Most people talk about change like it’s something that happens around them.

Markets shift… technology evolves… culture moves…
And yet we hold on to our thinking as if we are the one fixed point.
As if the only thing that never changes… is us.

That’s stasis.

And it’s dangerous… and it’s something I am constantly thinking about.
You can see it most clearly in how we talk about AI.
“AI can’t be creative.”
“It’s all AI slop.”
“It’ll never replace real thinking.”

Maybe.

But when we dismiss new tools with old assumptions or the current culture… that’s not insight.
That’s stasis dressed up as certainty.
I was reminded of this again in a recent conversation I had with Eric Pratnum on his The Unfolding Thought podcast, where we went deep on creativity, entrepreneurship and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
It’s wild how often we see the world clearly… but not ourselves.
I am finding myself checking in on my own states of stasis more and more these days… and it’s a work in progress…

Some days I catch it… some days it catches me.

And the more I look for it, the more I realize how subtle it can be.
It doesn’t always look like resistance… or fear… or a refusal to learn something new.

Sometimes stasis wears a very convincing costume.

It shows up as confidence.
It shows up as “I already know this.”
It shows up as advice we give others but won’t use ourselves (“do as I say, not as I do”).
It can even show up as nostalgia… the belief that things were somehow clearer, simpler, better before the world changed.

But every time I slow down and really examine it, I find that stasis lives in one place…

The gap between how fast the world is changing… and how slowly I’m updating my own mental models.
And maybe that’s the real work now…
Not keeping up with the world… but keeping up with ourselves.

Not chasing the next big idea…

But noticing the small moments where our thinking stops moving.
Because nothing in my life has ever gone wrong from learning something new.
Things tend to go wrong when we cling too tightly to what we think we already know.

So I’m trying to stay open.

To stay porous… to stay willing to admit that the world might be showing me something I don’t yet have language for.
And if you’re feeling that tension too… you’re in good company.

Like I said, some days I catch it… some days it catches me.

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