16h • Journal Entries
You Know This One - The Hidden Reason Some Habits Stick Forever While Others Die in a Week
We have to create our own enjoyment. Nobody is coming to build that for us.
“You know this one,” I said, and before anybody had a chance to think about it I was already bashing out the opening chords to that ZZ Top song, Tush, at full volume in the middle of a sunny sixty degree afternoon at our local motorcycle rally, spring bike blessing bash. We play this rally every year at the same time. It’s one of those gigs that just lives on the calendar like a birthmark. Ben, our guitar player, caught it immediately. He gave me that slight chuckle he does when he knows exactly where I’m going, nodded once, and fell right in behind me with that trademark thumping rhythm of his. A few seconds later the rest of the band lit up and we pushed the song forward into the daylight like we were trying to shake the winter off the whole crowd at once.
Still Googling your marketing problems? Just ask me.
A guy at the show had been shooting video for us, which was a gift because over twenty years of playing together we have an almost embarrassingly thin library of footage. We only tend to record maybe once a year, if that, so any new tape is a small event in our world. I got the footage back and sat down to watch it last night.
Now they say the camera adds ten pounds. In my case I think it was closer to thirty.
The music was fine. The band sounded good. But there I was, carrying what I’ll generously call my winter coat, the product of a long cold stretch and probably an inexcusable amount of inactivity that had crept in without me even naming it. When you see yourself on video instead of in a still photo, there’s no angle to hide behind. And compared to the footage from the same time a year ago, the difference was hard to ignore.
It made me think about something I’ve started calling benevolent abandonment. But let’s be honest about what it really is. It’s self sabotage. I’ve been reading a lot about self sabotage lately and the thing that strikes me most is how common it is to give up on yourself without ever realizing you’ve given up. Your habits just quietly redefine you based on what you find comfortable, and one morning you look up and the person in the mirror isn’t quite who you thought you were sending out into the world.
Here’s the strange part. I do run during the week. Or at least I thought I was running with any real consistency. I went back and looked at my training logs from a few years ago and there it was, clear as day, I had gotten my mile times down into the eight minute range, which for a guy closing in on sixty is moving. So where did that version of me go? I guess I can chalk up the extra twenty pounds I’m wearing right now to the simple truth that my motivation and my routines just haven’t stuck the way they used to.
And yet. Here I am writing in this journal every single day. That habit stuck. In fact I’ve been writing every single day for so long now that I honestly cannot remember a time when I didn’t. Every morning I sit down for fifteen or twenty minutes and I think through a topic and I write about it. It still takes energy. It still takes thought. It uses different body systems than running does, sure, but it is still a productive daily discipline that has become as much a part of me as brushing my teeth.
So why did the writing stick when the exercise and dietary cadences didn’t?
I think there’s a word missing from most conversations about habits, and that word is enjoyable. We talk about discipline. We talk about consistency. We talk about systems and accountability and streaks. But we almost never talk about the fact that the things that truly become part of us are the things we actually want to do. Not the things we force ourselves to do. Not the things we white knuckle our way through for six weeks before quietly walking away. The things we enjoy.
That’s the mix. Something effective and something that carries the pure magic of wanting to do it because it feels good to do it. When those two things overlap, you don’t need an alarm or a coach or a vision board. You just do it because it pulls you forward.
This is why surfers stay in shape their whole lives. They’re not grinding through sets at a gym under fluorescent lights. They’re chasing waves because chasing waves is the best part of their day. The fitness is a byproduct of the joy. It’s the quintessential case of form meeting function, where the achievement is baked into the experience itself rather than bolted on as some separate punishment. And I’d guarantee you I'd be in the water right now.. I’d literally stay in for 3-4 hours a day if I could.
I don’t live next to the beach. And I don’t think I’m suddenly going to pick up pickleball and ride that wave into some miraculous transformation. But I do know this much. A few years back when I had broken below the two hundred pound mark, which is about thirty pounds south of where I’m standing today, I wasn’t following some rigid plan, I didn’t even think about it.
I was just more active. I didn’t eat as much because I was busy doing things that held my interest. I don’t even remember what those things were specifically, which tells me it wasn’t about the activity itself. It was about being engaged enough in something enjoyable that the health just came along for the ride.
That’s the real clue right there. Figuring out what sticks in your life is the recipe for all success, not just fitness. If you like doing something, and it’s not harmful, and it moves you in a positive direction, you will get good at it. I’ve seen it in business. I’ve seen it in my cooking. I’ve seen it in songwriting. I’ve seen it in every arena where I’ve ever made meaningful progress. The common thread was never punishment or obligation. It was enjoyment.
And if that thing also has a social element to it? Now you’ve really got something. Now it’s not just a habit, it’s a life.
I’m looking at my mountain bike in the garage differently these days. It’s been coming out more than just once in a while. Maybe that’s the thing that sticks. Maybe I put my standing desk back into the standing position and slide an exercise bike underneath it so I can pedal while I work. That could be easy. That could be enjoyable. That could become invisible in the best way, the way this journal has become invisible to me, just something I do because I am a person who does it.
But here’s what I think matters most in all of this. We have to create our own enjoyment. Nobody is coming to build that for us. Nobody is going to hand you the perfect activity that checks every box and fits neatly into your schedule and also happens to burn four hundred calories an hour. You have to go looking. You have to experiment. You have to pay attention to what pulls you back a second and third time and then have the wisdom to say, that’s the one, let me build around that.
What sticks for you and why? Where could you find an enjoyable pathway to the things that will make you better? That’s not a rhetorical question. That’s the whole game.
Lesson Learned
The habits that last are not the ones powered by discipline alone. They are the ones powered by enjoyment. Self sabotage doesn’t always look like a dramatic quit. Most of the time it’s a slow drift, a quiet redefinition of who you are based on comfort rather than intention. The antidote isn’t more willpower. It’s finding the thing that pulls you forward because you genuinely want to do it. When something is both good for you and enjoyable, it stops being a habit you maintain and starts being a life you live. The real work isn’t forcing yourself to stick with something. The real work is finding the thing worth sticking to.
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You Know This One - The Hidden Reason Some Habits Stick Forever While Others Die in a Week
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