I used A Habit Tracker for a Year. Here’s the Surprising Truth of What Happened
Spoiler Alert: It actually worked
I was 14 when I first went on a diet. I’ve been on one ever since. Thirty years later, I’m still overweight.
I live each day trying to be a better version of me. I dream. I’m hopeless at skiing, but in my mind’s eye, I can see myself flying down a crisp white slope, wind in my hair, and life in my lungs. I can see myself lost in Debussy, my fingers rolling across the soft keys of a baby grand.
The desire for change is there. It’s just that there is a gap between intention and action. I spend more time thinking about the change than actually doing it.
2,500 years ago, some wise old dude made an observation:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle
As a student of Plato (who was himself a student of Socrates), I figured that he’d earned his chops and knew what he was talking about.
I reasoned that if I was really serious about these empty self-promises, then I needed to follow Socrates’ lead. I simply needed to iterate, to repeat the things that I wanted to see in my life. Maybe then I’d stand a chance of skiing the world in my fifties…
