Did you know that the so-called self-help industry is estimated to be worth $13.2 billion in 2022, up from $9.9 billion in 2016? What does that tell you about personal growth these days? Several observations. First, if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s a growth industry. Second, self-improvement has become a part of our cultural landscape. Third, and to me most important, the industry is failing to deliver its promises of inner peace, enlightenment, health, well-being, happiness, success, and meaningful relationships. I’m not faulting the self-help industry. Most of those trying get a slice of that $13 billion pie are well meaning and are offering insights, perspectives, strategies, and tools that may actually help people find what they are seeking.
The problem is that change isn’t easy. In fact, it’s incredibly hard to the point where I would say that most people who try to make a significant positive change in their lives fail, and many more don’t even try. If change was easy, everyone would change in the ways they want and they could save their part of that $13 billion pie.
It’s easy to blame people for being weak, unmotivated, undisciplined, lazy, or lacking the will to change. And we can just as easily blame our popular and consumer cultures which convince people that change is easy if only you’re willing to pay for that book, podcast, online course, or life coach. But I believe that there is something much more fundamental to our difficulties with making positive changes in our lives.
Evolution Doesn’t Play Nice with Personal Growth
Our inability and, in fact, our resistance to change is caused by something far more elemental to our humanity, namely, evolution. Evolution and personal growth just don’t play nice together. This statement might seem contradictory because evolution is all about change. It involves making changes that help all creatures to adapt to their ever-changing environment, thus increasing their chances of survival. That might work at the broader species level and at the more physiological individual level, but it doesn’t work so well in ways that encourage our growth as sentient and feeling beings. In fact, as the title of this post suggests, when you try to become the best version of yourself, you’re attempting to resist not only 250,000 years of human evolution (a blink of an eye in evolutionary time) since we officially became Homo Sapiens on the Serengeti, but also the billions of years of evolution since we climbed out of the primordial muck and started living on solid ground.
Evolution has ingrained in us, and all living creatures, the survival instinct, which is aimed at ensuring that we continue to live, procreate, and propagate our species. Our survival instinct is comprised of a number of mechanisms that have worked really well at helping us survive over these many eons. But it is those very mechanisms that make it so difficult for us to evolve as people in search of our best selves.
Over the billions of years of evolution as both animals and humans, our survival instinct has helped ensure our survival by reducing threats to our lives and encourages equilibrium and comfort. Evolution has created in us three states that, we experience as a threat to our survival—unfamiliarity, unpredictability, and lack of control—and which we seek to avoid because in primitive times, when we experienced those three states, death was probably not far behind.
Now, moving forward in time to the present, these are the very qualities that we feel when we consider making some sort of change in our lives, whether internal (e.g., re-experiencing painful memories, being optimistic) or external (e.g., end a marriage, change jobs). Change, meaning something new and different, by definition elicits these three states which we have evolved to avoid. We humans can maintain our feelings of familiarity, predictability, and control by staying in our comfort zone, mitigating risks, and avoiding negative emotions. These states, that have been so vital our survival as a species, prevent us from evolving as people and becoming the best version of ourselves. In other words, for us to grow as people, we must resist billions of years of evolution and embrace those three states that were so fundamental to our survival.
Another “Instinct” Does Play Nice with Personal Growth
Fortunately, there is another drive that has evolved in us that is more aligned with our desire to grow into the best versions of ourselves and that can act as a counterbalance to our survival instinct. I put “instinct” in quotes because an extensive search of the internet uncovered no evidence that this quality in us has been officially labeled an instinct by evolutionary scientists. At the same time, there is consensus among experts that this drive is genetic, has been present for most of human existence, and is evident across all cultures. I call it the “thrival instinct” at the heart of which is curiosity, an interest in exploration, and the desire to go beyond what is comfortable and familiar.
The thrival instinct drives us to grow and flourish, push outside of our comfort zone, overcome our self-perceived limits, see what we are truly capable of, and think, feel, and live life in the most meaningful, fulfilling, and joyful way. In sum, thrival means to want to be better, feel better, do better, and live better. The thrival instinct makes it possible—though still very difficult—for us to change and grow.
The thrival instinct is what has driven humans to all of the developments and achievements that have brought us to where we are today. On a grand scale, this instinct is what propelled us to explore our planet and beyond, discover and explain what had been the mysteries of our world, and invent technologies that have led us to life in the modern world. On a personal level, the thrival instinct has compelled us to pursue an education, climb mountains, learn musical instruments, and challenge ourselves in a multitude of ways psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Evolution has provided us with a set of emotions that helps us survive, whether unpleasant emotions such as fear, frustration, and anger, or pleasant ones including love, hope, and surprise. Evolution has also instilled in us another set of emotions that fuel our desire to thrive: inspiration, excitement, pride, satisfaction, admiration, and even curiosity and boredom. These are the emotions we feel when we attempt to thrive in our lives, and which encourage us to continue to engage in thrival experiences.
The challenge with the thrival instinct is that it is subordinate to our survival instinct for the simple reason that we can’t thrive unless we survive. From an evolutionary perspective, survival was more important because the environments in which we lived in the past were quite hostile (e.g., hot or cold weather, limited water and food, predatory animals, rival tribes) requiring us to first evolve in ways that ensured our ability to survive in those difficult environs.
Only once humans were able to survive by meeting their basic needs did the thrival instinct gain prominence. It is probably no surprise then that, in the last 50 years, as life in the developed world has become more stable, safe, and comfortable, in other words, simply surviving was no longer a significant concern for most of us, has the thrival instinct been able to take precedence. As the thrival instinct has come to the fore for many of us, the desire to do more than merely survive has strengthened and, not surprisingly, the personal-growth industry has naturally tapped into that growing need and flourished as we have sought ways to thrive.
Now that you understand, from a very elemental perspective, why personal growth is so difficult, in my next article, I will show you how, by leveraging the very forces of evolution that hold us back, you can resist billions of years of evolution to assert your thrival instinct and facilitate positive changes in your life.
