Why you should boil yourself alive and how to do it

If you drop a frog in a pot of hot water, it will immediately try to escape.

But if you place the frog in water at a reasonable temperature, it will swim around. If you then slowly increase the temperature, the frog will stay in the water even when it's boiling. The change is so slow that the frog never notices it and stays in the water until it dies.

The main point the story tries to convey is that slow change goes unnoticed.

This story is often used as a warning. We won't notice slow change, which will lead to our doom, the way it leads to the frog's death. It's used as a warning for climate change, in politics, wars and many other negative situations. But it can also be used as instructions for doing hard things.

If I tried to run a marathon today, I will immediately fail.

But if I trained and gradually increased the difficulty, I would eventually be able to run a marathon.

We don't notice slow change.

Things that are currently unbearable to us, like the boiling water for the frog, will eventually become normal if the change is slow enough. We simply won't notice it. Which means, if there's a thing we want to do or be, and it's too hard for us at the moment, the key lesson is this:

Slowly increase the difficulty, like you would slowly raise the water temperature for the frog.

In time, you will reach your goal, but won't even notice you have arrived. One day you find yourself doing the thing you thought impossible. You're swimming in metaphorical boiling water.

The recipe for boiling yourself is the same as for the frog. Start where you're comfortable and slowly increase the temperature.

* In reality frogs do jump out of the water when it gets too hot. But the metaphor is still very useful and vivid

** Don't actually boil yourself alive!