Loving the Bite
What mosquitoes, hot peppers, and human habits can teach us about growth
“First we make our habits. Then our habits make us.”
—John Dryden
I am grateful to the Oklahoma Athletic Administrators Association for the invitation this past week. Thank you!
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Loving the Bite
Watch someone who loves to run hills, sit in a sauna, or eat peppers that make their eyes water, and you'll notice they're not tolerating the burn. They're chasing it.
Habits work the same way.
The scoreboard resets and the season moves on. The next practice, meeting, project, or conversation gives you a clean slate. However, the way you handle setbacks—the way you respond when things aren’t going well, the way you dust yourself off when every break goes against you—these habit-forming moments don’t stay behind. They stay with you.
Circumstances are always changing. Sometimes you’re up big and life gives you a good bounce. Other times you’re grinding from behind and nothing will go your way. Either way, your habits don’t care. They just keep showing up.
That’s why how you manage when things are hard, boring, painful, or unfair matters more than most people realize. It’s not that the outcome doesn’t matter—it does, but the outcome isn’t the only thing being built every time you show up.
A study of mosquitoes, of all places, somehow helps us see how.
Researchers at Virginia Tech found that mosquitoes can be trained to like DEET. The love-it-or-hate-it stuff we spray to keep mosquitoes from biting us. After eight decades of keeping mosquitoes away, it is the most trusted repellent in the world.
And now … we find out that if a mosquito feeds on someone whose DEET has faded—still detectable, just not strong enough to repel—the insect’s brain begins to rewrite itself. It connects the smell with reward. More than 60 percent of mosquitoes returned to DEET, expecting a meal, even when there was nothing to bite.
The researchers cleverly call this a “complete reversal.” From innate avoidance to learned appetite.
Psychologists have a name for a phenomenon with some similarities in humans. Richard Solomon labeled it the Opponent Process Theory. The idea that with enough repeated exposure, an emotional response can flip entirely. What once felt aversive becomes attractive. What once felt punishing becomes something you miss when it’s gone.
That’s why some people learn to love hard workouts. Why entrepreneurs learn to enjoy risk, people love sauna bathing, and others love to eat blazing hot peppers. They’ve paired the hard thing with the feeling on the other side of it—the relief and sense that you did something hard and survived it—enough times that the brain rewires around it.
We become attached to whatever repeatedly precedes relief, reward, or familiarity. And here’s what we have to remember … the same process works in the other direction just as efficiently.
People can learn to love outrage because it reliably delivers a hit of righteous energy.
They can become attached to victimhood because it offers a familiar kind of comfort and relieves them of the weight of responsibility.
They can grow fond of drama, excuses, and being perpetually offended, not because those things are good for them, but because those things have been consistently rewarded, consciously or not.
The mosquito didn’t really learn to love DEET. It just kept finding food near it.
Humans do the same thing every day. We attach to whatever we’ve repeatedly experienced alongside something that felt like relief.
Your previous reps can save you or betray you. What are you teaching yourself to love?
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
—James Clear
Connecting this quote to the story. Over time, we become attracted to what we repeatedly reward, and every action is a vote for the habits, values, and identity we carry into the next round.
This week’s Chasing Influence tip: Winning cultures aren't built by avoiding hard things; they're built by embracing productive discomfort.