Your habits shape your identity. Your identity shapes your habits.
You are what you do repeatedly. Do the thing the person you want to be1 would do, and you’ll slowly become that person.
Goals set up a pattern of deferred happiness, meanwhile a focus on a system can lead to continual happiness. You aren’t thinking “I’ll lose 10 pounds, then I’ll be happy”, but instead you can be happy knowing you didn’t eat out today.
Your identity is a result of the cumulative actions you take. Each small action (habit) is a vote toward your identity. You don’t need a unanimous vote, you just need a majority. The etymology of “Identity” has literally means “what you do continually”.
👌 The most effective way to change your habits for the long term is to focus on who you want to be, not what you want to achieve.
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Or the person you look up to, your hero, etc ↩