Human beings are the only animals in existence that when pushed past their limits, spontaneously make massive changes in lifestyle that seemingly solve all of their problems overnight. We call it hitting Rock Bottom.
Before hitting Rock Bottom, every incremental load of stress on a person degrades their quality of life with no real positive outlook. This is called living in No Manâs Land, where you are not quite excited about your future but not unhappy enough to make any changes to your present. The goal in No Manâs land is to simply stay comfortable and avoid stress.
And so despite still feeling stress, we stick to our routines and patterns that make us feel safe. Seeking solutions only where it feels acceptable. Psychologists call this the streetlight effect - our bias to search for solutions where it is psychologically easiest to look.Â
The story goes - a drunken man loses his glasses during a night on the town. His friends find him on his hands and knees searching for them under a streetlight, even though he knows he lost them somewhere else. âWhy are you searching under the streetlightâ they ask him. âBecause thereâs more light I can see betterâ he responds.
The streetlight is our safety zone. But what if the answers to all of our problems existed beyond the thing we call our limits?
What if we could skip No Manâs Land and head straight to Rock Bottom.
What if we had the power at any given moment, to leave behind who we think we are to become the person we want to be
And what if beyond that thing we call our limits, is all of the reward, love, and satisfaction we have ever wanted in life.
I write these questions with a sigh of humility because I know most of us reading this wonât make any changes to their life. Not being able to solve our problems makes us feel special, important, and enough. We tell ourselves if we could solve our problems we would have already done it. Rock bottom unfortunately doesnât come from something you read online, it comes from inside.
Whether you believe that a better life is possible or not, you are right.
Below are my failed attempts at getting ChatGPT to create a humorous depiction of the streetlight effect and failing. For some reason it insists on putting the missing object directly under the streetlight
May you find rock bottom in 2024