I am not becoming, I am being

You are not becoming someone, you ARE someone. How you do anything is how you do everything.

You ARE someone

I had this thought the other day. Something I wish someone had told me way before, when I was still a teenager.

You are not becoming someone, you ARE someone. What you do now dictates who you are. What you are going to do in the future is irrelevant to being who you wish to be now. Today, all the power you need to be the person you want to be is in your hands.

Becoming is escapism

Putting “becoming” off into the future is a form of escapism. It probably has to do with not knowing who you will be, and that’s completely fine.

Nobody can know the unknown. But we can know the now.

Predictions in disguise

Goals are predictions in disguise. We allow them to become expectations. We shouldn’t. They should remain predictions, and predictions can change when new facts arrive.

So our goals should be malleable. We should even be able to drop them when the predictions shift to a side that won’t benefit us.

No goal, just process

I had this thought on a killer Hyrox-style circuit. If I don’t let myself think about the time left on the clock, if I don’t count the reps, then what’s the end goal? The moment I collapse and can’t go any further. But through the process I will have reached my limit, and trained harder than ever before.

Lucky for me, my coach timed every station and every break. The fruits bore anyway. So what would keeping track have done? Not much, other than more suffering.

Fruits either way

What if I don’t have goals, and I’m just focused on the work? Does no goal mean no fruits? Absolutely not. There will be fruits either way.

Almost every self-help and productivity book is built around the goal. But what if there were none? Could our output, in quality and quantity, go up? Could we make more sound and rational decisions? My gut says all of these are true.

How you do anything is how you do everything

A good mantra for this. Let me explain.

Friction

In the moment we often say no to the things we want, because they might be hard to do. Take creating a new habit. The friction at the start is especially strong, because the behaviour is new and our brains naturally resist some forms of change.

When we decide to act against what we wish, we know. And because we know, we can recall the mantra.

The dishes

We all want to do the best we can, and be the best person we can be, preferably in every domain of life.

The mantra tells us: if I slip doing the dishes, if I do them quick and careless, imagine all the other things I’ll do without care.

I say the mantra, I catch myself. So I do the dishes with effort. It’s boring, and it seems useless, but the long-term effects are tremendously impactful.

How I do anything is how I do everything.

First written in March 2026.