It's time to rewire ourselves
Swapping Safety and Stability for Purpose and Agility
Humans, at a very primal level, are wired to seek safety and stability.
The problem is - safety and stability don’t exist. Which is why we need to pivot and re-wire ourselves.
Safety & stability don’t exist. We need to pivot and re-wire ourselves.
Let me explain. Our distant ancestors (the cave-dwelling ones) were primarily concerned with staying safe and finding some sort of stability. Job number one was to constantly be on the lookout for food.
Hunting. Gathering. Whatever it took to stay alive.
Job number two was to keep from becoming food or otherwise dying. Whether it was evading predators or trying to avoid eating poisonous berries and mushrooms. Safety was a full-time job. Eventually we realized there’s safety in numbers and it’s easier to have more people sharing the hunting / gathering workload.
Fast-forward to contemporary times. The vast majority of us aren’t preoccupied with where our next meal will come from. Instead, we stress about whether they’ll remember to send along the right dipping sauce this time.
[Edit: One of my subscribers kindly brought it to my attention that my characterization of “contemporary times” is an inaccurate overgeneralization based on my privileged position. I acknowledge that for far too many folks, the struggle for survival and security is still very real. ]
We feel like we’ve conquered the forces of nature that threatened the basic survival of our distant ancestors. We’ve traded our caves for condos. We have mass agriculture. We have an incredible array of medicines available to address a host of illnesses and accidents. We’ve prevailed!! Right?
And yet... there’s still that part of our primal brain that’s constantly scanning for threats. Constantly seeking safety and stability.
The fundamental paradox of the human condition is that while we’re primed to seek safety, each one of us is mortal. The one thing none of us can ever be safe from is death. As the saying goes: “No one gets out of here alive”.
So is it any wonder we all seem crazy from time to time? We’re constantly looking for something we know doesn’t exist. We spend an incredible amount of mental energy trying to ignore, deny or simply hide from the basic fact that all living things will one day die.
At this point, you might be saying “Ok, fine - we’re all mortal. But at least we have much more stability now than our primitive ancestors did.”
Yeah, about that. Stability is another myth.
So many things in our world that we once thought of as bedrock stable are now cracking and crumbling. And many days the pace of instability seems to be picking up speed. I won’t dwell on this or get into specific examples but I’m sure more than a few have already popped into your mind.
It’s time to pivot.
The Mortality Mindset is about using the cold-hard reality of our mortality as an anchor point from which we can pivot to a new way of thinking.
Yes, our primal instincts revolve around seeking safety and stability. But we can make conscious efforts to replace these ideas with new ones. I believe we’re better served by being focused on purpose and agility.
I’ll go deeper into these in a future newsletter, but for now let me give a quick introduction to the concepts. (Please feel free to add your comments, thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.)
From Safety to Purpose
Imagine this for a second… Rather than trying to live a life where we always feel 100% safe, what if we pledged to life a purposeful life? One where we could be ok with all of the uncertainty about WHAT could happen and WHEN it might happen, because we’re comforted by deliberately choosing the WHY of how we live? That’s the power of purpose.
From Stability to Agility
Now try this one on… What if we replaced our reliance on stability (a factor that’s entirely out of our control anyhow) with a passion to develop a sense of agility? Being able to roll with things and adapt to evolving situations. This quote captures this idea beautifully:
“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not in the branch, but in her own wings.”
Moving away from Safety and Stability and towards Purpose and Agility. Are you willing to join me in making the pivot?
Thank you for sharing. As I read, I was reminded of many years ago while at university, studying psychology and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Food and shelter are first priorities followed by all of the other needs. While we can never avoid the human need, we can certainly rewire and rethink how we face each day, what we aim to accomplish, and the good we can do. I enjoy all of your notes. Nakurmiik!