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We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them.

James Clear

You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.
JAMES CLEAR

Architect Choice Environment Inspirational Job Victim Yourself
You need to know who you want to be.
JAMES CLEAR

Identity Personality Yourself
At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.
JAMES CLEAR

Boredom Point Training
Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
JAMES CLEAR

Enemy Friendship Goodness Habit Time Yourself
In short: genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.
JAMES CLEAR

Areas Destiny Determination Opportunity
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
JAMES CLEAR

Call Conscious Direct Fate Life Yourself
Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
JAMES CLEAR

Best Direction Goal Goodness Progress System
It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.
JAMES CLEAR

Belief Change Goal Habit Hard Planning Yourself
People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them.
JAMES CLEAR

Close Effort Limitation People Rare
True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement.
JAMES CLEAR

Accomplishment End Goal Improvement Thinking True
Being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action.
JAMES CLEAR

Action Count Leadership Motivational Smart
With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.
JAMES CLEAR

Achievement Focus Habit Identity Result
You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.
JAMES CLEAR

Current Result Tragedy Worth Yourself
In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption
JAMES CLEAR

Consumption Creation Fact Leadership Oneself Possession
When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.
JAMES CLEAR

Fall In Love Happiness Permission Process Product Wait
You do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you. The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through.
JAMES CLEAR

Encouragement Feeling Habit Need Yourself
You get what you repeat.
JAMES CLEAR

Habit Inspirational One Liner Repeat Yourself
Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.
JAMES CLEAR

Fight Habit Maintain Pride Yourself
Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.
JAMES CLEAR

Goal Lose Winner
Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.
JAMES CLEAR

Action Failure Goodness Habit Identity Yourself
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.
JAMES CLEAR

Game Goal Play Purpose Win
Habits are like the atoms of our lives. Each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement.
JAMES CLEAR

Fundamental Habit Improvement Live Ourselves
Success is the product of daily habits – not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
JAMES CLEAR

Habit Life Product Success Time Transformation
We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them.
JAMES CLEAR

Choice Early Habit Imitation
Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.
JAMES CLEAR

Appearance Change Need Patience Process Small Yourself
Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
JAMES CLEAR

Bad Cost Future Goodness Habit Present
Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.
JAMES CLEAR

Change Improvement Live People Right Time Wait

We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them.

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We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them.

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