State Changes

State changes

State changes is the name I give to whenever you need to start or stop something. They are also a secret super-power that few people seem to understand.

There are many things which people want to do and know should be good for them, but for some reason they just can’t get into it. State change is a simple and effective way in.

Getting started

Let’s say that you’ve heard that running, or taking a cold shower, or running barefoot, or eating more vegetables, or meditating, or insert habit of choice here are fantastic ways to help you enjoy life more, get sick less often and live longer. You decide that you have to start practicing one or another or all of the above. Next day, next week, next month or next year, you still haven’t started, or you started and quit. What gives?

Often people take up too much time thinking about doing something rather than experiencing what it’s like to do it. In the moment of experience, you have an amazing potential, that is simply not accessible to you when you think about doing something. Thinking and doing are very different modes of being, although we’re often tricked into thinking they are the same, because thinking about anything feels so real. It’s one of the innate human capabilities: awareness and its evil twin, self-delusion. Rather than thinking about doing something, focus on maintaining the first 30 seconds or few minutes of an activity and keep an open mind. Deciding to run a marathon and following through is hard, but putting on running shoes and clothes, getting out the door and running for five minutes is incredibly easy. You could do it every day. Deciding to take 10-minute cold shower daily is daunting, but just focusing on staying in a cold shower for 30 seconds is incredibly easy. Anyone can manage that.

Quitting thinking early

Don’t overthink it. A lot of people start with cold showers by first taking a hot shower, then gradually turning it colder and colder. That’s indicative to me of too much thinking about what your experience is going to be like. Humans are incredibly poor at successfully guessing how they will feel in a given circumstance. My advice: don’t. Focus on the present moment and you’ll find a vast potential at your disposal.

I ran barefoot for a few years. It was always surprising to me that when I told people of my experiences, I met a huge number of experts on barefoot running who had never gone for a run without shoes. They explained to me in great detail why what I suggested was crazy. I had been running barefoot for years, in the hot baking sun of the summer and in the ice and snow of the winter, on grassy slopes, woodland paths and gravelly roads, when I was tired and hungry, when I was relaxed and when I was stressed. When I explained my experiences to them and told them about other people who had given barefoot running a go, they were still adamant that the picture in their head of them running without shoes was still more real than these actual experiences. This is just a blind spot in how people experience life.

Deciding to quit those enormous lumps of plastic and cloth, that gum up your feet, letting yourself feel the earth as you run, letting your body do what it does naturally and has evolved to do over tens of thousands of years — I understand that seems tough when you think about it. Taking off my shoes when I run? Crazy. What if I hit broken glass? What if there’s dog poo? What if my feet start bleeding profusely? How will I get back home? What if? What if? What if? But halfway through a little run, taking off your shoes and running for a minute seems pretty simple. You can just sit yourself down, dust off your feet, put your socks and shoes back on and run back home. (By the way, my sage advice if you see things you don’t want to run through is to run around them). There you are: you’ve experienced barefoot running and now you can explain to that lunatic in great detail exactly why it doesn’t make sense.

Getting stuck in by getting stuck in

Something funny happens when you do something. All action has momentum in it. New things as well as habitual things. In a cold shower, your body is mostly reacting to the change in temperature. The first 30 seconds are the hardest. The next 30 seconds are a bit easier. Two minutes later you find yourself quite used to the temperature and it becomes simple to stay for five minutes more. Just focus on the shift between states and let your experience take care of the rest.