Throughout my first week of writing I noticed some patterns begin to emerge both in the writing itself and the ideas floating around my head. One major theme that I found coming up repeatedly was the idea of “survival vs comfort.” It’s a framework I’ve used before to explain different behavioral concepts to people. I feel like it is core to my philosophy of self improvement.

I originally chose to study psychology so that I could better understand how our brains worked, both biologically AND cognitively. I was raised in an environment of self improvement. My parents were big advocates of self development teachers like Tony Robbins, and introduced me to concepts of self development fairly early. They also raised me to be aware and critical of my actions and choices. They instilled an ability to analyze my own thoughts and behaviors from a young age. 

Unfortunately, this backfired. As the awkward self-consciousness of adolescence took hold I began judging myself very harshly. Every mistake I made and everything I disliked about myself all came to the forefront of my focus. When I took a psychology course in high school I found the subject fascinating because it gave me a look inside what our brains do and how they work. Maybe psychology could teach me how to stop being so miserable all the time.

Evolution of the Brain

The modern problems we face are largely the result of the brain misattributing uncomfortability as a threat to our survival.

As I entered college and gained a more firm grasp on evolution, I started realizing all of the psychological concepts I was learning had to have evolved. That meant the vast majority of the things our brains do were at one point useful functions that helped keep us alive and reproducing. 

For example, we feel a physical reaction to social rejection (romantic or otherwise) because we evolved to be social animals. Humans’ evolutionary strength lies in their ability to communicate and work together. One human by themselves is likely a dead human, but 50-60 humans working together is a lot harder to kill off. The tribe offered safety, and evolution slowly weeded out anyone dumb enough to not realize that. Now, millions of years later we only have people who are sensitive to social acceptance. Social acceptance was vital to survival, and the protohumans who did not cooperate with the tribe were left behind. No passing on their genes, and no survival.

How does this help us improve ourselves today? We can begin to answer this question by considering time scales. Evolution occurs on a time scale millions and even billions of years in the making. Life is estimated to have first appeared on Earth 3.4 BILLION years ago. Evolution has been running for 3.4 billion years, but Homo Sapien Sapiens (us) are estimated to have first emerged only about 200,000 years ago. You can trace pre-human evolution back millions of years before that. 

All of that is to say that our brains are the product of at very least MILLIONS of years of evolution. We mark the emergence of “modern” humans with the invention of farming. When humans stopped roaming around and figured out that they could farm food a shift occurred. The advent of farming is considered to be the start of modern civilization because humans began to settle into communities and build permanent structures.

Evolution vs Society

What makes any of this relevant to us today? Two things. First, modern civilization marks the end of a significant number of traditional survival problems for humans. Second, when we consider the timescales involved, we have millions of years of evolution against about 10,000 years of modern civilization. 

If we consider the problems that modern society solves we see that life shifted drastically when we stopped roaming around. We no longer had to hunt and scavenge all of our food. It was no longer a possibility, but a guarantee. We no longer had to protect ourselves from the same threats. Elements and wildlife became less problematic and threats became internal. Other people and their violent or social threats became the new problems. 

You Can’t Outrun Your Past

Take time scale into consideration and you expose the root of the problem. Modern civilization has advanced from figuring out we can grow food ourselves to leaving the planet in 10,000 years. We went from sailing across an ocean in a matter of months to flying across it in less than a day in the span of 400 years. We went from writing letters and delivering them by foot to being able to message someone anywhere in the world instantly. Books and lectures were the best way to transmit information to a large audience until about 40 years ago, and now we can spread information (or disinformation) to the entire world at the click of a button. 

The point is, modern society has advanced at a rate that evolution cannot keep up with. Our evolutionary minds have not had the time necessary to catch up with our society. We are trying to contend with the new problems of the modern era with equipment that was developed to keep us from being eaten by lions and figured tying a sharp rock to a stick was that millennia‘s crowning achievement. The conflict between our brains having evolved for one environment and our modern society not being anything close to that environment has created a number of unique problems, and I believe that understanding the gap between these two realms is key to understanding and improving ourselves.

Modern Society + Ancient Brains = Bad Time

Let me provide an example; the obesity epidemic. According to the CDC the rate of obesity in the United States stands at ~42% of adults. Nearly half. That has increased from ~26% in 2008. So how do we apply this evolutionary framework to understand and eventually solve this problem? 

Start by considering that your brain’s primary objective is to keep you alive. Remember that your brain evolved to do this in conditions that were very different from modern times. Back then, the food you ate was the food you found, and probably the food you killed. You were never guaranteed a next meal. It could be weeks before you get food again, and your brain evolved through millions of years of proto-humans dying to contend with this problem.

If your brain found a source of food that was high in calories, or “energy dense,” it would recognize that food as valuable to your survival. Berries, high in natural sugars, were a better source of energy than say celery, which is basically water. Over time, the humans that ate energy dense foods tended to be better off than those that didn’t. Evolution takes over and through thousands of years physical systems in your brain emerged to reward the consumption of energy dense foods. 

This way, future generations of humans would prioritize food that was better at keeping them alive. Take that system of rewarding the eating of energy dense foods and put it into a society that has an abundance of food and exploits the addictive nature of “energy dense” foods for profit. You have an evolutionary system that rewards you (with dopamine) for choosing foods that your brain thinks will prevent you from starving, in a society where as long as you have money you will not starve. 

The evolutionary system that prioritizes foods is too automatic to be able to understand that it is unhealthy to eat a pint of ice cream every night. It’s a system that is so old evolutionary that it does not require conscious thought to run, like your heartbeat. It is built in. The reward system is operating under the assumption that you may not eat again for a while and it wants to put on fat in case you go for a few weeks without food. But when no such danger of starvation exists the system careens out of control due to the ease of access to foods that are artificially enhanced to be “energy dense” (packed full of sugar and empty calories) so that they take advantage of this system. 

These evolutionary systems are online and running constantly, regardless of whether or not they are needed. Because they were needed at one point and we have not had time for evolution to catch up with modern society the system runs unchecked. Obesity is the result of our brains rewarding the consumption of energy dense foods like sugar thinking we may not eat for an extended period of time. Each and every time the opportunity to choose something unhealthy and calorie rich comes up the reward centers of the brain light up because the system “thinks” you may not eat again. 

Understand that this is only a model to explain modern problems from an evolutionary perspective. It is a way to consider why modern problems are the way they are. If we can understand how our brains are misusing these evolutionary systems we can begin to strategize ways to circumvent them. 

To simplify this into a tweetable idea (another problem of the modern era – attention span):

“The modern problems we face are largely the result of the brain misattributing uncomfortability as a threat to our survival.”

Being Uncomfortable Won’t Kill You (It Usually Helps)

Whenever you feel the resistance to something in your life, consider whether or not it is a survival mechanism being misused. For example, the number one fear in the United States is public speaking. Something that, unless you are a president in the 20th century, is virtually harmless. There is exactly 0 percent chance speaking in public will KILL you. The uncomfortability is your brain’s SURVIVAL mechanisms, in this case fight or flight, trying to prevent you from threatening your own life. 

The systems that were once responsible for keeping you alive are now making you miserable.

Imagine the scenario I described earlier in which your place in the tribe is vital to your survival and ability to reproduce. If you got up in front of your tribe and made a fool of yourself you were risking your social standing. That meant that your chances of being able to reproduce (the ultimate goal of all life) could be threatened if you said something stupid. Social embarrassment used to be a significant risk, and your brain still considers it one. I experience a bit of this resistance and fear whenever I am about to post an article. It is what kept me from starting a blog for the last few years. Despite me knowing how these systems work I was still met with the fear and resistance designed to keep me safe.

But in the modern era, it is unlikely that any group of people you interact with in a public way is “vital” to your survival. Therefore, when our brains are trying to stop us in order to protect us it is because your brain is confusing uncomfortability with survival. Speaking in public is uncomfortable, but it will not harm your chances of survival or reproduction (probably.) 

Returning to the obesity example, the same is true. The resistance someone feels when considering cleaning up their diet and being healthy is partly due to the fact that your brain believes you will starve if you do not continue eating the food that is guaranteed to be more efficient in the long run. Your brain believes stopping you is a matter of survival, and creates resistance to stop you.

A considerable number of modern problems fall into this paradigm. Your brain resists change because change is uncertain and could risk death. In survival times it was advantageous to stick with what worked. Exploring new areas meant having to learn where all the new berry bushes and animal dens were, but staying put you knew where everything was. 

The systems that were once responsible for keeping you alive are now making you miserable. What once kept people from starving is now causing them to eat themselves to death. What kept you in the good graces of the tribe and protected your image is now ostracizing you.

Change is risky from an evolutionary perspective. Managing the smallest amount of risk possible in order to get what you need to stay alive is smart when dangers are everywhere and resources take time and energy to collect. 

What’s important about this idea of survival vs comfort? If you are not conscious about your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors you allow your brain to confuse the two and it will act on the survival instincts your brain has in response. What makes people defensive during confrontation or arguments? A perceived threat to their identity and social standing, or an attack on something they are insecure about. What do animals do when cornered? They fight back. 

We’ve all experienced someone seemingly overly sensitive about an argument, and we’ve all experienced that sensitivity ourselves. By understanding how our brains are wired and WHAT they were wired for we can begin to understand the ways our equipment is failing us in the modern era. 

How to Stop Trying

But what do we do about it? Once we understand the ways our brain is misguided in trying to protect us and keep us alive we can begin to design systems to circumvent. Let’s consider the obesity example again. If you know your brain will always select addicting, high calorie foods if given the chance, we can begin to design a system to help limit that behavior. We can use our higher thinking not to force but to go around, under, over, or to avoid the problem entirely. 

It takes considerable time, energy, and willpower to be constantly fighting your urges all day every day. It’s often unsustainable. Instead, the goal should be to minimize the amount of time and energy spent on these problems because as you continue to fight your ability to resist these responses can fail. 

Making it harder to get the high calorie foods, reducing their consumption slowly over time, trying to exercise a bit so that you feel incentivized to eat better are all ways to help curb the tendency to eat unhealthy foods. Being overly reactive and sensitive to confrontation? Begin practicing mindfulness so that you can notice those feelings as they emerge. Shift your perspective about confrontation so that you look at it as a learning opportunity or a time to practice patience. Invest in developing who you are and the lifestyle you live to build a sense of self confidence. 

What’s important about this idea of survival vs comfort is that we need to learn to observe the times where we are trying to do something different with our lives, physically, mentally, or emotionally. When we feel resistance to those changes we are trying to make we can remind ourselves that our brain is afraid of change and is mistaking discomfort for survival threat. When you begin to analyze the world from this perspective you realize that most of what we experience on a day-to-day basis is really mundane and not nearly as big of a deal as our brains are making it out to be. 

The Major Takeaway

your brain has all sorts of methods to keep you alive that evolved over millions of years, and these methods are not going away anytime soon. In our modern society, where most threats to our wellbeing are more perceptual than real our brains cannot tell the difference. It engages the fight or flight reflex in situations that pose no real danger to us, and this prevents us from acting in a productive way. 

By understanding this we can begin to observe the ways our brain resists change and difficult situations and learn to circumvent it. Design systems in your behavior and your life that make change easy and resistance difficult. Trying to lose weight? Don’t buy junk food and keep it in the house. Trying to start exercising? Start small and create a daily habit that builds over time. Struggle to handle confrontation? Learn mindfulness, build self-confidence, and cultivate a razor sharp eye for opportunities to learn and improve. Turn an uncomfortable situation into a growth point for yourself. 

Most modern problems are simply a result of our brains misinterpreting situations. When looked at objectively with an understanding of the survival mechanisms we have in place we can regain our ability to choose rather than react. Pay attention to what your brain is resisting and learn to understand it. From there you can begin to plan how to make a change. Brute force can work, but often it’s more effective to flow like water. Yes I just finished a post with a quote from Bruce Lee.