Learning to change, NEGATIVE feedback
Understanding this can give us immense psychological strength to enact the changes that we would want to see in our lives. Once we understand that we are actually trying to go agaisnt the grain of our very biology, we can shift our efforts into better understanding this mechanism, how it affects us, and how we can leverage on it to make better changes to our lives.
Let’s take a moment to unpack some of the principles of negative feedback:
First, Baseline. negative feedback always starts with a baseline that we will tend to return to. Whether it be our weight, our comfort zone, or our passions, negative feedback generates the attractive and repulsive force that ensures that we stay within the boundaries that make us comfortable.
Second, Alarm. negative feedback is triggered or alarmed into reaction. This means that all systems have some if/then processes that help to identify a change and trigger the steps needed to control it. For example, if blood sugar levels are low, the brain will then trigger a reduction in insulin levels so that our bodies will release more glucose into our blood (circulatory) system.
Third, restoration. negative feedback reacts against the direction of the change in order to restore balance. It’s not about being oppositional: a system does not subtract when you add, nor does it add when you subtract. Instead, it attempts to undo something such that it restores itself to its original state.
These three principles: Baseline, Alarm, and Balance, are the things that we can leverage to achieve the change we want. For example, when making resolutions or trying to implement changes, we can focus on the baseline, trying to implement a new normal that we expect the system to accept. This is the most common way people go about implementing change, but it is also the hardest. As I shared in the very beginning: change is difficult, and in expecting a new baseline, we are already assuming that change has been done.
This leads us to examine the second principle: Alarm. Another way to implement change is to make it such that your changes do not trigger any alarms. This is where the popular idea of “atomic habits” come into play. Much like how you can boil a frog by slowly raising the temperature of the water so that it doesn’t notice, systems are often bad at noticing tiny changes. In this case, take your time, start small, and slowly build on incremental changes in your habits and routines. Studies have shown that slowly reducing your food intake, or slowly increasing your exercise regimen, were found to be much more effective in leading to longer-lasting change. A popular rule is the “just one more” or “just one less”. It’s surprisingly easy and surprisingly effective, since you’re no longer trying to fight against your negative feedback system.
The third and final principle is Balance. Sometimes, the system is just too sensitive, and notices any slight deviation from the norm. In this case, it’s time to look into how the system will oppose the change. Remember that negative feedback tends to push a system to restore itself to an original state. This means that when you want to add something, you need to subtract something else. It’s kind of like a law of equivalent exchange: the system will only accept change when something of opposite value is traded. Like a weird accountant, you need to find a way to balance the books.
The balance principle is the fastest and most powerful way to implement change. For example, if you find exercise painful, but want to add it to your routine, you can choose to subtract some painful aspect from your routine (subtract pain to add pain), or add some enjoyable aspect to your routine (add pleasure to balance the addition of pain). You have to balance your books, such that the system will not feel that things have changed away from the origninal state.
I hope that this musing into negative feedback has given some insight into how change works in nature, and how we can leverage on the principles of feedback to come up with better ways to think about change and how we can implement them.
Negative feedback is just one of two systems involved in how we react to change. in a future post, I’ll delve into positive feedback, and how that mechanism makes for easier, but also more unstable change.