Complacency Kills
Rising from Complacency: A Systemic Approach to Never Falling Back
Every single one of us is guilty of ignoring advice or thinking we’re special or the exception to the rule and “Oh, that could never happen to me. I would never”.
That hubris could very well be your downfall because life is ever-changing and short-term results (which in the game of life can be considered as long as a decade) don’t necessarily equal long-term results.
A life lesson so simple yet profound that I’m extremely surprised I’ve never heard before is this:
As you go through life and accomplish the things you set out to accomplish, the reasons why you started and what motivated you to become/do whatever it is you set out to do can completely change or become irrelevant.
Take a second to re-read that and really internalize it.
This is fine if we’re talking about destination-oriented goals—meaning once you achieve it, it’s not something you have to pursue anymore.
This could be things like becoming rich because once you reach a certain threshold, what we often refer to as financial independence, you can continue to maintain your lifestyle from the fruits of previous effort (via passive income or enough you could never spend it all), and as long as you don’t make huge mistakes then it’s not something you ever have to focus on or pursue again.
I use the wealth example because unfortunately, the majority of people measure their self-worth and success almost solely from this one aspect of life. (but this is a convo for another day).
A lot of people then think about most goals in this “destination-oriented” mindset or paradigm, which is fine, but it’s far less conducive to overall success and happiness than being more processed-oriented (as I’ve talked about in my post on Systems).
The Importance of a Process-Oriented Mindset
Where issues can start to rear their ugly face is when applying that mindset to goals that DON’T have a destination, which encompasses things like health and fitness.
You (hopefully) don’t want to spend all that time getting into great shape and creating a state of health that makes you feel good, energetic, virile, etc. just to get there and say “Oh, well that was cool, time to stop, chronic illness and feeling like shit sounds great, time to cut my life short a decade or two”,
No, you do this because you want lasting change and benefits, you want to feel good and be healthy for as long as you can with your precious time on this planet.
This sounds simple enough and is inherently common sense, right?
The issue is, and I can speak for myself here, there was a reason or a “why” many of us started this lifestyle and pushed us to build this great state of health and physique.
For many guys, especially those who started as teenagers, the reason was to try to get more girls. Then you have another huge number who started because they wanted to improve at whatever sports they played. Or maybe more than any other reason is the insecurity and shame of being overweight.
You might be like myself and so many others who started because they were at rock bottom and struggled with having no purpose, depression/mental health issues, or needed an outlet for addiction. Whatever it is, doesn’t matter, the point here is there is almost always an initial spark that got us started and pushed us to where we are now.
After a certain point, it’s almost a universal phenomenon that we realize that we don’t really care about *that* anymore and we just keep going because it’s so ingrained in our life that we do it because we basically “need” it and it’s as natural as showering or brushing your teeth.
This happens because we’ve effectively rewired our brains and built the habits of eating right, working out, and all the other healthy things we do.
BUT, what happens if we get complacent and start to unravel this habit?
It’s easier than most think.
How Complacency Sets In
It starts with skipping a session or two because of what could be perfectly valid reasons. Then your diet slips but you don’t really see the consequences for a decent amount of time.
Maybe you start skipping an exercise here and there because you just hate doing it. On top of all this, you get a little injury that keeps you away for a couple of weeks… now if we scale this out, we can essentially kill our good habits with a death by 1000 cuts.
As we speak, some of you at this point are guilty of doing exactly what I said in the first sentence of this post… “that’d never happen to me.”
I genuinely hope it doesn’t, but if it was uncommon, then we’d see so, so, so many more people over the age of 40 in great shape… but the reality is, it’s rare; many fall off the horse, many who said: “that’d never happen to me”.
Why it happens could be a million different reasons, but there is a key component I see in those who struggle to get back into it—which, unfortunately, most never do—hence why I’m writing this so it doesn’t become you.
Back to my point about our initial whys and motivations; this is extremely important because as life goes on, often those initial factors that pushed us are gone and we’re now just on auto-pilot from those habits.
Hence if you lose those habits, it can be pretty damn hard to get going again because change is extremely hard, our brains do everything to resist it, so the driving forces to get back into things need to be very strong to overcome this. Thinking back to the initial “whys”, they were probably extremely strong—for many ways stronger than really anything we could come up with now because we’ve improved our lives and/or accomplished that “why”, which is a breeding ground for complacency.
On top of this, you could be like me who started young with zero responsibilities, but now has a wife, children, businesses, and other legitimate responsibilities that take time and effort.
Quite frankly, and I know this is true for so, so many people, you’ve reached a point where you’re just comfortable with where you are. Life is good, could be better, but also could be worse. You hopefully are even comfortable with yourself, and all these things are great, but they don’t exactly inspire major change.
These things can provide enough friction that getting back to those old good habits (and breaking the bad, which is a battle in itself) can feel impossible.
Add on to that, after doing this for so long, you might not even remember the little tricks and stuff you used in the first place to build those habits.
This is an entire recipe for disaster, for becoming a “has been” like we all know so many of.
Now, it’s hard to catch yourself in the act when you’re starting to become complacent and slipping up, it’s easy to justify and intellectualize it away as just being temporary or just really not a big deal.
It’s also one of those hard lessons many just have to experience so that they can internalize and actually learn it.
This is why it’s extremely important to develop mindfulness and humility to the fact that we’re all human and this could happen to anyone.
This is why becoming process-oriented instead of destination-oriented is a major key to long-term success.
This is why we have to keep evolving and looking for more reasons “why” and to keep stoking the flames of our desires and motivations because that fire can burn out if we don’t keep them maintained.
Starting at Level 0 and Climbing to Level 100
Now if this happens or even has happened to you, then you’re not hopeless, not even remotely; however, you have to ground yourself and become realistic about what it’s going to take to get back to peak form.
More likely than not, you’re not going to be able to go 0 to 100 overnight and pick up where you left off. No, you’re going to have to go through the process of slowly building those habits and physically rewiring your brain to get back to the point where it feels “automatic” again.
Many quit because they get frustrated they can’t get everything 100% and struggle to get the ball rolling, which often manifests in a sort of “all-or-nothing” thinking—this is very, very bad.
Rather, you have to push through and appreciate the little wins because those are the bricks that slowly build the house. Even if it’s small wins like just getting a couple of workouts a week or stringing together a couple of days of eating right, these wins build momentum which will snowball into bigger and bigger wins.
Eventually, you go from being proud for not skipping any workouts that week to beating yourself up because you might’ve been able to get another rep on that heavy set—your reward feedback and level of habit scales like this, both feel like they have the same relative level of challenge/difficulty because it’s all relative to the level of habit they’re built on.
That’s a great way to think about habits, almost like a level system from a video game. What feels difficult at level 1 and level 100 are leagues apart, but to you, at the time they feel nearly equal in terms of your perception of them. You can’t get to level 100’s perception until you’ve built and layered 99 levels under it.
Eventually, getting into the gym or not going over your calorie goals will feel as difficult as dieting down to single-digit body fat with all your meals perfectly timed and waking up extra early to get that extra cardio session in—again, it’s all relative to your level of habits because those previous challenges have become automatic which allows you to build on them and focus on bigger and better things.
Creating Positive Mental Feedback Loops/Breaking All-or-Nothing Thinking
Understanding this can make getting back into things way easier because you’re not focusing on getting back to the daunting goal of whatever your peak was. No, your focus is just on making sure you get all your scheduled gym sessions done and eating what you’re supposed to. Over time, focusing on doing this will get you back to that peak form and you won’t constantly be beating yourself up for not being there anymore.
Letting yourself have these little mental wins is crucial for 2 very important reasons:
It is helping you create a positive feedback loop with your reward systems in your brain
This is how we can avoid or break “all-or-nothing” or “black-or-white” thinking habits
It is okay to feel proud of these small wins, even if it feels “beneath” what you’re capable of, while also being aware that you want bigger and better things in the future. A good way to look at them is these small wins are the building blocks for bigger wins. This type of mental model allows you to be both satisfied with what you’ve done while avoiding becoming complacent with where you are.
Creating Systems To Avoid Ever “Falling Off” Again
If you’ve ever “had it all”, lost it, then clawed your way back, you’ll know just how important never letting that happen again becomes mentally.
Because you’ve gone full circle, you have experience to draw on to know exactly what pitfalls and bad habits to avoid. If you can create a system that allows the good habits to flourish while creating failsafes to ensure the bad habits never come back, then you can essentially use “lessons learned” to never allow it to happen again.
So, if you’re currently struggling to get back to where you once were (or where you want to be if you’ve never been there), then this is the way you should view the setbacks you’ve had, as valuable teachers, instead of letting it hurt your confidence in yourself because someone not confident they can do/achieve something is a person who’s much less likely to achieve it.
Like how our brains are resistant to change, they are also resistant to doing things they don’t actually have much faith they can achieve (this is where we see people do things like unconsciously self-sabotage).
On top of this, systems, lifestyle design, and habits all work hand-in-hand together because to create a good system, we have to look at our lifestyle design to make this system work best.
When we do this, it creates less friction/more flow of our days, which makes doing the things we need to create the good habits even easier to accomplish, and then as we keep getting the reps in and accomplishing these tasks, we allow ourselves to keep improving the system.
Finding Our “Process” Is The Result We Want
Assuming your life doesn’t take any massive curveballs, once we get where we want and as the habits become deeply ingrained, we should have the awareness and mental playbook to essentially keep ourselves here without allowing the old bad habits to knock us back off again.
In a sense, the “result-oriented” goal we are looking for is the “process” that will allow us to keep being the people we want to be and keep getting the results we want—funny how that works, ehh? The goal is to find out what system best supports us to BE a certain way because if we can operate from that personal state, getting the results and achieving the goals we want is just kind of a byproduct of who we are.
In more plain English, we want to create an environment that allows us to be the best versions of ourselves while avoiding falling into bad habits that will limit our potential and experience in this life.
This is a better way than being pure “result-oriented” because life goes on after you achieve these goals and so, so many fall into a sense of purposelessness or at best a chronic boredom until the next goal… so instead we can just avoid that whole valley of despair and understand happiness comes from who we are and what we do, rather than what we’ve done.
Complacency Is a Slow Death
All this is great, but at the end of the day, there is a reason we say “complacency kills” and why being complacent feels so bad and often creates bad results.
In life, you can get complacent, and maybe even comfortable, but deep down you’ll be miserable. You know, I know, we all know it.
On the flip side, anything that actually makes us feel good, sustainably, usually sucks to achieve and often sucks once you get there to maintain it, but you will know deep down that you’re doing something worthwhile and you’ll get to experience a level of happiness or satisfaction that doesn’t come with any strings attached in the form of “I know I could do more and be more” in the back of your head.
That is the price, that is the trade you make. It comes back to delayed vs instant gratification.
So, knowing this, no matter how bad things have gotten or how much you’re struggling to get where you want, it should be the only option because the other option is a slow death before you physically die and nights awake with regret that you weren’t the person for yourself, your family, and left a lot of “what if’s” that will never be answered in your one shot at this life thing.
Because of this, you have to keep pushing and figure it out, because you’re absolutely capable of doing it, and the reward is so much greater than anything a few moments of dopamine and comfort that choosing the “easy wrong” over the “hard right” will provide.
This is what I’ll be going over in depth in my next post, how to build this unbreakable resilience and keep in pursuit of whatever it is you're after, no matter how much life throws at your face.
TLDR;
Hubris Leads to Downfall: Believing one is immune to common pitfalls can lead to failure.
Motivation Shifts: Initial reasons for pursuing goals can change, impacting long-term commitment.
Process Over Destination: Emphasize ongoing process for goals without endpoints, like health.
Danger of Complacency: Small lapses can accumulate, leading to significant setbacks.
Rebuilding Habits: Focus on small, incremental victories rather than immediate peak performance.
Systematic Lifestyle: Create systems to support and maintain good habits.
Positive Mental Feedback: Use small wins to break all-or-nothing thinking and foster motivation.
Life Philosophy: True satisfaction from continuous self-improvement, not just achievements.
#WAGMI
Your friend,
- BowTiedOx
DISCLAIMER
This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Please consult a medical professional before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol. These are opinions from a Cartoon Ox. Bob Saget.
I have needed this post for the last couple months! Thank you for explaining my wallowing inspiration, I no longer have the same motivations for my long distance running, but also know how much I love it (or the satisfaction making it through a demanding training cycle) Thank you, looking forward to your next post : ))
I really enjoy your writing style. What resonates with me is the lifestyle design. I have ADHD so building in the fail-safe routine is extremely important for me.