Imagine you get a text from a friend:
Hey, check out his study showing that exercise makes you rich!
Your eyebrows raise suspiciously. But you click the link and see what the study actually claims is that people who exercise at least five times a week have higher annual incomes than people who only exercise infrequently.
Does that mean exercise makes you rich?
Of course not! Because, among other possible reasons, it’s at least as likely that rich people just exercise more.
This is a variant of the correlation does not mean causation rule called reverse causality:
Because A is related to B, we assume A causes B but ignore the possibility that B is causing A.
And when it comes to emotional health, we make this mistake constantly:
- Do you worry because you’re insecure or are you insecure because you worry?
- Do you procrastinate because you’re distractible or distractible because you procrastinate?
- Are you afraid of failure because you’ve failed or are you failing because you fear failure?
- Do you ruminate because you’re depressed or depressed because you ruminate?
- Do you isolate because you’re lonely or are you lonely because you isolate?
- Do you avoid conflict because you’re a people pleaser or are you a people pleaser because you avoid conflict?
- Do you argue because you’re unhappy or unhappy because you argue?
- Are you risk-averse because you’re a perfectionist or a perfectionist because you’re risk-averse?
- Do you give up because you lack discipline or do you lack discipline because you give up?
- Are you stuck because you’re anxious or anxious because you’re stuck?
- Do you doubt yourself because of imposter syndrome or do you have imposter syndrome because you doubt yourself?
Of course the answer to all of these is both.
But just because A influences B doesn’t mean you should ignore all the ways in which B influences A—including the possibility that B→A is much stronger than A→B.
More specifically, if you’ve got two variables—one a feeling like insecurity or imposter syndrome, and one a behavior like worrying or self-doubt—you should spend a lot more time and energy considering how the behavior affects the feeling than the how the feeling affects the behavior for the simple reason that the behavior is the only variable of the two you can control directly.
It’s important to acknowledge how your psychology affects your choices, but it’s more important to understand how your choices affect your psychology.
If you liked this essay, here’s another you might like: The High-Agency Mindset →
