p.s. Translating a great article, with views exceeding one hundred million.
If you’re like me, you think "New Year's resolutions" are silly.
Because most people completely go about changing their lives the wrong way. They make these resolutions just because everyone else is doing it — we create a shallow meaning out of status games — but these resolutions do not meet the requirements for real change. Real change is much deeper than just convincing yourself to be more disciplined or efficient this year.
If you are one of those people, I’m not here to preach from a height (my writing style is usually a bit sharp). I have given up on more goals than I have achieved by ten times. I believe most people are the same. But the fact remains: people try to change their lives, and almost every time it ends in disaster.
However, while I think New Year's resolutions are foolish, it is always wise to reflect on the life you hate and use it as a springboard to leap to a better one, as we will discuss here.
So whether you're looking to start a business, change your physique, or take a risk to pursue a more meaningful life without giving up after two weeks, I want to share 7 insights about behavior change, psychology, and productivity that you may never have heard before, to help you achieve your goals in 2026.
This will be a detailed article.
This is not the kind of fast-food article you read and then forget.
This is a piece of content that you'll want to save, take notes on, and dedicate time to thinking about.
The agreement at the end of the article (for delving into your psychology and discovering the life you truly want) takes about a full day to complete, but its impact will extend far beyond that day.
Let's begin.
I – You didn't get to where you wanted to go because you weren't the one who could get there.
When setting big goals, people tend to focus on one of the two requirements for success:
Change your actions to move towards your goal (least important, second-order change)
Change who you are, and let the behavior happen naturally (most important, first-order change).
Most people set a superficial goal, motivate themselves to maintain discipline in the first few weeks, and then return to their old ways without a struggle, because they are trying to build a good life on a rotten foundation.
If this sounds unreasonable, let's look at an example.
Imagine a successful person. It could be a bodybuilder with an excellent physique, a founder/CEO worth hundreds of millions, or a charming man who can chat and laugh with a group of people without any anxiety.
Do you think that bodybuilder needs to "grind" to eat healthily? Does that CEO need to force himself to be disciplined to lead his team? To you, it might seem that way, but the truth is, they can't imagine themselves living any other way. That bodybuilder has to "grind" to eat unhealthy food. That CEO has to force himself to stay in bed past his alarm, and he'd hate every second of that (there are subtle differences here, let me finish).
To some, my lifestyle might seem a bit extreme and disciplined. For me, it's natural, and I'm not saying this to contrast with other lifestyles. I simply enjoy it. When my mom tells me I should take a break, go out and have some fun… I refrain from telling her, “Why would I do this if I don't find it fun?”
The next sentence sounds simple, but what's puzzling is that so many people don't understand it.
If you want a certain outcome in your life, you must have the lifestyle that creates that outcome long before you achieve it.
If someone says they want to lose 30 pounds, I usually don't believe them. Not because I think they're incapable, but because too many times that person immediately follows up with, "I can't wait to lose weight so I can start enjoying life again." I'm sorry to tell you, but if you don't adopt the lifestyle that helps you lose weight and stick to it for life, if you can't find a stronger reason than the pull that drags you back to your old habits, then you'll be back to square one, and then painfully say that you've wasted a resource you can never get back: time.
When you truly change yourself, all those habits that don't propel you toward your goals become repulsive because you have a profound awareness of how your every action contributes to your life. You're content with your current standards because you're not fully aware of what those standards are or what they lead to. We'll discuss how to reveal this, but we need to lay some groundwork first.
You say you want to change. You say you want "financial freedom" and "to become healthy," but your actions point to the opposite, and there's a reason for that. And it's much deeper than you think.
II – You failed to reach your desired destination because you did not want to go there.
Trust only actions. Life happens on the level of events, not words. Trust only actions.
— Alfred Adler
If you want to change who you are, you must understand how the brain works so that you can begin to reprogram it.
The first step to understanding the brain is recognizing that all behavior is goal-oriented. It is teleological. This is somewhat obvious upon closer examination, but most people don't want to hear it when we delve deeper.
You take a step forward because you want to get to a certain place.
You scratch your nose because you want to stop the itch.
These are obvious, but most of the time, your goals are unconscious. For a simple example, you might not realize that when you're sitting on the couch during the day, you're trying to kill time until the next responsibility comes up.
On a more unconscious and complex level, the goals you pursue may harm you, but you will justify your actions in a socially acceptable way to make yourself not look like a loser.
For example, if you can't stop procrastinating on work, you might defend yourself by saying you "lack self-discipline," but in reality, you're trying to achieve a goal as usual. In this case, that goal might be protecting yourself from the judgment that comes with completing the work and sharing the results.
If you say you want to quit that dead-end job but stay without any real reason, you might start to think you don't have enough courage, or that you've never been an "adventurer." But the truth is, you're pursuing security and predictability, and using that as an excuse to avoid looking like a failure in front of friends and family who believe having a job is success.
The lesson here is that real change requires changing your goals.
I'm not talking about setting superficial goals, because that itself serves an unconscious goal that's actually harming you. That's been overused in productivity. What I mean is changing your point of view. Because that's the goal. A goal is a projection of the future; it acts as a perceptual filter, allowing you to notice the information, ideas, and resources that help you achieve that goal.
Now let's dig a little deeper, because if you don't understand this, it will only become more difficult to get out.
(This is a brief interlude from the author regarding subscriptions; translation omitted.)
III – You failed to reach your desired destination because you were afraid to go there.
The important thing to remember is that how you got this idea, or where it came from, doesn't matter at all. You may never have seen a professional hypnotist. You may never have been formally hypnotized. But if you accept an idea—whether it comes from yourself, a teacher, parents, friends, an advertisement, or any other source—and go further, if you firmly believe that the idea is true, it has just as much control over you as the hypnotist's words have over the hypnotized person.
— Maxwell Maltz
This is how you became who you are today, and how you will become who you are tomorrow. This is the anatomy of identity:
You want to achieve a goal
You perceive reality through the filter of that goal.
You only notice the "important" information and ideas (learning) that allow you to achieve that goal.
You move toward that goal and receive feedback that you are making progress toward it.
You repeat this behavior until it becomes automatic and unconscious (conditioned reflex/regulation).
This behavior becomes part of who you believe you are ("I am the kind of person who...").
You defend your identity to maintain psychological consistency.
Your identity shapes new goals, restarting the cycle; if that identity is detrimental to a good life, it can become very bad.
The unfortunate reality is that you have to break the cycle between steps 6 and 7, but this process begins when you are a child.
You have a goal in life.
You depend on your parents to teach you how to survive. You must obey. Since most people educate through rewards and punishments, you will be punished unless you adopt their beliefs and values. You won't truly think for yourself until you realize this.
But your parents also went through this process in their lives. That's the danger. Your parents, unless they broke this pattern themselves, were also conditioned by the success concepts accepted by industrial-age culture. They also carried the best and worst conditioned reflexes from their parents and grandparents.
Going a step further, once you've met the basic needs for physical survival (which is easy in today's world; you're practically born safe), you begin to survive on a conceptual or ideological level. You might not try to protect and reproduce your body, but you will absolutely protect and reproduce your mind. It's not hard to see the ideological wars on the internet, where the participants are individuals and groups identifying with each other.
When your body feels threatened, you enter "fight or flight" mode.
The same thing happens when your identity feels threatened.
If you strongly identify with a particular political ideology (through the process we just discussed), you will feel threatened when someone challenges your beliefs. You will feel genuine pressure. Emotionally, you will feel like you've been slapped in the face. Since most people don't analyze the truth behind their emotions, you tend to get trapped in echo chambers and double down on claims that harm yourself and others.
If you grow up in a religious family and don't think for yourself, you'll fight and attack those who threaten your psychological safety in that little bubble.
The same thing happens when you unconsciously see yourself as a lawyer, a gamer, or someone who won't take action to achieve a better life.
IV – The life you desire exists at a specific level of mind.
The mind evolves over time through predictable stages.
When you are born, you are like a tiny survival sponge, absorbing any beliefs you can (which is largely determined by your culture) so that you can feel safe and secure. If you are not careful, your mindset may become rigid, which can make it difficult for you to live a more meaningful life.
This is well documented in models such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Greuter's stages of self-development, Spiral Dynamics, and Integral Theory, each building upon the previous one, but it is not difficult to observe these in society.
I've discussed these topics many times and integrated them into my own "Human 3.0" model, complete with various AI prompts to reveal your developmental level and path forward (you can open a tab to read later if you wish), but here's the core 20% of the nine stages of self-development, as a review (because repetition helps reveal things you hadn't noticed before, and there are new readers reading these letters):
Impulsive – There is no separation between impulse and action. Black-and-white thinking. For example, a toddler might hit someone when angry because feeling and behavior are the same thing.
Self-protective — The world is dangerous, and you've learned to take care of yourself. For example, children learn to hide their report cards, lie about doing chores, and figure out what adults want to hear.
Conformist — You are your group, and its rules feel like reality itself. For example, some people genuinely cannot understand why someone would vote for someone different from their family or group.
Self-Aware — You notice that you have an inner life that doesn't match your external life. For example, sitting in church and realizing you're unsure if you believe what everyone around you seems to believe, but you don't know how to deal with that feeling.
Conscientious/Responsible – You have established your own system of principles and take responsibility for yourself. For example, leaving home to study a religion after careful consideration and adopting a personal philosophy you can defend, or developing a career plan with clear milestones because you believe that the right effort produces the right results.
Individualist – You see that your principles are shaped by your environment and begin to hold them more loosely. For example, realizing that your political views are more related to where you grew up than to objective truth; or noticing that your ambitious career goals are actually for your father's approval.
Strategist — You utilize the system while being aware of your own involvement. For example: leading an organization while actively questioning your own blind spots; or participating in politics, knowing that your views are one-sided and influenced by biases you cannot fully see.
Construct-Aware — You perceive all frameworks, including your identity, as useful fictions. For example, treating spiritual beliefs as metaphors rather than literal truths, knowing that "a map is not territory," or watching yourself play the role of a "founder" or "thought leader" with a mild sense of amusement.
The Unity Form — the separation between self and life dissolves. For example, work, rest, and play feel like one thing. There is no longer a "who" who needs to become anything; only the present presence reacts to what happens.
For most readers of this article, I'm assuming you're hovering between 4 and 8, which is a huge range. Those near 8 are reading this to learn something or to kill time in a non-destructive way. Those near 4 are genuinely seeking change. You feel you're destined to do more, but you can't quite put everything together yet because clearly many factors are at play.
The good news is that it doesn't matter which stage you're at, because navigating them all follows a pattern.
V – Intelligence is the ability to get what you want from life.
The only true test of intelligence is whether you get what you want from life.
—— Naval Ravikant
There is a formula for success.
One component is agency.
One component is opportunity (which many people like to mistakenly think of as "privilege"—because they lack the other components).
The last component is intelligence.
If you have high motivation but few opportunities, it's useless, because no matter how you act toward the goal, it's not a goal that will yield much fruit.
If you have the opportunity and the initiative but lack intelligence, you will never be able to fully benefit from that opportunity.
First, we've talked about agency before. Regarding opportunity, I can't ask you to change your physical location, but if you can't see the abundant numerical opportunities right in front of you, I don't know what to say to you.
That being said, I want to focus on what intelligence is in the context of these other two components and this letter. To that end, we turn to cybernetics.
Cybernetics comes from the Greek word kybernetikos, which means "to steer" or "to be good at steer".
It is also known as "the art of getting what you want".
Therefore, if Naval's definition of intelligence is getting what you want from life, understanding cybernetics can help you do that much faster.
Cybernetics describes the properties of intelligent systems:
Have a goal.
Move toward that goal.
Perceive where you are.
Compare it with the target.
We will take further action based on the feedback.
You can judge intelligence by the ability to iterate systems and persist in trial and error.
A ship that has veered off course and is correcting its course toward its destination. A thermostat that senses a temperature change and activates. The pancreas that secretes insulin after a spike in blood sugar.
What does this have to do with getting what you want from life?
everything.
Action, perception, comparison, and understanding systems from a meta-perspective are the foundations of high intelligence (according to our definition here).
High intelligence is the ability to iterate, persevere, and understand the big picture. The hallmark of low intelligence is the inability to learn from mistakes.
People with low intelligence get stuck on problems instead of solving them. They give up when they encounter obstacles. Like a writer who gives up before building a readership, they lack the ability to try new things, experiment, and figure out a process that works for them (believing there's no such thing as an effective process you can create, regardless of your limiting beliefs, is a verifiable error and therefore a sign of low intelligence).
High intelligence is recognizing that any problem can be solved over a sufficiently long timescale. The reality is, you can achieve any goal you set your mind to.
Intelligence is recognizing that there is a set of choices you can make that lead to achieving your desired goal. It's understanding that ideas have hierarchies; you can't jump from papyrus to Google Docs all at once. Even if that goal is impossible now, it simply means you lack the resources—resources that might be invented in the next few years—to achieve it.
When I talk about “goals,” as I will continue to repeat, I am not speaking from a typical self-help perspective, although that can be a useful one at times.
I'm speaking from a teleological or Greek kosmos perspective—everything has a purpose. Everything is part of a larger whole.
Your goals determine how you see the world.
Your goals determine what you consider "success" or "failure".
You can try to “enjoy the journey,” but if you pursue the wrong goals, you won’t enjoy it.
Your brain is the operating system of reality.
That system consists of objectives.
For most people, those goals are assigned to them. Program them into your mind like lines of code.
Going to school. Looking for a job. Being offended. Playing the victim. Retiring at 65.
A known but impassable path.
To become smarter, you must:
Reject the known path
Infiltrate the unknown
Set new, higher goals to expand your mind.
Embrace chaos and allow growth
The universal principles of studying nature
Become a generalist
I understand this may not be the traditional definition of intelligence, but this series of steps leads to an extraordinary level of connectivity in your brain, resulting in what we observe as intelligent people. Combine that with agency, and you've got it.
This perfectly leads into the next section.
VI – How to Start a Brand New Life (In 1 Day)
The best periods of my life always come after a period when I'm absolutely fed up with my slow progress.
How do you explore your inner self?
How do you become aware of your conditioned reflexes?
How can you access profound insights and truths to change the course of your life?
Through the simple yet often painful act of asking questions.
Few people do this; you can tell from the way they speak or their opinions on a particular topic. Asking questions is thinking, and few people think.
I want to give you a comprehensive protocol that you can use every year to reset your life and kickstart a season of rapid progress. This protocol helps you ask the right questions.
These questions will cover everything from the macro to the micro: where you want to go, what you need to do to get there, and what you can do right now to start moving reality in that direction.
This will take a whole day to complete, so I suggest you strictly follow this protocol. You will need a pen, paper, and an open mind.
When I observe the patterns in people who have successfully reversed their identities, it often involves a rapid transition after a buildup of tension. Specifically, I've noticed that people tend to go through three stages:
Dissonance – They feel out of place in their current life and are fed up with their lack of progress.
Uncertainty – They don’t know what will happen next, so they either experiment or get lost and feel worse.
Discovery – They discovered what they wanted to pursue and made six years' worth of progress in six months.
Therefore, we want to use this protocol to help you reach the point of dissonance, navigate uncertainty, and discover what you truly want to achieve, so that this clarity overwhelms everything and distractions cease to matter.
The agreement was structured so that it could be completed within a day.
In the morning, you conduct psychological probing to uncover your hidden motives.
During the day, you use interruption mechanisms to remind yourself to step out of autopilot mode and reflect on your life.
Tonight, you will synthesize your insights into a direction that you will take action on tomorrow.
I can't guarantee this will work for everyone, because I can't guarantee that everyone reading this will be in the right chapter of the story to make these points relevant. You can't put the climax at the beginning of a book and expect it to be interesting.
Part 1) Morning – Psychological Exploration – Vision and Counter-Vision
First, we must create a new framework, or perceptual filter, to allow your brain to function.
It's like creating a new shell, leaving the old one behind, and slowly growing into the new shell over time. At first, it will feel like it doesn't fit. That's a good thing.
Set aside 15-30 minutes (the time it takes to watch a YouTube video…you can do that) to think about and answer these questions. Don't try to outsource this contemplation to AI. I want you to break the limiters in your brain. If you can't answer immediately, come back later.
What is that dull, persistent discontent you've learned to coexist with? It's not the deep pain, but something you've learned to tolerate. (If you don't hate it, you'll tolerate it.)
What is it that you repeatedly complain about but never really change? Write down the three complaints you most often expressed in the past year.
For each complaint: someone who observes your behavior (rather than your words) will conclude what you actually want.
What truth about your current life would you find unbearable to admit to someone you deeply respect?
These questions are designed to make you aware of the pain in your current life. Now, we need to transform these into what I call "anti-vision"—a harsh awareness of the life you don't want to live. That way, you can use that negative energy to direct your efforts in a positive direction and act from intrinsic motivation.
If nothing changes for the next five years, describe a typical Tuesday. Where do you wake up? How does your body feel? What's the first thing that comes to mind? Who's with you? What are you doing from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.? How do you feel at 10 p.m.?
Now imagine it over ten years. What did you miss? What opportunities closed off? Who abandoned you? What did people say about you when you weren't in the room?
You've reached the end of your life. You've lived a safe version of life. You've never broken the pattern. What's the price? You've never allowed yourself to feel, try, or become anything?
Who in your life is already living the future you just described? Who is five, ten, or twenty years ahead on the same trajectory? How do you feel when you think about becoming them?
To truly change, what identity must you give up? ("I am the kind of person who...") What social price will it take for you to no longer be that person?
What's the most embarrassing reason you haven't changed? The reason that makes you sound weak, fearful, or lazy, rather than rational?
If your current behavior is a form of self-protection, what exactly are you protecting? What price are you paying for this protection?
If you've answered these questions honestly, and you're at the right stage of your life, you'll feel a deep discomfort, even disgust, with your current lifestyle. Now, we need to channel that energy in a positive direction. We need to create a Minimum Viable Vision, because your vision is like a product. It's not clear at first, but it grows stronger and more powerful with time and experience.
Forget about reality for now. If you could snap your fingers and live a different life in three years, it's not about what's realistic, but what you actually want. What's a typical Tuesday like? (Same level of detail as question 5.)
What must you believe in yourself for that kind of life to feel natural rather than forced? Write down an identity statement: "I am the kind of person who..."
If you were already that person, what would be one thing you do this week?
The first thing I'll do tomorrow morning is answer all these questions.
Part Two) All Day – Interrupting Autopilot – Breaking Unconscious Mode
These journaling exercises are cute, but what we need is real change.
Frankly, change won't happen unless you break the current unconscious patterns that keep you in the same place.
Throughout the day, I want you to reflect on everything you noted down in Part One. Beyond that, I don't want you to forget to reflect. Take it seriously. You won't change if you do the same thing your whole life. You need to consciously force yourself to break the pattern.
Take the time now to create reminders or calendar events on your phone. Include the problem in the reminder or event so you can start thinking about it immediately.
The more random and less likely to conflict with your schedule, the better.
11:00am: What am I running away from by doing what I'm doing right now?
1:30pm: If someone took a picture of the past two hours, what conclusion would they draw about what I want to get out of life?
3:15pm: Am I heading towards a life I hate or a life I want?
5:00pm: What is the most important thing that I pretend is unimportant but is actually the most important thing?
7:30pm: What did I do today because of identity protection rather than genuine desire? (Hint: The vast majority of things were because of identity protection)
9:00pm: When did I feel most alive today? When did I feel most lifeless?
To add fuel to the fire, schedule these issues during your commute, while walking, or while lying down.
What would happen if I no longer needed people to see me as [the identity you wrote in question 10]?
In what aspects of my life am I trading energy for security?
What is the smallest version of "the person I want to be" that I can become tomorrow?
Part Three) Evening – Comprehensive Insights – Entering a Season of Progress
If you've followed that process, I'd be surprised if you haven't yet gained at least one profound insight that could potentially change the trajectory of your life. Now, we need to bring these insights to light, integrate them into who we are, and act accordingly to begin solidifying our journey to a new level of mindset.
After today, what is the most genuine feeling about why you have been stagnant?
What is the real enemy? Name it clearly. It's not the environment. It's not other people. It's the internal patterns or beliefs that have been manipulating things behind the scenes.
Write down a sentence that captures the kind of life you refuse to let become. This is your condensed anti-vision. You should feel something while reading it.
Write down a sentence that captures what you are building and knows how it will evolve. This is your vision MVP.
Finally, we need to set goals.
To reiterate, these are not goals you set to achieve, because goals are merely projections. They are unreliable, making you feel bound to something that is bound to change. Instead, view goals as a point of view—a lens you can switch between to enter the right mental state to take actions that will lead you away from the life you don't want. Don't worry about a finish line, because we'll find it doesn't exist. Enjoy the progress itself.
A year later, what must be real for you to know you've broken the old pattern? A specific event.
One-month lens: What must be true one month later for the one-year lens to remain possible?
Daily Lens: What 2-3 actions can you **timeblock** perform tomorrow that the person you want to become will naturally do?
There's a lot of content here.
Hopefully it helps.
But we have one last piece of the puzzle to lock everything together.
Hang in there.
VII – Turn your life into a video game
The optimal state of inner experience is one of ordered consciousness. This occurs when mental energy—or attention—is invested in a realistic goal, and skills are matched with opportunities for action. Pursuing a goal brings order to consciousness because one must focus on the task at hand, temporarily forgetting everything else.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
You now have all the components to a better life.
Now, it might be helpful to organize all your insights into a coherent plan. Take out a new sheet of paper and write down these 6 components:
Anti-vision – What is the root of my existence, or the life I never want to live again?
Vision – What do I think is the ideal life I want, and how can I improve it as I work toward it?
1-Year Goal – What will my life be like in 1 year, and will it be closer to the life I want?
1-Month Project – What do I need to learn? What skills do I need to acquire? What can I build to get closer to my 1-year goal?
Daily levers – What are the priority tasks that can push the pointer and bring my project closer to completion?
Constraints – What am I unwilling to sacrifice in order to realize my vision from scratch?
Why is it so powerful?
Because these components literally create your own little world. If you are destined to pursue this level of achievement at this stage of your life, you will have no choice but to become obsessed. You will feel drawn by something greater. You will not consider anything else as an option.
You've turned your life into a video game.
Because games are quintessential representations of obsession, enjoyment, and flow. They possess all the components that lead to focus and clarity, so if we reverse-engineer these components, we can live in a state of deeper enjoyment, less distraction, and greater success.
Your vision is how you win. At least until the game evolves.
Your anti-vision is a gamble. What will happen if you lose or give up?
Your one-year goal is a task. This is the only priority in your life.
Your 1-month project is a boss battle. How do you gain experience points (XP) and loot?
Your daily leverage is a task line. A daily process that unlocks new opportunities.
Your constraints are the rules. Limitations that encourage creativity.
All of these act like a set of concentric circles, a force field that protects your brain from distractions and the allure of "sparkling objects" (novelty).
The more you play this game, the stronger this power becomes, and soon it becomes who you are, and you won't want any other way.
