Love your content, hate that you consistently list Elon as someone aspirational. I see where you’re going in that he built something and has larger-than-life goals, but there are better examples of people who can actually sustain that level of success. Depending on your values I guess.
Money is a measure of value. In Elon case, he is the richest. Remember the core point of the article, to become a new person, and Elon represents that considering he didn't come from money.
I honestly sat and was thinking about this some days ago. The fact that you start something and all of a sudden you are back to what you’re running from and don’t even get me started on the times when you start and then it’s at that moment that everything concerning what you’re trying to change about yourself becomes so glamorous (in a sense) and you just slip. But I fancy this article because having read atomic habits myself this article came as a call to action and to remember that the “basic” things are really easy and all we have to do is start from there. It’s not about perfection it’s about starting and the best way to start is to create an environment that keeps future you and the baby steps right in your face.
Thanks Dan, after the first letter in this series, I am back to working out every morning, already 2weeks in and I wasn’t counting (I started from 1st September-ish)🙏🏽 looking forward to your next article, and I do pray it continues to stir that dissatisfaction in me, thank you.
“you are the statistical sum of what you repeatedly do” might be the only quote i ever need to read again for the rest of my life. tattooing it on my forehead.
Right?! It's so true. I get distracted by what my external circumstances "show me" and that causes me to fall into bad habits again. The called out James Clear quote here about trajectory being the most important metric to consider also needs to be tattooed on my forehead.
What gets you started isn't what keeps you going." That line is the whole piece.
I'd add one more fuel: for people with families and responsibilities they can't walk away from, it's often not disgust but love. Wanting to build a better life for the people you carry.
I'm inside the circle, but the circle isn't my horizon. Freedom isn't an escape. It's construction, one stone at a time.
Sometimes nothing is wrong. You're just done. I have not heard it said that plainly. Most of my changes came from pain because pain is loud. Wanting more is quiet and easy to ignore. I keep wondering if the quiet signal needs a different kind of attention, not a bigger push. When you moved without pain forcing you, what made the wanting loud enough to hear?
Great article, thanks. Serious question - when you are using negative emotions as "launch fuel" to change your life, how does that not burn you out? I can only go so long on "I hate my life, I have to change" before I build up too much anxiety and can't continue. It's a loop that keeps me stuck.
As Dan says (and Özgür commented), "What gets you started isn't what keeps you going." I agree with you that too much wallowing in negative emotions can stop being "launch fuel" and just become paralysis. But ideally by that point, you have long since switched to using inspiration/excitement/momentum from what you've already achieved, as your power source.
You said the loop keeps you stuck. I feel that. What I keep running into is that fear gets me moving, then fades, and the moving stops with it. Not burnout exactly. More like my body never learned the moving was safe, only that the danger was real. When the anxiety built for you, did it hit before you started or after you were already going?
Dan, I noticed that the link at the bottom doesn’t have UTM tracking. It can be quite hard to see the user journey clearly from the analytics side without it.
You might want to know who clicked that button and how many of them actually converted into users from Substack.
This surprised me. I started reading thinking that your article was life advice, but it turned out to be on identity mechanics: how a pattern stabilizes itself and how it can be re‑patterned under pressure. Your launch‑fuel metaphor matches with what I've been describing as identity as a coherence pattern with degrees of freedom, and the way disruptive signals ("tactical stress") act like the human version of a pheromone trail.
Bees follow chemicals; humans follow questions and pressures. The disgust you describe is a boundary‑signal (when the pattern senses incoherence and reorganizes). Your input/output loop describes that mechanism at a different scale: identity maintaining itself by adjusting the flow of information and action.
You called disgust a boundary signal. That reframed it for me. I always treated it as fuel. Signal makes more sense. Here is what I wonder. Some people feel the signal and shift. Others feel it and go numb. I have done both. What decides which one happens? How loud the signal is, or how much room the person has to act on it?
As someone who just came home from prison after 13 years - I am now 9 weeks free. This is an important post.
Let's go through it.
Brute force: OK. I like it. The issue is, and I speak from experience and from what I have seen that sometimes we put ourselves in situation to force up to grow up but it doesn't do the job.
Why you think that is?
I am definitely with being disgusted with one self. I am. This is why I am doing a serious challenge where, thank G-d, still going strong. Lost over 10KG. Started writing. Focusing on another business skill too. Working on a new apartment. Oh? Did I mention I was deported from the US and sent to a different country? Talk about brute force.
Discipline: I once read a line from Tyson that goes like this - discipline is doing the things you hate as if you love it. The reality that working out daily is not fun per se. But the identity of that person is. Like today. While Saturday is not a cheat day, it is. family day and a religious day and there is plenty of food. And while I do partake, I found myself just not interested in the extra. Or the junks. Like the old me would have gobble gobble - this me, eh.
And like you said, people say things in their own self interest to protect themselves. Eat a little. Go out a little. NO. This is not me.
Which leads to having the right people around you.
BTW, I love EDEN. I used the free version for now but jumping into the paid one. It is a beauty. I cannot speak of tangible results just yet as I just used it for the week BUT boy - brilliant. Not sure why I delayed.
WOW. Congrats on getting out of jail and on your fitness accomplishments so far! I AM rooting for you, and wishing you all the best (so long as you don't reoffend).
I am a Ukrainian soldier. I know that the Stripe payment system doesn't allow Ukrainian citizens to sign up, so I realize that monetizing my Substack will be a bit more challenging for me than for people with US or European citizenship.
Nevertheless, thanks to you, I decided to join Substack. I decided to go for it.
Not arguing with your overall point that people have to get sick of themselves, but it's wild that you use Elon Musk as an example. The pictures of him looking very ...un-optimized... on a yacht are infamous, as is his regular drug use to get through the day. And he's still a billionaire. This idea that being physically optimized is a precondition for enormous success is simply not true.
“You aren’t disciplined because you aren’t the person who doesn’t view it as discipline.” - This is exactly the reason I’ve found it so hard to answer friends’ questions when they ask: how do you stay motivated to workout everyday?
I think a lot of people are stuck in beginner mode. Going from beginner to high performer (aka not just dreaming about it, or saying you want it) requires being ok with not being great at first. This is such a hard concept for adults to grasp. Once we do, we set ourselves free and on the path to progress.
I can't believe how many times I've read such articles, and how many times I've launched my new life, only to come back to square one (even when I know I have all the potential to be who I want to be). The battle becomes even harder when you don't know where exactly you want to head in your life. Anyone got any 2 cents on this?
This is helpful, thank you. The social media detox and morning pages are the exact things I've been avoiding for years. Going to give this a real shot.
Love your content, hate that you consistently list Elon as someone aspirational. I see where you’re going in that he built something and has larger-than-life goals, but there are better examples of people who can actually sustain that level of success. Depending on your values I guess.
Absolutely! It's high time we started pairing money with high moral values and divorced associating it with criminals and low-life types.
Nobody in human history has done what he has done. I think he’s a good role model.
Hi Sierra - I think you are right but I want to understand more deeply what do you mean by this comment ? Could you please explain me ?
Money is a measure of value. In Elon case, he is the richest. Remember the core point of the article, to become a new person, and Elon represents that considering he didn't come from money.
I honestly sat and was thinking about this some days ago. The fact that you start something and all of a sudden you are back to what you’re running from and don’t even get me started on the times when you start and then it’s at that moment that everything concerning what you’re trying to change about yourself becomes so glamorous (in a sense) and you just slip. But I fancy this article because having read atomic habits myself this article came as a call to action and to remember that the “basic” things are really easy and all we have to do is start from there. It’s not about perfection it’s about starting and the best way to start is to create an environment that keeps future you and the baby steps right in your face.
Thanks Dan, after the first letter in this series, I am back to working out every morning, already 2weeks in and I wasn’t counting (I started from 1st September-ish)🙏🏽 looking forward to your next article, and I do pray it continues to stir that dissatisfaction in me, thank you.
Great, great job. And great comment, too!
“you are the statistical sum of what you repeatedly do” might be the only quote i ever need to read again for the rest of my life. tattooing it on my forehead.
Right?! It's so true. I get distracted by what my external circumstances "show me" and that causes me to fall into bad habits again. The called out James Clear quote here about trajectory being the most important metric to consider also needs to be tattooed on my forehead.
i totally agree ❤️
What gets you started isn't what keeps you going." That line is the whole piece.
I'd add one more fuel: for people with families and responsibilities they can't walk away from, it's often not disgust but love. Wanting to build a better life for the people you carry.
I'm inside the circle, but the circle isn't my horizon. Freedom isn't an escape. It's construction, one stone at a time.
I respectfully disagree with one thing. I don’t think you have to hate your life to change it.
Sometimes nothing is wrong. You’re just done. Pain has caused me to reinvent myself several times.
But maybe it’s time we push ourselves into the next chapter and stop waiting for pain to force us there. Wanting more may be reason enough.
Sometimes nothing is wrong. You're just done. I have not heard it said that plainly. Most of my changes came from pain because pain is loud. Wanting more is quiet and easy to ignore. I keep wondering if the quiet signal needs a different kind of attention, not a bigger push. When you moved without pain forcing you, what made the wanting loud enough to hear?
Great article, thanks. Serious question - when you are using negative emotions as "launch fuel" to change your life, how does that not burn you out? I can only go so long on "I hate my life, I have to change" before I build up too much anxiety and can't continue. It's a loop that keeps me stuck.
As Dan says (and Özgür commented), "What gets you started isn't what keeps you going." I agree with you that too much wallowing in negative emotions can stop being "launch fuel" and just become paralysis. But ideally by that point, you have long since switched to using inspiration/excitement/momentum from what you've already achieved, as your power source.
You said the loop keeps you stuck. I feel that. What I keep running into is that fear gets me moving, then fades, and the moving stops with it. Not burnout exactly. More like my body never learned the moving was safe, only that the danger was real. When the anxiety built for you, did it hit before you started or after you were already going?
Dan, I noticed that the link at the bottom doesn’t have UTM tracking. It can be quite hard to see the user journey clearly from the analytics side without it.
You might want to know who clicked that button and how many of them actually converted into users from Substack.
Just my two cents. 😊
You said I might find some of my people in the comments. So here goes ...
Any female author-entrepreneurs over 40 building an extraordinarily successful life? I want to know you and read your stuff.
Me me! 🙋♀️ Just gave you a follow!
😘
Hi! This is my journey. Good to connect with you.
This surprised me. I started reading thinking that your article was life advice, but it turned out to be on identity mechanics: how a pattern stabilizes itself and how it can be re‑patterned under pressure. Your launch‑fuel metaphor matches with what I've been describing as identity as a coherence pattern with degrees of freedom, and the way disruptive signals ("tactical stress") act like the human version of a pheromone trail.
Bees follow chemicals; humans follow questions and pressures. The disgust you describe is a boundary‑signal (when the pattern senses incoherence and reorganizes). Your input/output loop describes that mechanism at a different scale: identity maintaining itself by adjusting the flow of information and action.
Interesting article!
You called disgust a boundary signal. That reframed it for me. I always treated it as fuel. Signal makes more sense. Here is what I wonder. Some people feel the signal and shift. Others feel it and go numb. I have done both. What decides which one happens? How loud the signal is, or how much room the person has to act on it?
If it involves 20 likes in 3 minutes I’m all ears
OH I was waiting for a post like this.
As someone who just came home from prison after 13 years - I am now 9 weeks free. This is an important post.
Let's go through it.
Brute force: OK. I like it. The issue is, and I speak from experience and from what I have seen that sometimes we put ourselves in situation to force up to grow up but it doesn't do the job.
Why you think that is?
I am definitely with being disgusted with one self. I am. This is why I am doing a serious challenge where, thank G-d, still going strong. Lost over 10KG. Started writing. Focusing on another business skill too. Working on a new apartment. Oh? Did I mention I was deported from the US and sent to a different country? Talk about brute force.
Discipline: I once read a line from Tyson that goes like this - discipline is doing the things you hate as if you love it. The reality that working out daily is not fun per se. But the identity of that person is. Like today. While Saturday is not a cheat day, it is. family day and a religious day and there is plenty of food. And while I do partake, I found myself just not interested in the extra. Or the junks. Like the old me would have gobble gobble - this me, eh.
And like you said, people say things in their own self interest to protect themselves. Eat a little. Go out a little. NO. This is not me.
Which leads to having the right people around you.
BTW, I love EDEN. I used the free version for now but jumping into the paid one. It is a beauty. I cannot speak of tangible results just yet as I just used it for the week BUT boy - brilliant. Not sure why I delayed.
WOW. Congrats on getting out of jail and on your fitness accomplishments so far! I AM rooting for you, and wishing you all the best (so long as you don't reoffend).
Appreciate that and thank you.
The main goal is moving forward and using everything to become a better person.
Full accountability on my part.
I am a Ukrainian soldier. I know that the Stripe payment system doesn't allow Ukrainian citizens to sign up, so I realize that monetizing my Substack will be a bit more challenging for me than for people with US or European citizenship.
Nevertheless, thanks to you, I decided to join Substack. I decided to go for it.
I just did it.
I love a challenge.
I’m 55—and I’m just getting started :)
Not arguing with your overall point that people have to get sick of themselves, but it's wild that you use Elon Musk as an example. The pictures of him looking very ...un-optimized... on a yacht are infamous, as is his regular drug use to get through the day. And he's still a billionaire. This idea that being physically optimized is a precondition for enormous success is simply not true.
“You aren’t disciplined because you aren’t the person who doesn’t view it as discipline.” - This is exactly the reason I’ve found it so hard to answer friends’ questions when they ask: how do you stay motivated to workout everyday?
I think a lot of people are stuck in beginner mode. Going from beginner to high performer (aka not just dreaming about it, or saying you want it) requires being ok with not being great at first. This is such a hard concept for adults to grasp. Once we do, we set ourselves free and on the path to progress.
This is well-put. I feel like I'm finally graduating from beginner mode in many domains, including fitness, meditation, and writing/reading.
a spark ignites, the shadows clear,You shed the weight of yesterday's fear.
I can't believe how many times I've read such articles, and how many times I've launched my new life, only to come back to square one (even when I know I have all the potential to be who I want to be). The battle becomes even harder when you don't know where exactly you want to head in your life. Anyone got any 2 cents on this?
I can only generalize since I don't know anything about you -- except that you like writing -- but here are some places to look:
-hobbies/passions you had as a kid
-daily morning pages a la The Artist's Way; writing 3 pages a day for 3 months will almost certainly give you more clarity
-a 1 month social media cleanse (this can include signing off Substack and just reading books)
-tracking what books/movies/stories light you up and identifying why; maybe there's an unlikely career or artistic path hiding in there
This is helpful, thank you. The social media detox and morning pages are the exact things I've been avoiding for years. Going to give this a real shot.