Water flowing downhill. Electricity flowing through the neural network in your brain. Your behavior flowing through your social and cultural landscape. All follow the easiest path they can find. Because we always do things the easiest way possible, bringing about desirable changes in our behavior can only happen when we alter the landscape to make a new way of doing things easier than the old way.

This video is a brief introduction to this concept, inspired by the many trickles that wind their way from melting snow to mountain lakes in the Sierra. I’ll revisit this topic soon. In the meanwhile, can you find examples from your life or from your experiences counseling people?

Please leave comments below, but if you have questions you’d like me to address in future blog posts, send them to questions@interchangecounseling.com.

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He founded Interchange Counseling Institute in 2002 and is the lead teacher of Interchange's San Francisco-based year-long counseling and coaching training. When he's not counseling people, leading workshops, and advocating for social justice, Steve climbs mountains, adventures in the urban wilderness, explores the edges and limits of what's possible, deconstructs everything, and finds new ways to put it all back together.