October 4, 2025- Habits will keep us safe

Winners and losers have the same goals.

~James Clear

We can have lofty goals and reasonable expectations at exactly the same time. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. The difference between success and failure is determined by the process, not just by the results.

We live in a little house on a large lake. Our best friend lives directly across the lake from us. We imagine how fun it would be to just show up on their dock one day, after swimming all the way across that lake. We could try that today, and we can drown out in the middle of that lake. Or we can get to work today, building our stamina with incrementally longer swims, to, and from our own house, until that full swim across the lake becomes reasonable.

Our motivation may cause us to drown. Our habits will keep us safe. When we use motivation to set up behaviors in which our plans are the same as our goals, we set ourselves up for failure. When we use our motivation to build plans that will bring us toward our goals, we can flourish.

Separate your plans from your goals. Measure success through your progress, more than your product. Engineer a better version of you, starting today.