Benjamin Franklin kept a ledger where he tracked his progress on thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate. Temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. He treated character as a project, something you chose and refined and measured against your own... See more

Once you choose, you have to live with it. You can’t blame your circumstances anymore. You can’t hide behind the fantasy of who you might have been if only things had been different. You have to own the life you’ve built through the accumulated weight of every choice you’ve made or failed to make.

You are not what you post. You are not what you intend. You are not what you dream about becoming someday when the circumstances are finally right. You are what you choose , especially when no one is watching, especially when it’s inconvenient, especially when it costs you something you’d rather keep. Identity isn’t found, it’s forged— one choice... See more

Most people think identity is something they discover, like some buried artifact waiting to be excavated if they just do enough therapy or read enough self-help books or take enough personality tests. We’ve built an entire industry around this idea that there’s a real you hiding underneath all the conditioning and trauma and social expectations,... See more

We’ve mistaken having options for having agency, when really the opposite is true. The more options you keep open, the less power you actually have.

you can reset any default if you’re willing to tolerate the discomfort of conscious choice long enough for the new pattern to become automatic.

William James wrote that human beings are bundles of habits, which means your identity is just the residue of your previous choices.

we’d rather stay in the fantasy of infinite potential than step into the reality of finite existence,