Knowing isn’t changing

I'm in Annecy, France this week, flying paragliders over ridgelines in terrain I've never seen before. It's the kind of trip that would have seemed far-fetched to me a few years ago. Different country, different mountains, different version of what I thought was possible.

And yet. Sitting with a group of pilots the other night, I watched something I've seen a hundred times in firehouses and gyms and coaching conversations. Someone nodding along to an idea they believed was true but didn't believe was possible for them.

We were talking about anxiety. One of the pilots has been caught in a loop — worried about conditions, worried about other pilots' decisions, caught in patterns he couldn't quite get out of. I said something about the discipline of focusing only on what you can control. He said yeah, you're right.

But his voice said something else. It said: that's a better way to be, and I am not that person.

I've heard that response a hundred times too. It isn't laziness and it isn't weakness. It's something more specific than that. We become comfortable with the familiar. Not because the familiar is good, but because it's known. And when something new approaches — a different way of thinking, a different pattern of behavior — the nervous system treats novelty the same way it treats danger. It fires. It says this is wrong, retreat. And we've learned to trust that signal more than we should.

The other morning I went for a run, which isn't something I've been doing lately and following a friend who's much fitter in this regard. We walked out the side door of the house, climbed over two garden walls and slipped through an opening in a hedge. That was the warm up. Right onto one of those steep, narrow, classically French roads you see in the Tour de France. Heart rate immediately in zone 4 (5 is max for non fitness nerds) and unsure of how long this climb was going to be.

I was suffering in the way that often makes us negotiate with ourselves. The thoughts came fast. This is painful. Just keep moving. Don't stop. Am I holding Nick up? How long will this run be? Don't step on one of the red slugs. And then a comical little moment of panic — oh my God, can I keep going? The rapid fire thoughts, the self-consciousness, the way my monkey mind was narrating my own suffering. An absurd torrent of thoughts to the point that I laughed. This is newsletter material, remember it.

Have you ever seen one of those videos where something startles a group of cats and they go full panicked nuts jumping, climbing and running over the top of each other? That was my stream of thoughts.

Nothing was wrong. I was just in unfamiliar territory.

That's the whole game, really. Not silencing the signal. Learning the language.

The pilot's nervous system is doing the same thing mine was on that hill. When he considers changing his anxious patterns, it fires. It says this is not you, this is wrong, go back to what you know. He trusts that signal. Trusts it enough to agree with his words and retreat with everything else.

What he's picturing, I think, is a diametrically different version of himself. Calm where he is anxious, loose where he is tight. And because that person doesn't exist yet, the distance feels uncrossable. So he stays.

But that's not how change works. You don't become a different person. You make a different decision. Then another one. Then another.

I was a lacrosse player for most of my athletic life — conditioned for two and three minute shifts, short explosive bursts, built for intensity with recovery built in. Then I started mountain biking. Long rides, then longer ones. I remember being wrecked after an hour, having to stop and eat and sit before I could continue. Months later I was riding for three hours without stopping. Eventually I was racing a hundred miles in a day. I didn't transform. I just kept making the next decision.

Here's what the research also tells us: too much focus on the destination works against you. Visualizing the changed version of yourself can actually deceive your nervous system into feeling you've already arrived — which quietly drains the motivation to do the work. And the destination is an outcome anyway. You don't control it.

What you control is today. The small decision in front of you. Noticing a pattern you want to change. Choosing differently this once. That's not a lesser version of transformation. That's what transformation actually is.

The pilot knows what a better way looks like. That part is done. The question isn't whether he believes in the destination. It's whether he's willing to be uncomfortable on the way there — and to stop mistaking that discomfort for a reason to turn back.

—Ben