Make Habits, Not Goals

Make habits not goals. Decide who the person you want to be is and make yourself that person. Then keep going. Do this by adopting incredibly simple habits (i.e. walk 5min/ day; no soda after 6pm). Once a habit is made, strengthen that habit. It takes incredible willpower to develop or break habits. Therefore it makes more sense to spend as little willpower as possible in a way that eventually requires you to use willpower to not perform the habit. Forget New Years resolutions, they’re a waste of time and obviously don’t work. Instead do one habit each month for the entire month. Even if you fail, keep at it. Even if it doesn’t become a habit, good; at least you learned something about yourself. And even at a 50% success rate you’re still adopting at least 6 new habits each year that will in turn become fantastic lifestyle changes. Those changes will help you develop new lifestyle changes and a positive feedback loop will be established. Do these as challenges, make it fun, include other people. Never judge yourself or hold yourself up to other’s expectations. You’re already perfect, just the way you are. Self-improvement is all about the journey, not the goal. In fact, there are no goals, there is only the journey, and that journey is life itself. So enjoy it, appreciate the mistakes, celebrate the victories, and allow everything to happen at its own rate.

A Note to Students

For all fellow students out there about to enter Finals Week, just remember: in a week it will all be over. In a week all of the struggle and fatigue and bullshit will be over. And as you go to and from your finals, just stop. For one moment. And listen to the birds and what they have to say. Because what the birds have to say is this: "Stop giving a fuck. Life goes on and life only gives you so many fucks to give so stop wasting your fucks on the things that don't matter." Because when you're old and senile, shitting yourself in a hover-rocking chair and telling your grandchildren about the days when there wasn't virtual reality and how we had to actually drive cars you're not going to give a fuck about what assortment of the first six letters of the alphabet are on a piece of paper. And remember to sleep. Because sleep is so precious, and so important, and so underrated. And when you wake up, remember to smile. Because you're beautiful. And realize that you've always been beautiful, and always will be beautiful. Actually, all you are is beauty. A luminous, brilliant beauty that is nothing less then Pure Love. Grades are grades, grades come and go, grades are not You. You, my friend, are simply and forever Pure Love. Finals or no finals, grades or no grades, birds or no birds. So stay strong and hang in there, because in a week it will all be over anyways.