Why would your first step in solving a problem be replacing the most important part that you understand the least with an irrelevant substitute that you happen to understand the best?
Conversation
This is the “yes, and...” improv approach to being changed.
It’s also Miller’s law applied to accepting subjective postures at face value. Assume their life posture is valid and ask what circumstances it could be valid for. Then look for ways to change the circumstances.
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One sign you’re doing it right (or it’s being done right to you): the change is somewhat unpredictable. A whole life reorientation/reconfiguration. Not a simple stimulus-response or a cause effect goal-pursuit effect. This is not incentive shift in a fixed solution structure.
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It’s an equilibrium shift. They’re restating and resolving their “life” problem in a new way around shifted constraints. Neither you, nor they know where they’ll land. It won’t be a simple “they’ll do more X, less Y” or “X instead of Y”. They’ll reinvent who they are.
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True even for deceptively structured life changes like hiring someone away from another company. They aren’t just changing jobs for more money, to do the same thing for more. They’re usually reconfiguring their “life” solution.
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Replying to
idk if this is directly related, but it's kind of cosmically funny to me how many of my "best" behavior changes, in a "quantity has a quality of its own" sense, have been from me saying "what if we did that 1000 times"?
my dumb ass wants it to be about "purpose" & "motivation",
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recently some guy asked me for advice and it came in that same stale "profound" wrapping. he was like, "O, wise internet guy, how do I break out of this divine rut"
me: uh, go somewhere new
guy: how
me: go to the furthest you've been on something, then go further than that
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You’re still falling into the trap of giving actual advice/behavior change suggestions though. My gating criterion is: if it sounds like it requires “willpower” for *them* to do, don’t suggest it. That’s usually a reliable difference between a constraint shift and “advice”.

