutionary point of view. You have only one life. There is path dependence. If you die to this virus, everything else is irrelevant. This applies to all diseases and potentially other lethal events. The only smart thing to do is to minimize your odds of having to suffer from them. People who undermine the possible impact of the virus are, plain and simple, stupid. There are opportunity costs for minimizing the odds, but the opportunity costs of dying are infinite. You have to find the balance of avoiding the virus and the other life.

Instead of the survival of the fittest, this pandemic is about the survival of the most adaptable. People who thrived before the pandemic can have great problems in adapting to new conditions if they maximized their output compared to their resources before the pandemic. People who have slack in their lives are in pole position to survive Many lives are disrupted in one way or another. Some people suffer the wrath of the virus and most do not experience big effects. It is safe to say that some people are more adaptable for fighting this virus than others. Even young and healthy individuals have died to it. Nobody knows why it happened to them. From an evolutionary point of view, Covid-19 makes genes of the human race more adaptable to the current situation in total.

What about the necessary changes in this situation? Can you adapt your rhythms of life to the current situation with the virus? Can you change your schedule in a way that you can minimize the odds of possible contagion of the virus? Can you change your daily rhythms to make the change? Can you use trial and error if you have to go out to exercise or work out at home? Can you go out when others stay at home or do you follow a tight schedule? Can you work or do your chores like buying groceries from home? Can you find a place to live far away from others and grow your own food or cook it yourself? If you have not done these things before, can you reprogram your brains to do them?

Even though survival is the most important thing, you have to think about the financials. This situation brings higher-order effects. Some of these effects cause financial distress. Can you adapt your finances to the new situation or new world? This pandemic will have profound effects on the world, nations, companies, and individuals. Some financial rules will probably change. There will be no return to the past. Some nations, companies, and individuals will thrive financially while others will suffer. Many old successful business models will crash and new models will be born. Some industries will change permanently. Best-adapted companies will pay small money for the destroyed businesses that were in ok shape before the pandemic. They can become more successful. Companies and individuals who have cash and small fixed costs concerning their total costs and income can buy things cheaply.

It is a great time to make changes

Covid-19 pandemic is not all about doom and gloom. It is also a great time to make changes. When your life has changed, it is easier to make other changes too. For example, you can use your time more efficiently because some time wasters have disappeared. You do not have to use so many hours to get to work and back. You can also avoid colleagues who waste your time. You can arrange your work in a way that is not dependent on others. It can be easier to develop ways to become more productive in your work without explaining it to others. Or listening to them tell you it is a bad idea to do things differently because it is not the way we do things here.

This is also a great time to get rid of bad habits or other behavior or develop new ones. Bad habits can disappear if the trigger and the prize do not exist anymore. You are then forced to make changes and reprogram your brain. The paths of least resistance to growth with new behavior can be easier to develop. It can also be harder to reach out to old paths of least resistance because the physical and mental efforts can become too hard. You can also develop a better attitude to a crisis when you notice that you can survive this one and thrive after it. Do not be afraid of the future, because it can be better than you think and the odds to make changes are higher today than before the pandemic.

Until next time!

-TT

PS. Do you consider yourself a helpful person? If you found anything useful in this text, please teach it to your friends