#16: Knowing and doing are not the same

We deceive ourselves by confusing thoughts with actions

“ONE OF THE MAIN BARRIERS to turning knowledge into action is the tendency to treat talking about something as equivalent to actually doing something about it.” - Jeffrey Pfeffer

The famous guru Bodhidharma once said, “All know the way; few actually walk it.” He was referring to how to become enlightened, but it applies to just about anything. We all have the habit of thinking about something and believing we’ve done the hard part. How many of us have read books or heard podcasts about a habit we want to change, learned a few things, and then did nothing? Probably almost all of us. Knowing something and doing it are not the same. They are actually very far apart, which is why it’s so tempting to confuse one for the other.

Take Bodhidharma himself for example. While he is famous for this quote, did he actually walk the way? No one really knows! As is often the case with prophets and gurus, useful details about their real lives are in scant supply among their followers. It’s the fictional perfections of heroic figures that helps sell them to the masses. It’s possible Socrates told terrible jokes. Or that Moses had bad breath. Or legandary strategist Sun Tzu was terrible at chess. How would we know? Who among their followers would tell us?

My point is that even the wisest among us can fall victim to this rule. Bodhidharma might have failed to walk the way all the time. He might have been a horrible neighbor, playing loud music after midnight, or a bad friend, cheating his friends at poker. Alan Watts, my hero, was an alcoholic. All his great teaching about meditation and self-love didn’t protect him from addiction. The most famous Stoic, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, advised “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” And yet his son Commodus would become one of the worst emperors, and people, in Roman history.

We all know people in our lives who patronize us with advice they failed to follow themselves. Practicing what you preach is harder than the preaching, but the choirs often forget to notice. The tough truth is that wisdom doesn’t come merely from acquiring new knowledge. That’s not enough. You have to go through something that humbles or excites you enough to motivate change. Change and growth are almost always uncomfortable, scary or confusing, things we work hard to avoid most of the time. The reason why “few walk the way” is it’s hard. It’s not that we don’t know what to do, it’s that it’s hard to do it.

The first step might be to catch ourselves when we’re talking and thinking instead of doing. Then at least we are aware of what’s happening, giving us a chance to make different choices, instead of pretending we’re doing more than we are.