By DAVID SHAYWITZ
Company — the conviction I can form my future — is an important driver of human well being and human potential.
Additionally it is the issue missed by most digital well being platforms.
College of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, who has spent many years learning this, says company boils all the way down to the assumption “I could make a constructive distinction on this planet.” Folks with excessive company consider there’s something they will do subsequent which may assist – after which they really attempt.
As Seligman emphasizes, the moments once we “attempt arduous…persist in opposition to the percentages…[and] make new, inventive departures” are exactly when company is at work. That additional effort and sustained dedication — not simply the mindset — exhibits up as improved efficiency, larger achievement, and enhanced well being. It additionally manifests as resilience, enabling us not solely to get well from adversity however (ideally) to bounce again as a fair higher model of ourselves.
GLP-1s spotlight the ability and promise of newfound company. For a lot of dwelling with weight problems, previous makes an attempt at weight reduction bolstered a “cycle of despair” – attempting tougher principally meant failing once more. With the appearance of GLP-1 medicines, many discovered that their weight would come down — and keep down. Oprah Winfrey known as the sensation “a aid, like redemption, like a present.”
The deeper change is psychological: for the primary time in years, effort feels rewarded. GLP-1s unlock an agentic dividend: the motivational increase that comes from lastly with the ability to take management of your well being. That surplus sense of chance might be channeled into the acquainted well being fundamentals — transferring extra and sleeping higher — but additionally, typically extra importantly, into how we present up in {our relationships} and communities, within the enthusiasm we convey to our hobbies and pursuits, into the totality of experiences that make life so significant.
Company is the motivational forex of well being, the ATP of conduct change – it lets success in a single area drive progress in others.
Linked health platforms have an identical alternative. Every discrete achievement — ending a category, using thrice in per week, noticing that the steps really feel simpler or the again hurts much less — is a small proof of “I can do that.”
In fixating narrowly on efficiency metrics, platforms like WHOOP, Oura, Peloton, and Tonal are leaving company on the desk. The chance right here is to assist individuals acknowledge, title, and financial institution their achievements, compounding the agentic increase that comes from every small win and making it simpler to translate that confidence into the remainder of life.
There are strategies that appear to help company – cognitive reframing, parts of motivational interviewing, wholesome dialog abilities that assist individuals generate their very own plans, positive-psychology workouts that improve a way of management and chance.
However there isn’t a well-validated playbook. The 2021 Duckworth–Milkman train megastudy and a 2022 assessment by Feig and colleagues each level in the identical route: many thoughtfully crafted interventions, when rigorously evaluated, have disappointingly yielded solely modest, usually short-lived adjustments in conduct; within the case of the megastudy, the consequences noticed have been on common practically ten instances smaller than skilled forecasts. Cracking this nut stays one of many largest alternatives in well being and expertise.
Furthermore, as public-health thinkers like Michael Kelly and Mary Barker, and Angela Duckworth in her emphasis on “situational company” remind us, conduct is at all times embedded in social practices and every day routines, not floating in particular person headspace. Kevin Corridor’s work on weight problems underscores the identical level from a metabolic angle: in environments saturated with ultra-processed, hyper-palatable, calorie-dense meals, many individuals will overeat and achieve weight. Our environmental defaults could make it a lot tougher for particular person company to realize traction.
Highly effective rising applied sciences — from AI to linked gadgets and “well being OS” platforms — now give us a brand new lever on this drawback, however provided that we use them thoughtfully. To date, most effort has centered on treating individuals as objects to be managed, with platforms competing to instrument each second and compress our lives into ever extra granular scores and rankings.
The actual white house, I’d argue, is a platform that may reliably domesticate company at scale. Constructing one thing like that will imply placing our most subtle AI and connected-health instruments within the service of scaffolding human company — serving to individuals see actual choices, notch early wins, get well from lapses, and let small successes accumulate right into a lived identification of functionality.
None of this — from GLP-1s to digital well being platforms — makes conduct change straightforward, but it surely does make sustained, structured help extra doable than earlier than, for sufferers, for customers, and for workers attempting to remain nicely whereas they work.
Whereas we don’t have all of the solutions, designing for company will seemingly emphasize:
- Early, plain wins which are small however significant (“I damage much less,” “stairs really feel simpler”).
- Guided decisions as a substitute of scripts or chaos, so individuals expertise themselves as selecting, not simply complying.
- Suggestions that hyperlinks progress to particular person effort (“since you did X, you’re now experiencing Y”), quite than to the brilliance of algorithms or the knowledge of clinicians.
- Methods to financial institution progress so actions add as much as a lived story: “I’m somebody who exhibits up.”
By focusing expertise on enhancing our intrinsic potential quite than simply crunching our extruded numbers, we will strengthen our company and with it, our capability to reside more healthy, extra absolutely realized lives.
In a yr when tech-forward well being platforms are vying to include essentially the most agentic AI, our biggest problem, and most vital alternative, could also be determining learn how to leverage these ever-more highly effective rising applied sciences — with knowledge, humility, and humanity — to nourish the event of essentially the most agentic individuals.
Dr. Shaywitz, a physician-scientist, is a lecturer at Harvard Medical Faculty, an adjunct fellow on the American Enterprise Institute, and founding father of KindWellHealth, an initiative centered on advancing well being by way of the science of company. This piece was beforehand revealed on the Timmerman Report
