The Everyday Marksman

I was reflecting on something Lanny Bassham wrote in his book, With Winning in Mind. It's something that I reference a lot, and definitely suggest giving it a read. When discussing selecting the right goal, Lanny says that you should pick something that you're willing to trade your life for. He doesn't mean that in the literal sense of dying for your goal. Rather, it's a figurative statement about giving up the life you lead now for the attainment of that goal. If it's not powerful enough, then you won't do it.

In the last episode, we talked about the Martial Marksman mindset, I had an aside about homeostasis. The context was that driving change in your life means introducing some stress. That stress could be physical, mental, or something else. The point was that introducing sufficient stress signals to your mind and body that something must change in order to make the stress less impactful the next time.

While writing all of that post, I had a very long aside about how difficult this actually is. Eventually, I decided to break it off into its own article- which I'm sharing with you today.

I don't want to undersell just how difficult it is to make this process happen. Part of it is that change happens slowly. You will not get the kind of improvements you want to see after just a handful of exposure to the right kind of stress. It takes hundreds, if not thousands, of exposures over time to make this happen. Eventually, and probably a lot sooner rather than later, pursuing this kind of change runs into the homeostasis problem.

The Homeostasis Problem

If you recall, homeostasis is the tendency towards stable equilibrium between interdependent elements. When it comes to driving change, you might think of this as a "status quo bias." We tend to want to keep things as they are because it's familiar and comfortable.

This all makes sense when you're thinking about introducing stress by lifting a weight, or building a habit for dry practice.

But here's where the problem comes in: usually, the "interdependent elements" part of the equation include more than yourself. Humans are social creatures, and we tend to surround ourselves with people "like us." Your lifestyle, as it exists today, is probably organized in a way to best support the current status quo.

For example, let's say you get back from a long day at work to have dinner with the family. After the kid(s) go to bed, you and your wife have a ritual of talking for a while then watching something on Netflix for a bit. After that, you scroll social media and trade a few posts, then go to bed. Both of you probably view this as "together time." So what happens if you decide that you want to spend 30 minutes per day practicing rifle drills by yourself, and the only time available is when you would be watching Netflix together?

That's the challenge. When you introduce stress to drive a change, you're not just pushing against your own willpower. You're pushing against your entire lifestyle and social circle, elements that have little to no reason to challenge the status quo.

If you aren't aware of this problem, then it's easy to abandon the new habit and any change you were hoping to develop out of it. It's easy because everything else in your life is literally organized against you.

Working the Problem

Going back to the "together time" example. At first, you probably won't think this is an issue. You feel good about doing something more productive with your time, and you start picking up little wins and showing progress against the clock. Not long later, though, your wife starts getting upset that you never spend time with her anymore. She misses hanging out with you and watching shows together.