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Atomic Habits stopped at the third layer

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In his second year of high school

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a baseball bat struck James Clear square in the face

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His nose broke

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his skull fractured in several places

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and both eye sockets shattered

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Later he woke up and blew his nose once

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Air passed through the fractures

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and pushed his eyeball out of its socket

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A doctor called a helicopter to take him to hospital

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It took him eight or nine months to recover

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and he could not drive for eight months

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A teenage boy

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running on a field one day

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could do nothing the next

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He spent the next several years

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doing one tiny thing after another

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and slowly putting himself back together

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First one pushup every day

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Then ten more minutes of sleep each day

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Then one more bite of vegetables at every meal

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There was no earthshaking moment

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Just tiny action piled upon tiny action

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By graduation he made the Academic All America team

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and received the university presidents medal

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From nearly dying in a hospital bed

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to standing on an awards stage

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What lay between was not talent

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and not luck

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but thousands of tiny choices

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He turned that experience into a book

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called Atomic Habits

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published in mainland China as Master Your Habits

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The most powerful thing about this book

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is not advice on waking early

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or advice on quitting your phone

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Its real strength

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is dividing habits into three layers

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Hello

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everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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Clear says

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most people trying to change a habit

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push hardest at the outermost layer

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I want to lose five kilos

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I want to earn thirty thousand a month

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I want to run five kilometers every day

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This is the outcome layer

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One layer inward

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is process

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You make plans

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draw up lists

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set alarms

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and buy running shoes

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What many people call discipline

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actually stops at this layer

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But Clear says

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there is another layer

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hidden deepest inside

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He calls it the identity layer

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He gives an example

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Two people are each offered a cigarette

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The first person says

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No thanks

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I am trying to quit

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The second person says

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No

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I do not smoke

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Listen closely to those two replies

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On the surface

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both people refuse the cigarette

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But the first is still fighting smoking

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There is still a smoker inside him

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being held down

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He could lose at any moment

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The second person has no fight at all

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In his world

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he simply is not a smoker

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Offering him a cigarette

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is like offering an umbrella to a fish

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It is not that he does not want it

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It simply has nothing to do with him

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The behavior looks the same

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but the underlying identities are completely different

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Clear draws an important insight from this

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He says

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you do not need to change the outcome

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you need to change who you believe you are

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Every action you take

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casts a vote for the person you want to become

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You do not need every vote

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As long as those votes outnumber the others

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your identity slowly takes shape

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When I first read this idea

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it truly struck me

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because it explained something I never understood

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Why can some people keep a good habit with apparent ease

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while others struggle hard and still keep giving up

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The difference is not willpower

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but the person living inside their minds

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He also says something severe

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He says

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you do not rise to the level of your goals

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you fall to the level of your systems

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In other words

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willpower is unreliable

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You may think you are charging up the mountain

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but if your system does not change

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you will eventually slide back to where you began

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The British cycling team had a coach named Dave Brailsford

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When he took charge of the national team

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British cycling had won since 1908

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only one Olympic gold medal in nearly a century

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How bad was British cycling before that

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A major bicycle brand even refused to supply the team

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believing that association would damage its brand

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Brailsford did not go looking for gifted riders

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He did one thing

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He broke cycling into hundreds of small components

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and improved each one by one percent

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They changed the saddle material

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gave every rider the best pillow and mattress

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and even redesigned how they washed their hands

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to reduce the risk of colds

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Five years later

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the team won most of the cycling golds at the Beijing Olympics

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Four years after that

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one of their riders won the Tour de France for the first time

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Clear does a calculation in the book

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If you improve by one percent every day

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after a year you are thirty seven times better

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Three layers of the onion

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the voting mechanism

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and the compound effect of one percent

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The whole framework is clean and powerful

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and immediately practical

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I found it genuinely useful

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But on my second and third readings

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I felt there was somewhere he did not continue

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He treated identity as the deepest layer

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But ask one more question

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Where does identity come from

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Who keeps it in place

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He does not answer

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I discussed this before through the Cheng Weishi Lun

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Buddhism divides consciousness into several layers

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One of them is called manas consciousness

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It does not handle anything else

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It does only one thing

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At every instant it confirms one fact

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What fact

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It says

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this is me

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This body is mine

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This thought is mine

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This habit is mine

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It is like a voting machine that never shuts down

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casting the same vote every moment

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Do you hear the connection

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The voting mechanism Clear describes

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and what manas consciousness does

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almost completely overlap

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He says every action casts a vote for identity

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Buddhism has a concept called habituation

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It means

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every action you take

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plants a seed deep in consciousness

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When enough seeds accumulate

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and conditions are right

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they grow on their own

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and become your next automatic response

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You may have experienced this

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After cycling for ten years

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one day you suddenly wonder

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how do I actually keep my balance

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You cannot explain it

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but your body remembers

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It is not you remembering

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it is the seeds moving

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Every action you have taken

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has left its mark

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They have all become seeds

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waiting there

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to be triggered again

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Clears one percent compounding describes the same thing

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Seeds of the same kind keep repeating

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their force grows stronger

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and their direction becomes smoother

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It is not you forcing the effort

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the track itself is deepening

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Clears four laws fit as well

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Make it obvious

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make it attractive

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make it easy

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and make it satisfying

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All four arrange the conditions for a trigger

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A seed needs the right conditions to sprout

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Once the conditions are arranged

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the seed moves on its own

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We have discussed this before

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discipline is really environmental design

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In a sense Clears book

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is an operating manual for conditions

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At this point you may think

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are Buddhism and this book saying the same thing

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No

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The difference lies in the final step

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Clear says

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start by changing your identity

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Do not say I want to run

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say I am a runner

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Do not say I want to read

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say I am a reader

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Treat identity as the ultimate lever

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This advice is extremely practical

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I have no objection

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It works at the behavioral level

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You tell yourself

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I am someone who writes every day

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then write even fifty words each day

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and cast another vote for that identity

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Once enough votes accumulate

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writing is no longer something you force yourself to do

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it is simply what someone like you does

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But Buddhism asks one more question

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You replaced an old identity with a new one

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from I am a lazy person

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to I am a runner

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The label changed

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but did the voting machine stop

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No

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Manas consciousness does not care which label you use

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It cares about only one thing

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that something called me exists

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Whether it is the lazy me

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or the athletic me

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as long as the word me remains

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manas consciousness keeps running

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Clear teaches you to change the label

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Buddhism teaches you to see the act of labeling

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This is where he stops after peeling the third layer

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The onion has another layer

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That layer is not a particular identity

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not a question of runner or lazy person

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That layer is this

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identity itself is a habit

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Not a good habit

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not a bad habit

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but the deepest and oldest of all habits

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and the hardest one to notice

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Every moment you assume there is a me

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When you wake in the morning

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your first thought is not what day is it

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but I am awake

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When you walk

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it is I am walking

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When you get angry

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it is I am angry

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The word me never rests

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It is so automatic

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you never even recognize it as a habit

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But it is

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and it is the most stubborn habit of all

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A member asked an excellent question

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He said

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There are habits

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that I know are bad

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but I simply do not want to change

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It is not that I cannot control myself

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I do not even want to control myself

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What is this state of knowing but refusing to move

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What is really happening

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I think this reaches the heart of the issue

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because it exposes a truth we rarely dare to consider

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Think about it

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A habit you know is bad but refuse to touch

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what does it really mean

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It means the habit is no longer just a behavior

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It has been absorbed by manas consciousness

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It has become part of you

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like an old algorithm that once worked

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still running automatically in a new world

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You know it is outdated

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but it feels too familiar

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so familiar you cannot separate the habit from yourself

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Changing it

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feels like denying who you are

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It is not that you do not want to change

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your identity is defending its position

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Psychology works at the behavioral level

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It tells you

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to remove triggers through environmental design

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and fill the gap with replacement behaviors

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These methods work

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but they work on conditions

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Buddhism does not work on behavior

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or environment

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or motivation

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It works on the word me

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00:10:26,631 --> 00:10:28,163
Buddhism has three tools

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The first is ethical restraint

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Many people think restraint means prohibition

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No smoking

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no drinking

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no staying up late

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But that is not its true meaning

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Its purpose is to dismantle conditions

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If you avoid the trigger

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the seed has no chance to sprout

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It is not suppressing you

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it is taking you away from the battlefield

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The second tool is concentration

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Concentration means not feeding the impulse

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You may have experienced this

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Late at night you reach for short videos

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even though you do not want to watch

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But the thought appears

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and your hand reaches out

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Concentration means

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the thought appears

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you see it

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but you do not follow it

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Not following is not a fight

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and not gritting your teeth

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You see it arrive

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but do not continue the chain

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Without new nourishment

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the seed slowly weakens

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The third tool is wisdom

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Wisdom is finally seeing the voting machine

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You are no longer wrestling with a particular habit

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You step back

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and see manas consciousness repeating every moment

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this is me

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this is me

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00:11:30,367 --> 00:11:31,180
this is me

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You see the act itself

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00:11:34,047 --> 00:11:34,560
In that moment

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00:11:34,887 --> 00:11:37,700
a little space opens between you and it

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00:11:38,167 --> 00:11:38,920
With that space

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00:11:39,247 --> 00:11:41,548
it no longer pulls you along

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00:11:41,895 --> 00:11:44,548
I discussed this in my Ghost in the Shell episode

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What Motoko finally did

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00:11:46,416 --> 00:11:48,749
was stop mistaking the shell for herself

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Many viewers said that passage struck them deeply

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What Motoko did is the same thing we are discussing

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She did not replace it with a better shell

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She saw

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the shell is not me

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So you see

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00:12:02,880 --> 00:12:07,173
restraint concentration and wisdom complete Clears three layers

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Restraint works on conditions

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like Clears environmental design

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00:12:11,280 --> 00:12:13,439
Concentration works on the strength of the seeds

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like Clears process layer

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00:12:15,520 --> 00:12:18,012
Wisdom works on the word me itself

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00:12:18,439 --> 00:12:20,293
Clear teaches the first two steps

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00:12:20,599 --> 00:12:21,033
To dismantle conditions

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he gives the four laws

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00:12:23,079 --> 00:12:24,159
To stop feeding the seeds

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00:12:24,160 --> 00:12:27,400
he gives habit stacking and the two minute rule

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00:12:27,987 --> 00:12:29,585
The two minute rule means

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00:12:29,587 --> 00:12:31,400
whatever new habit you want to build

364
00:12:31,467 --> 00:12:34,239
shrink it to a version you can do in two minutes

365
00:12:34,386 --> 00:12:34,979
If you want to run

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00:12:35,186 --> 00:12:36,839
put on your shoes and step outside

367
00:12:36,906 --> 00:12:37,500
If you want to read

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00:12:37,707 --> 00:12:38,920
open the first page

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00:12:38,987 --> 00:12:39,859
First learn to show up

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00:12:40,186 --> 00:12:41,239
then work on doing it well

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00:12:41,426 --> 00:12:42,880
The idea sounds simple

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00:12:42,906 --> 00:12:45,026
but it solves the hardest step

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00:12:45,026 --> 00:12:46,040
starting

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00:12:46,266 --> 00:12:46,979
But the third step

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00:12:47,347 --> 00:12:49,040
seeing the voter itself

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00:12:49,146 --> 00:12:51,020
is where his book does not go

377
00:12:51,248 --> 00:12:53,327
This does not mean Atomic Habits is a bad book

378
00:12:53,327 --> 00:12:54,206
Quite the opposite

379
00:12:54,207 --> 00:12:57,181
It is one of the most useful habit books I have read

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00:12:57,327 --> 00:13:00,181
If you have not built a basic system of good habits

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00:13:00,207 --> 00:13:01,101
read it first

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00:13:01,288 --> 00:13:02,407
At the behavioral level

383
00:13:02,408 --> 00:13:04,620
it is more useful than any Buddhist text

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00:13:04,807 --> 00:13:06,260
Clear is right when he says

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00:13:06,288 --> 00:13:08,047
you do not rise to the level of your goals

386
00:13:08,048 --> 00:13:09,941
you fall to the level of your systems

387
00:13:10,048 --> 00:13:11,740
So build the system first

388
00:13:11,768 --> 00:13:14,181
Start planting seeds in the right direction

389
00:13:14,648 --> 00:13:16,101
The methods he teaches

390
00:13:16,128 --> 00:13:19,461
habit stacking the two minute rule and environmental design

391
00:13:19,487 --> 00:13:21,660
all hold up in real life

392
00:13:21,847 --> 00:13:23,181
These are the foundation

393
00:13:23,368 --> 00:13:24,407
Without a firm foundation

394
00:13:24,408 --> 00:13:26,909
talk of seeing the voter is empty

395
00:13:27,415 --> 00:13:29,389
But if your system is already built

396
00:13:29,455 --> 00:13:30,748
you run when it is time to run

397
00:13:30,775 --> 00:13:31,769
meditate when it is time to meditate

398
00:13:32,016 --> 00:13:33,348
and rise early when it is time to rise

399
00:13:33,496 --> 00:13:35,149
Your habits are already moving

400
00:13:35,175 --> 00:13:36,988
and life looks pretty good

401
00:13:37,136 --> 00:13:39,149
yet something still feels unsettled

402
00:13:39,415 --> 00:13:40,669
No matter how much you optimize

403
00:13:40,736 --> 00:13:43,348
or how many better labels you give yourself

404
00:13:43,535 --> 00:13:46,309
something underneath never seems to move

405
00:13:46,616 --> 00:13:47,128
That something

406
00:13:47,535 --> 00:13:48,988
is identity itself

407
00:13:49,376 --> 00:13:51,909
the machine that keeps casting votes

408
00:13:52,295 --> 00:13:53,789
You do not need to shut it down

409
00:13:54,055 --> 00:13:55,389
and you cannot shut it down

410
00:13:55,695 --> 00:13:57,820
You only need to see it

411
00:13:58,248 --> 00:14:00,421
Imagine standing beside a river

412
00:14:01,088 --> 00:14:02,460
The water keeps flowing

413
00:14:03,127 --> 00:14:05,220
You do not need to stop the water

414
00:14:05,647 --> 00:14:08,100
or change the direction of the current

415
00:14:08,688 --> 00:14:11,060
You only need to stand on the bank and watch

416
00:14:11,608 --> 00:14:13,340
In that moment of watching

417
00:14:13,488 --> 00:14:16,501
a little distance opens between you and the river

418
00:14:17,127 --> 00:14:19,541
Next time you hear yourself thinking

419
00:14:19,728 --> 00:14:21,220
this is just who I am

420
00:14:21,767 --> 00:14:22,621
pause for one second

421
00:14:23,167 --> 00:14:24,460
Do not deny it

422
00:14:24,568 --> 00:14:26,860
and do not replace it with a better phrase

423
00:14:27,287 --> 00:14:28,860
Just watch that moment

424
00:14:29,328 --> 00:14:30,580
and ask yourself one question

425
00:14:31,488 --> 00:14:32,775
Who is casting this vote

426
00:14:33,404 --> 00:14:35,093
Do you think this question is worth considering

427
00:14:35,625 --> 00:14:36,917
Have you ever noticed

428
00:14:36,918 --> 00:14:39,340
something in yourself you know is harmful

429
00:14:39,340 --> 00:14:40,707
but still cannot bring yourself to change

430
00:14:41,401 --> 00:14:43,070
Share your thoughts in the comments

431
00:14:43,259 --> 00:14:43,979
I am Leo Wang

432
00:14:44,309 --> 00:14:45,414
See you next time