Emily McDonald

And so yeah.

Yeah, I think whenever we think about, you know, perseverance as well and just on this, like, what makes—what helps somebody persevere?

Like, what allows you to persevere and continue?

And it is, you know, one, your identity and how you see yourself and kind of the self-concept that you hold about yourself.

And they've shown in studies that the self-concept that you have, kind of the story you have about yourself determines whether a challenge—

either confirms your belief that this challenge is the reason why you shouldn't be doing it, or this challenge is an opportunity to grow, to level up in the game, and it's actually going to help you.

And it's just another example of we get to decide the meaning, but your identity and your self-concept and your belief in yourself and how you see yourself, maybe even your self-worth a little bit, actually determines your perception of this challenge.

And so I

A lot of different things kind of play into this equation, but that's kind of the first point that I wanted to kind of sit on there because absolutely, I have experienced so many times.

I mean, my own kind of personal philosophy on even content creation, I have never posted consistently, ever.

From the very beginning, I've never had a consistent posting schedule.

I don't even have a posting schedule, never.

With long-form content, I do.

I'm stepping more into the structuredness of it, but I've never... Yes, I post a lot, but that's because I allow myself... I do it because I love it.

Like, I never... My plan was never to create content, ever.

I had... When I was in undergrad, my senior year, I...

maybe my junior year, I took a class on the neurobiology of drug addiction, learned about why the current treatments to prevent relapse don't work.

They don't have a high efficacy rate.

And it was because they were putting band-aids on symptoms rather than actually treating the root.

And that was something that I resonated with in my own life because I grew up with so many different health issues and people very close to me growing up also had so many health issues and doctors were never really able to help the people that I loved or me.