James Clear

centers me or it's the only time I really get for myself.

And so I want to work out now.

Yes, of course, I want the benefits of it and the, you know, the physical changes and all that stuff.

But what I really want is I just feel good when I do it.

You know, I feel like I'm being me, I'm being the kind of person I want to be.

And it makes me feel like, yeah, this is the identity I want to have this kind of person I want to be.

And so I can get that satisfaction.

instantly.

As long as I'm doing one rep, I get that feeling.

And so that's a reward that comes maybe later.

You got to show up a lot before you get to that place mentally.

But I think ultimately, that's where you're trying to get to.

Now, there is maybe one more stage after that, which is

The tighter that you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

And so this is kind of an endless process.

You know, like you, we all can sort of think about, like, let's say you have a surgeon who they've been doing an operation a certain way for the last 20 years, and they have a bunch of successful patients and cases from that operation.

And they just are like, yeah, you know what?

I know it works well this way.

Yeah, a new technology comes along and they're like, hey, you can do this with robots now or you can do it laparoscopically or whatever.

And they resist it because they're like, no, I have a lot of evidence for doing it my old way.