Have you ever heard of the 2% theory? A grand total of 2% of people will choose the stairs over a more convenient way to get to where they are going. That means 98% of people take the elevator. 98% of people willingly (or predeterminedly depending on your view of free will) pick the option of comfort or convenience over one that has the potential to make them feel good. How do you feel after you take the stairs? Do you find yourself more inclined to make positive decisions afterwards that satisfy you? Maybe you tend to make more beneficial choices throughout the rest of your day, no matter how daunting the task may seem at first?
The 2% theory, coined by Michael Easter, exposes the 98% of us that are trapped in the revolving door of familiar territory. Society's choice to prioritize an evolving unburdened lifestyle started with the Industrial Revolution, peaked during the post WW2 boom, and started to digitalize itself in the early 1990’s. We advanced with minimizing the need for effort, our options to take the easy way in or out increased, and living inside our comfortable world became the inevitable choice. When we consistently live in a place of comfort, exposed to a world of machines designed for us to live with ease, our need to think critically within our day-to-day lives decreases. If growth is the goal, friction is your friend (Will Davis, 2026).
Think about a time in your life that was defined by comfort. A few things may have happened: Maybe you remained in a place of stagnant energy with little awareness or clarity of growth. Or perhaps, you became emotionally distant, and potentially started to create problems out of nowhere for yourself. This is not a new concept, and it most certainly doesn’t need a new solution. When I’ve spoken to friends or family about this particular static place, I watch a somatic shift take place in them. Their eyes widen with an understood sense of embarrassment and they shake their heads as they hold their breath tightly. Shame rushes to take up space inside their words, and then, sometimes as quick as it arrived, it becomes dismissed.
So, the question becomes: what can we do to take back the space in our lives? To find the colour that once blanketed itself over daily moments, and to uncover the humility that is necessary for a life beyond the wings of backstage. As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” Maybe we could start to look at it as such.
❖ Show up for yourself. Make this high on your priority list. In the world of comfort, conveniences, and consumption, commit to finding your way through life. No matter the inconvenience, or the excuses that start to bubble up. See what happens when discipline becomes a habitual factor. Tune into your internal clock and rediscover your role in life.
❖ Rediscover your friends. Commit to being present with them. Share your time, your presence, and your energy with your dear ones and let distractions fade into the background.
❖ Own your space when you walk into the studio. Take the time to check in with yourself before class. Hold space for all the pieces that you are coming in with and bring that entire beautiful mess right to the mat with you. Then, take the time to check in with yourself after class, how do you feel? Find the time to integrate your process.
❖ Take a risk without seeking the reward. The cost is high and so is the risk. Without taking risks you remain in a stagnant place, you find problems created within your own volition, and you watch as everyone and the world goes by. Watch when fear starts to write itself into your choices, break the pattern up, and give yourself the same opportunity you would so willingly give to others.
Doing one or all of these, most likely you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone in one way or another. Doing so opens up space for some really beautiful things to happen. Imagine a world where you consistently did that. Imagine standing in the check out line for groceries and not once feeling the need to sink your eyes on your phone to distract yourself from the possible outcome of being present and letting idle time pass. Maybe an opportunity for curiosity lies there and an idea forms in your head that stirs something inside you and you follow that thought. By overriding the impulse to disassociate, you gain access to the world surrounding you. And of course, melancholy, confusion, and even boredom will still swing through for a visit every once in a while, but just know, they’re all temporary visitors. But when you choose to prioritize taking care of your body (and in turn your mind), despite how challenging it may be to exercise and stay present, you are bypassing that impulse to stay static; that impulse that has gradually been conditioning you to remain in that state of convenience.
When showing up to the studio to take class, there is a common consensus that we get to escape our lives and brains for 45 minutes. However, this may not be what we are actually looking for. Yes, of course there are times we want to check out, but if this is the consistent pattern, what might we be missing? Especially as we continue to use all the advancements of technology that are at our fingertips in our day-to-day lives. Quite quickly (and successfully) we can truncate our workload, organize our schedules, discover different tactics to reach our goals, get the exact measurement of an ingredient in a recipe that we don’t quite have the time to look for (even though calling a parent or a friend is quite honestly the desired first impulse), and more. All of these things are useful and time saving, which might create space to spend more time with our friends, our families, and our pets. And yet somehow still, we are living in one of the loneliest eras in the history of America (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023). On top of that there is also a decline in critical thinking skills (Kosmyna et al., 2025).
There is an intentional way of moving on the mat and mega, and they both deserve your full attention. Where your head goes, your body will follow. The amount of times I’ve witnessed clients discover proprioception vastly outweighs those that did not feel the difference their body was making. They audibly recognized the slight adjustment to their spine c-curving back in space rather than falling over their legs in Spine Stretch Forward. They noticed because they were intently engaged with the way their body was moving through space. Our brains are increasingly being conditioned to only read or take in short-form content. So, what happens when you double up on the practice of paying attention while you are working out? There is a lot to be gained when we can pay attention to the signals our bodies are telling us. If we are constantly outsourcing our thinking and checking out from our emotions, are we truly learning to look at the world and find it through our own sense of perception? Or, are we willfully, and somewhat negligibly, looking through the world from the lens of those around us or, through the prompt box of ChatGPT?
In a world where most everything is at your fingertips (and available at all hours), what if you took responsibility into your own hands and designed your life in such a way that no matter how tempting the comfortable option is, you decide to take the stairs.
