Brian Johnson explains why you should fix the root cause instead of treating symptoms. He uses a boiling water and ice cubes metaphor: adding ice cubes to hot water is a temporary fix, but turning off the flame solves the problem. Stephen Covey's work on habits illustrates this principle.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson More Wisdom in Less Time this is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.
No more ice cubes, please. If you had a boiling pot of water and you wanted to easily and permanently make the water stop boiling, would you a drop in two ice cubes at regular intervals or b turn the flame off and move the pot off the heat? Unless you're insane, you'd pick option B, right? Seems so simple. Yet somehow, in a world where 15 million-plus peeps have purchased Stephen Covey's the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we've failed to implement habit number one to be proactive. Instead, we throw our hands up in the air at all the symptoms we experience, from acid reflux to depression, and and rather than go after the causes of these ailments, we reach for another couple ice cubes to temporarily reduce the heat while doing nothing to deal with the flame at the root of the underlying problem. Bizarre. How about you? Do you ever do that? What bottle of pills or ice cube tray are you relying on? And what can you do to deal with the cause of the issue?
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