Homeostasis and why we roll back

At one time or another, we all tried to achieve great changes. And almost all of us, having made grandiose plans, found that a change in some aspect of our life or organization, whether it was acquiring a new skill or simply changing an old process, led to a big rollback.

Where does such a mismatch come from?

As George Leonard says in his classic book Mastery , based on his many years of experience in aikido practice, there is no need to scourge yourself or derive a complex psychological explanation.

The problem is explained by a very simple mental model that describes how systems are regulated through feedback loops: homeostasis .
Rollback is a common experience for all. Each of us resists significant changes, at least for the worse, at least for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have an internal tendency to remain unchanged within fairly limited boundaries, and when changed, to roll back, and it is very good that they do it. Just think: if your body temperature increased or decreased by 10 percent, you would be in big trouble. The same applies to blood sugar levels, and any other body functions.

This state of equilibrium, this resistance to change is called homeostasis. It characterizes all self-regulating systems - from bacteria to frogs, from people to families, from organizations to whole cultures - and refers to both psychological states and behavior, and physical condition.

The simplest example of homeostasis is in a home heating system. The thermostat on the wall sets the room temperature; when the temperature on a winter day drops below a predetermined level, the thermostat sends an electrical signal that turns on the heater. The heater closes the circle, supplying heat to the room where the thermostat is located. When the room temperature reaches the set value, the thermostat sends an electrical signal back to the heater, turning it off, thus maintaining homeostasis. Maintaining the desired room temperature requires only one feedback loop. Maintaining the life and health of even the simplest single-celled organism requires thousands. And maintaining a person’s homeostasis requires billions of interwoven electrochemical signals pulsating in the brain, traveling through nerve fibers,passing through the bloodstream. One example: each of us has about 150 thousand tiny thermostats in the form of nerve endings that are sensitive to the loss of heat of our body, and even a little deeper in the skin of 16 thousand or so of those that tell us about the penetration of heat from the outside.

An even more sensitive thermostat is located in the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, next to the branches of the main artery, which delivers blood from the heart to the head. This thermostat can detect even the smallest changes in blood temperature. When it gets cold, these thermostats signal the closure of sweat glands, pores and small blood vessels near the surface of the body. Gland activity and muscle tension make you tremble to generate more heat, and your senses send a very clear message to your brain, prompting you to keep moving, put on more clothes, snuggle closer to someone, seek shelter or make a fire.

When it comes to systems, homestasis seems to be the norm, but we often forget about it or think that we do not obey the simple law of nature. But there is no need to completely despair. Homeostasis is often quite favorable, and it supports the life and health of systems. Without it, our bodies would not work, as well as our social systems.

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The problem is that homeostasis, like natural selection and like life itself, is non-directional and does not have a “value system” - it does not preserve what is good and does not reject what is bad. It is like inertia: it is a simple algorithm that keeps things moving as they were.

Say, for example, that over the past twenty years - from high school - you have been almost completely inactive. Now most of your friends are engaged in fitness, and you decided that if you can not defeat the fitness revolution, then join it. Buying tights and sneakers is fun, as are the first steps when you start running along the school track near your home. Then, about a third of the first circle, something terrible happens. Maybe you suddenly feel sick. Maybe dizzy. Perhaps there is a strange panic sensation in the chest. Perhaps you are dying. No, you are dying.

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Leonard offers several possible solutions, or at least an approach to the problem of homeostasis. The good thing is that homeostasis is not omnipotent; it is just a force with which we must work. He offers five ways to approach the problem:

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