Why Humans Are Better Surviving vs Thriving

NOTE: This article is not your typical take on the surviving vs thriving debate. It is a brutally honest, psychologically-researched, take on why most of us fail to find something to truly motivate us through life, and which leads many people to coast through life, live within themselves, and essentially be unhappy underneath.

So let’s start with a brutally honest truth:

Most Of Our Tactics Only Help Us Survive, Not Thrive

Now, of course, you might be wanting to hear that ‘it’s okay’, ‘just believe in yourself’ and ‘all will come good’, or ‘it’s meant to be’, ‘this is my destiny’ etc.

We have developed a host of tactics to help us deal with the pain of failure or self-doubt, and whilst there’s certainly a place for mindfulness, we seem to forget that we often fail because we didn’t get used to the harsh realities and difficulties that go towards success (and we may have found it easier to give up along the way). and not because we didn’t tell ourselves enough positive affirmations.

I’m certainly not an exception. I’ve failed, many times. I’ve also given up in the past, many times, and today I’m still failing, many times, but, I get back up, many times.

That’s the truth of most people. It’s often not a lack of effort but a lack of energy left after not ‘making’ it to your dreams. We tell ourselves tactics to keep going but we seldom know truly how to change our approach.

Over time we simply lose energy and focus on what it was we actually wanted, which stops the whole circuit in place.

We have been prepped by society to get jobs and be good worker bees, and we have been prepped by media to idolize those who somehow aren’t. It’s like we are meant to be inspired to reach lofty goals but pulled back by reality.

Our dream often isn’t clear to us, and may never be because, quite frankly, we often don’t have one calling in life.

We can focus on something and make it feel like a calling, at least for a while, but there’s a fact of humanity that stops this ideal from being realistic for most.

Humans Are Much More Conditioned To Surviving Vs Thriving

You only have to do a quick search on the amount of search results that highlight ‘how to survive’ over ‘how to thrive’ and far, far more people are ingrained to think in survival terms.

You may also think that surviving brings about images of campfires with little rations, but more often in today’s world, it’s the picture of a comfortable sofa and watching TV.

We spend far more time trying to build our comfort castle than we do trying to push our dreams.

While this is the illusion of survival, what about actually surviving?

Humans are far better when the pressure to get something done by a timeframe is truly on. We are pretty rubbish when we try to mimic that timeframe by setting our own timeframe. Physiologically we know when the true pressure of life is on.

When a visa is about to expire, when we are underwater and must get back to the surface, when we have a car coming towards us.

At these times we simply do what needs to be done, not because we think about it, but because we are conditioned to survive and react as and when our body needs to.

The rest of the time we are in a state of autopilot conserving energy and pretending we actually know what our purpose is.

Those who say they were born to do this or this are usually people who have rarely challenged their own conventions. Most of the time they tried something once, or just fell into it through environmental conditioning, liked it, stuck at it, and made a good career out of it.

Credit to them for their one-minded focus and not giving up, but most of us just don’t try something once and know that is what we are meant to do forever onwards. Most of us still aren’t really sure up to the day we die.

That might unsettle a few people but that’s only because we have mostly bought into this mantra that we must tick certain boxes through life in order to be seen as a success. We think we must have a calling.

How often people miss the enjoyment of the day ahead wrapped in fear of their unfounded goals and uncertain future.

Why does that happen?

Again, we are survival experts but thriving newbies.

For most of humanity’s existence, we haven’t had to think beyond survival. We have adapted well to changing conditions, but only to make our environment easier to survive in, but when our world became comfortable enough we didn’t have to survive each day for food and water like in the past.

Some people still do, but most are now in a perceptual state of existence in office jobs and routine tasks and habits that help us mimic daily survival needs but without really actually feeling that life is truly on the cards.

Instead, we just seek to collect more banks of comfort. We head to work each day in exchange for ‘rewards’ nicely packed up to keep the reality of the situation at bay. The reality being we are collecting comfort to help us conserve enough reserves so we feel less threatened in life, and so one day we can enjoy a few years of retirement before our time is up.

Those people who are struggling to make ends meet each day (and by that I mean really struggling, not struggling because they can’t afford a bigger mortgage payment), those people are arguably happier in some ways because they have an immediate purpose that gets them out of bed and forces them to do something.

Humans Just Aren’t Natural Thrivers (We Actually Stop Those Who Do Try To Thrive)

Humans are notoriously bad self-starters though when we aren’t under survival mode.

Why?

Firstly, we are programmed to preserve energy where possible. So, if our immediate survival is not threatened (read a bit of money in the bank or a safe job) then we often choose to go through the next day the same. We don’t rock the boat. We play it safe.

Secondly, we are novices at being self-aware. It’s only in the past 50-100 years that the concept of being self-aware has emerged into existence, certainly for the masses. For years most people followed spiritual and external reasons for existence without question, and the good life was made up of earning a good status and job, even if it meant your daily life was nothing short of soul-crushing labor (hardly a good-life at all if we are honest with ourselves, but a life that was expected to fit into society).

So, even if we do have a dream of what we want to do in life, we more often than not settle for the easier option, even if it’s somewhat soul-crushing.

Now, this may sound like we are all to blame for this, but actually, we aren’t, not one bit. We are programmed to do these things.

Self-awareness takes time to build up to a point where you can challenge convention enough to think differently and seek to make a life that stands out rather than fits in.

But this feels hard to do at first because it goes against our survival habits.

Even in today’s world where there’s more self-awareness growing in people than ever before, there’s still this notion of ‘great, you save the world, I’ve got Netflix to watch’.

And then if you do try to do something out of the conditioned ordinary, then people start to worry. They worry because it subconsciously threatens their own safe plateau.

So, if you told your parents or friends you were going to move to a new place and start afresh without a job set up they would panic. Part of that is genuine care for your safety, but most of it is actually the feeling of insecurity it brings about in themselves, and if they are not one to rock the boat then they will likely try to talk you out of it or just not understand your apparent recklessness.

Many of today’s generation have grown up with parents as such, but it’s not the parent’s fault. They are from an environment that was even less self-aware than today’s generation so their safety barriers are even more firmly in place.

However, there’s a very interesting thing that happens along the journey to thrivedom.

Let’s say you do try to change, and you do try to do something that is attempting to add value to humanity rather than seek a safety net for yourself. A passion over comfort decision. Then often you will seemingly get support on the outside saying ‘go for it’ only for the tone to change immediately when you try to get someone involved even in the smallest way.

Let’s say you simply wanted a bit of feedback on your goal, then those closest to you might try to find ways not to get involved in your project. It’s not because they don’t want you to thrive, but often because you trying to thrive indirectly threatens their capacity for just surviving.

In other words, it makes them feel worse about themselves.

It’s funny in a way because when the threat isn’t directly linked to their life they don’t feel it.

For example, they could watch an athlete on TV and support them to the hilt despite not really knowing them personally. Vicariously living is so strong today because there are not many instances where it just becomes easier to watch someone else do something rather than take the risk and do it yourself.

Again, we are survivalists not ‘thrivists’ (if there is such a word).

You can have an army of people moan about their responsibilities in life and how they are stuck in jobs, but they are not stuck in jobs, they are stuck in a survivalist mentality, and often survivalist environmental surroundings.

So, if we want to be truly honest about why people don’t achieve goals and dreams, it’s not because they don’t have them, or don’t want to, it’s because they are often conditioned to avoid the perceived risk it might bring to their survival, even when it physically could actually make their life better.

Basically, our fears get the better of us so we stick to the sofa and live vicariously instead. We may become okay with waking up each day doing the same soul-crushing routine, or we keep ourselves busy in routines so we don’t have to ask the harder questions of what we actually want to do with our life to make it more meaningful.

Now, obviously nobody truly wants this consciously and would prefer to be able to answer those questions easier and take control of their life potential, but subconsciuosly it’s hard to do so often deflection tactics then come into place to make us feel better about not taking control of our life destiny.

We can end up feeling guilt or jealousy to those who do move beyond their fears, and some people even try to bring those people back into the vortex with them so they get a sense of satisfaction that others are also failing around them.

Why would people you love do this to you? It’s not conscious. It’s all part of our survival mechanism. It’s just a twisted way to preserve energy by not venturing too far down the road less known. Finding a way to sabotage the success of others can feel like a mini-success strangely enough (it psychologically reduces the ‘perceived’ threat of someone else).

This never helps anyone though, as it just won’t help you learn to thrive, which is what needs to be done to get out of this vortex.

Thriving Is A Different Game To Surviving (What Is And Isn’t Thriving)

Thriving is a game that takes people out of their comfort zone to a point of discomfort. This is because it challenges our inbuilt fears (that are built up to keep us ‘safe’ – but rather lifeless).

This is an energy-sapper though, as it takes energy to process new information we aren’t used to.

What happens when we try?

Well, Captain Survival tries to take over the apparent directionless ship again and bring it back on course. The course it wants to go is the easy road.

We can actually go through life okay just through listening to our survival instincts. It will likely tell us to be safe for the most part and to procreate with a suitable partner to pass on our worker bees genes. Job done.

It won’t, however, help us decide what to do with our lives beyond that, or help us realize what our goals are beyond survival, or what is truly best for us to thrive, again because thriving plays by different rules.

Thriving actually bends the rules. It’s the chaos side of order. We thrive when we test new experiences and environments that are different from what we are used to.

Of course, this involves potential danger, the unknown entity, which goes beyond the scope of our survival center, which is why it often tries to pull us back from it and back on that comfortable sofa.

There’s another problem at play. We often have a false interpretation of what thriving is. No doubt our strong survival side has tried to shape it into a more manageable concept. To thrive in life can often be mistaken as ‘have more money’ or just have more of something, or just have a bit of fun.

We may think thriving is about earning enough money so we can be free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, but actually, this is often a false hope too.

You aren’t thriving if you just can afford a bigger cage to dwell in and play the same daily routine over. You also aren’t thriving if you go and spend that money on pleasure receptors.

We are again surviving. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to let off steam and go and have some fun, it’s good for us, but when you see people trying to overact their pleasure to make it seem as though their life is so wonderful it often is just that, an act, an act of desperation even.

It’s what has fueled such a selfie-conscious world who may on the outside seem like they are having fun taking selfies, but often they are crying out for validation or approval. It may look like fun on the outside, but so is going out and drinking, but does this help you thrive? Of course not.

Pleasure receptors are a way of telling our survival mode that we are not under threat and we are again safe. Why do you think some people end up cheating? That is hardly a smart conscious choice, but people do it for the immediate release of stress, to feel better momentarily (even if it no doubt makes them feel worse afterward).

This is the same if you are going on a rollercoaster or are a heroin addict. It’s not always a good result. Pleasure can essentially trick our own survival mechanism. Addicts survive through trying to trigger this pleasure receptor, and our brain responds by granting more of the same.

We often deal with stress through comfort tactics, which help us survive, but again these don’t help us thrive or ‘change’. Change involves chaos or ‘change’, and survival involves order or ‘repetition’.

The irony is we often think of chaos as a bad thing when it can be the key to helping us thrive in life.

That again is down to our survival mode tricking our brain. It says that chaos is too scary and energy-sapping, we are better here on the sofa again. Wear a helmet while you are at it.

How To Start Developing A Thriving Mindset

So, how it is that some people thrive?

Those that thrive have invited ‘change’ into their life. They’ve accepted conflict. Not conflict in a survivalist sense. They aren’t going to war or causing needless friction with others. They have accepted that to thrive you have to be willing to change your surroundings and push your comfort zone more often.

This means doing things, by choice, that you might be afraid of doing, knowing it takes you to a place you desire to be, and not only doing it for a pleasure reward that helps us survive but for a bigger goal in feeding our curiosity about something we are currently unable to do.

This doesn’t mean having one goal or dream to focus on. It means having a daily pattern of change enough to reduce the fear of change and to move beyond thinking you have to come back to your comfort zone at the first point of difficultly.

It doesn’t mean being reckless and jumping off a cliff onto rocks. It does mean edging a bit further than you’ve ventured before, and feeling the pain of muscles growing to new limits.

It does mean breaking habits that tell you to do the same thing each day. When you wake up it’s about setting yourself a challenge to ‘eat the frog’ and do something that feels hard but which has meaning to you if you do it.

It does mean setting yourself challenges to improve daily, but it also allows for times of rest back in our comfort zone, just so long as it doesn’t become a hub that ends up consuming you again back into safe survival patterns.

There’s SO much talk out there about how productive routine habits will help you get further in life but they often come from the mindset of a survivalist who is just trying to get more comfortable as an end result (through mountain top living), where to thrive doesn’t follow a set milestone pattern at all. There is no finish line, as you are always growing and changing and trying to learn different things. It’s more like a river mindset of going with the flow and venturing further despite whatever unique hurdles come your way.

When we think life is about finding one calling or purpose we tend to think we have to climb this mountain top to reach a point of success in our life. It leaves people unhappy when that mountain feels too high (so they give up), and even unhappy when they reach it (and then wonder ‘what now?’).

It’s our survival mentality of trying to fit into convention that teaches us that we have to live life in such a way, but to thrive we need to grab a paddle instead and accept that there’s not just ‘one’ calling for us in life, and that we can have many different journeys and chapters to inspire and challenge us.

Each day is a chance at a new journey or chapter. The survival mindset will tell us to keep going for that goal that makes us more comfortable, whether we truly want it or not, whilst to nurture the thriver within us we have to embrace a new experience as part of daily life.

When we get us to doing so then life will not just feel more rewarding but we will be training our survival mode to ease up a bit as it realizes we are capable of doing a lot more before it hits the ‘fear brakes’ on us.

As for ‘changing the world’, well that doesn’t happen if we follow the same routine each day, it only happens if we start by making small changes in ourselves each day.

If you don’t want to be one of 90% of humanity (that ever existed) who made zero meaningful contribution to the world with their lives, then the good news is that change starts at home, not through grand gestures.

For those who want to continue to watch life drift by on the comfortable sofa, then I could say that’s your choice, but actually it just means your conditioning to comfort is stronger, and it just requires more mini-changes each day to eventually break out of.