Simple, Not Easy.

Much of the advice in Guide2Life is simple.

But, it's not easy.

Knowing what to do is only half the battle. It's not just the knowledge that you need; it's how you go about implementing the changes in your life. Understanding the advice is one thing, but putting it into practice is another matter entirely. Changing your identity, your ingrained patters, believe that you can change, overcoming the doubts at the start of your journey when you cannot yet feel the changes.

That requires trust in the process — this is where the real challenge lies.

Evidence-Based Knowledge

The reason we are so focussed on evidence-based advice, is that we hope that this makes it easier to have that trust in the advice, knowing that thousands of scientists have worked to back up the claims that we make here.

Take meditation, for example. There are a huge amounts of benefits. At face value, nothing could be simpler.

You — quite literally — have to do nothing. Just sit still, focus on your breath, and let your thoughts come and go without getting caught up in them. It sounds easy enough, right? But when was the last time you meditated for two hours, or even ten minutes?

If you're like most people, the answer is probably "never" or "a long time ago."

The concept of meditation is simple, but it is not easy to do. It requires discipline, patience, and a willingness to sit with discomfort and boredom.

Many things in life are just like this. We could write ten simple rules that ensure you have a good life, but following those rules is precisely what matters when trying to make changes.

It's not enough to know what to do; you have to actually do it.

It's where theory becomes practice, and knowledge becomes action. This is the hard part that requires effort and dedication.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." Yogi Berra.

Things that look simple are actually very difficult because they look so simple. They catch us off guard, and we fail to plan, to take them seriously.

We assume that because something is simple, we don't need to put much thought or effort into it.

But this is a mistake.

The simplest things can be the most difficult.

In fact, the more difficult something is, the more you should be attracted to it.

The things we find most difficult, the things we most resist doing, are often the things that are most important for us to do.

Use this as your guiding light. Get a list of things that you don't want to do. Ask yourself, exactly why you don't want to do them. And then start. Even the simplest, smallest, start. Most of the time, you realize that it is not quite that bad.

The more you start doing "things that suck", the more your brain will adapt to this — quite literally.

The part of your brain that gets active when you do things you don't want to do is called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC helps you notice mistakes, manage your emotions, and make decisions. It also helps you deal with challenges and stay focused on difficult tasks. Another important part of your brain is the prefrontal cortex. This part helps you plan, make decisions, and stay motivated even when things are uncomfortable.

Your brain can also change and adapt over time. When you keep pushing yourself to do things you don't want to do, your brain forms new connections and strengthens old ones. This process is called neuroplasticity. The more you practice doing hard things, the better your brain gets at handling similar challenges in the future.

So when reading Guide2Life, do not be surprised if we give rather simple, sometimes obvious advice. The key thing is taking the sometimes difficult path to implement simple ideas, and changing your brain along the way.