Self-improvement feedback loop

Systems thinking has us investigating feedback loops. We create these loops in our lives over and over, without thought. We simply go through our daily rituals. Those soon become self-fulfilling.

The more we do them, the more we seem driven to continue doing them. On and on and on. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. Right or wrong doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter systematically because the system doesn’t care.

The system perpetuates regardless of morality, perspective or empathy. The results further confound what was put in. Put in good and good comes out. Put in bad and bad comes out. Put in right and right comes out. Put in wrong and wrong comes out.

This is how we see things often spiral out of control. We see evil grow and grow. But we also see joy grow and grow. For some reason, humans notice the evil more often than we see the joy.

There are many aspects in life that are a zero-sum game. If you go to your neighbor’s house and steal $20 you gain that amount and they lose that exact amount.

This leads many to believe that all of life is a zero-sum game. Guilt comes along with a win. Jealousy arrives when we lose.

But most of life is NOT a zero-sum game. In fact, there is often abundance where we assume there is scarcity. Unrealized potential cultivates because we see insufficiency.

When you finally break from that thinking and understand feedback loops, you can start to see the opportunity in life. The opportunity is to self-improve. It is to constantly strive to better oneself creating a feedback loop.

In Jordan B. Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, he talks about bettering your life. He says, “But you don’t stop there. You realize that it’s a mistake to aim for a better life, if it comes at the cost of worsening someone else’s. So, you get creative. You decide to play a more difficult game. You decide that you want a better life, in a manner that will also make the life of your family better. Or the life of your family, and your friends. Or the life of your family, and your friends, and the strangers who surround them. What about your enemies? Do you want to include them, too? You bloody well don’t know how to manage that. But you’ve read some history. You know how enmity compounds. So, you start to wish even your enemies well, at least in principle, although you are by no means yet a master of such sentiments.”

Peterson is describing a feedback loop that derives from self-improvement. The more you improve, the more you want to improve the circumstance for others as well. On and on it goes.

Then he talks about the inner change that comes from this shift. He talks about how the core being starts to adjust. In other words, the system is changing all because of the self-improvement efforts. The feedback loop kept accelerating. Now it is something even more powerful.

He goes on to say, “And the direction of your sight changes. You see past the limitations that hemmed you in, unknowingly. New possibilities for your life emerge, and you work toward their realization. Your life indeed improves. And then you start to think, further: ‘Better? Perhaps that means better for me, and my family, and my friends – even for my enemies. But that’s not all it means. It means better today, in a manner that makes everything better tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and a decade from now, and a hundred years from now. And a thousand years from now. And forever.’”

Setting out on a journey of self-improvement is the beginning to a whole new life. It isn’t a zero-sum game. You don’t pull away from others. You don’t steal the future for now. You don’t hurt others to better yourself.

Instead, you start creating feedback loops that drive improvement further than yourself. It might start as self-improvement but turns into improvement in general. It has the potential to revolutionize, simply by taking the small step of working to better oneself.

Or, you can continue to feel that it is pointless, so why bother?