For years we tried to break bad habits the way we’d seen people do it in movies: cold turkey, white-knuckled, full of dramatic declarations that we were done for good. It never worked for more than a couple of weeks. The habit always came back, and we always came away convinced we were weak. What … Read more
A few years ago we wanted to become a person who meditates, and we kept failing at it. Every attempt started with a full session—twenty minutes, a cushion, an app, the whole production—and every attempt ended within a week. Then a friend told us something that sounded almost insultingly simple: stop trying to meditate. Just … Read more
For most of our twenties we believed we had a willpower problem. Every January we’d decide to exercise daily, and every February we’d quietly quit. We told ourselves we just needed to try harder, to want it more, to be more disciplined. Then, around our thirtieth birthday, we read something that rearranged how we think … Read more
For two years we tried to force ourselves into the kind of morning routine you see on YouTube: wake at five, cold shower, green smoothie, journal three pages, meditate for twenty minutes, then hit the gym before sunrise. We managed it exactly once, felt heroic for about an hour, and crashed by two in the … Read more