In 2013, three authors (Quoibach, Gilbert, and Wilson) wrote a paper called ‘The End of History Illusion’. Its main finding was that, over our lives, we change more than we think we will.
In interviews with 19,000 people at ages from 18-68, the authors asked two questions:
How much have you changed in the last 10 years?
How much do you think you will change in the next 10 years?
At every age range, people recognize fairly accurately how much they have changed, but wildly underestimate how much they will change.
It seems, the authors note, that people believe, at basically every age, that we have now become the people we’re supposed to be, and that we are now fairly ‘set’ in our approach to life. And we are quite wrong about that.
I find this fascinating. And also useful - personally and professionally. It makes me consider two basic truths:
I have more capacity for change than I generally believe
And so do others
Other than the insight that 67-year old me might regret the tattoo that 42-year old me insisted on, there are other more important personal and global possibilities.
On the personal level, for example, 35-year old me was ‘not a gym person’, and was also significantly overweight. Whereas 43-year old me decided to simply become a gym person and, along with other decisions associated with believing myself to be strong and healthy, lost about 50 lbs. (Incidentally, post-pandemic, 47-year old me needs to remake some similar decisions! But I’m not that kind of middle-aged-go-getter-bike-15-miles-before-breakfast-fit-person!! But maybe I’m wrong about that!)
As I look out at U.S. society at the moment, there are community-level or national-level insights too.
For example, people who were staunchly anti-COVID vaccine, often changed their minds after a personal or family brush with death.
In the 1960s over 40% of adults smoked in the US, and now it’s fewer than 14%.
The number of American adults who believe that ‘most scientists think global warming is happening’ rose from a low of about 33% in 2010 to almost 60% in 2020. Still shockingly low it seems to me, but a significant change in 10 years.
So, sometimes, (maybe often), it takes an event or evolving societal norms to change our minds. If people around you don’t smoke, you’re less likely to as well. Or if your unvaccinated sister almost died from COVID, it might prompt you to reconsider your own vaccine stance. Or if my colleague, Jeremy1, could lose 50 lbs and get fit, maybe I could too.
But in other cases, we are able to gradually realize that we want to do something different or have something different. Perhaps you want to go for a walk without huffing and puffing. You want your kid to be safe at school. You want to have access to fresh food even if you’re on a budget. You want to know more of your neighbors.
And in almost all cases, what gets us to do something or have something different is to be someone different.
We have to decide to be a fit person, or a community garden organizer, or an advocate, or good neighbor in order to have health, and homegrown good, or safety, or neighborliness.
It’s deeply annoying, because although the decision can be rapid, the habit or practice - the effort - has to be consistent and takes time.
The two things I want to remind myself of though is that:
We can do it. We are more wired for change than we think. And in fact, when you really take that decision and believe in it, the change is inevitable. The internal change has already happened the moment you make that decision. It’s the external evidence of that change that takes a little while longer.
We only see the external evidence of other people’s changes. So first of all, we don’t know where they are in their internal ‘becoming’, and secondly, something might happen tomorrow to influence them differently. And it might be us.
Not his actual name, but along with a few hikes where I couldn’t keep up, a colleague really did inspire me to believe I could make changes to my health.