There are tremendous resources about how to build new habits, giving up old habits, new diets, quitting smoking etc. But not enough about why we do what we do. After reading this book, my belief is that the biggest lever for changing our behavior is actually insights into why we do what we do. And in order to use insights, we need to understand them better.
There are countless ways to know something and many varieties of knowing.
Intellectual Knowledge
We are all familiar with the knowing that is associated with our intellect. This type of knowing is fact-based or procedural types of intellectual knowledge. That type of knowing tends to feel relatively clear—you know that you know some things, and you know that you don’t know others. Intellectual knowing is improved by studying, practicing, rehearsing, memorizing, and other active pursuits. You seek out information, and that information adds to the base of knowledge you can (usually) access when needed. The capital of Canada, how to change a tire, lyrics to a song are all intellectual knowledge.
Insightful Knowledge
A different type of knowing is insightful knowledge. What you know insightfully tends to feel quite different from what you know intellectually, because insight is a deeper sort of truth.
Often you’d be hard pressed to explain how you came to know them or why you feel the way you do.
While intellectual knowing comes about actively, through reading or rehearsing information, insightful knowledge comes about more passively, through - you guessed it - insight. There is nothing you have to do - nothing you even can do - to guarantee an insight. Insight often occurs when you are open-minded and you aren’t thinking too much about anything in particular.
Insight Changes Behavior; Intellectual Knowledge May Not. Intellectual understanding gives you a fuller perspective on concepts, but it doesn’t necessarily affect you personally. Insight, on the other hand, changes you from the inside out.
Insights are most often small and subtle. It’s not just that you might not have a lightning-bolt-from-the-sky kind of experience; you might not even realize you had an insight at all until your behavior changes or life simply starts to feel different in some relatively subtle or indescribable way. Insight imparts the sense that “nothing changes, but everything is different.”
Insights bring change by “seeing” rather than “doing”. Once you see why you have certain behaviors (and you decide that you don’t want them), it brings change.
If you could force insight, you surely would have by now. Although there is nothing you can do to produce deep insight, there are a few conditions that encourage it.
Give your intellect a break. The best thing you can do is this. Don’t think too hard. When you hear a new idea or perspective on your habit—on anything in life—and you begin analyzing it, comparing and contrasting it with other things you’ve heard, you end up squarely in the realm of intellectual understanding.
Meditate. Meditation puts you in the seat of an observer. Instead of intellectualizing, you become an observer of your thought and belief patterns. Often insights emerge from this.
Talk to a therapist. In meditation, you are an observer of your thoughts. In therapy, you are a curious explorer of your thoughts, along with a guide.
Plant-Medicine/Psychedelics. These deserve their own post, but plant medicine and psychedelics allow for an “egoless” state, creating fertile space for insights to emerge about our deep truths. Some of the best healing and change comes from this. This is an upcoming area, still being better understood, so please do your own research.
As we gain deeper insight into the nature of life and the nature of our habit, we wake up to the truths that have always been there. It’s the feeling of waking up from a nightmare—when you’re in the middle of a nightmare, you feel as if you are experiencing reality, but then you wake up and see a new reality. The moment you wake up, the nightmare is put into perspective, and it loses its power.
We can all wake up to a new reality about our life and our habit. A deeper understanding of life is always possible, and it is always helpful.
Memento Mori.
This article is adapted from a book called The Little Book of Big Change, the most underrated and helpful books about change.