“And how is it going with the journaling?” I ask her before taking the last bite on my plate. The size of the bite tells her that I expect the full story, even though I don’t really put expectations on other people’s choices.
“Oh, I thought I’d start on January 1st,” she responds with a smile. The answer is short, yet lingers between us, as she doesn’t seem to question it herself.
“But it’s the middle of October,” I think to myself, as the chewing gives me a moment to restructure the thought into a gentle question. “And if you started today, who would you be by January 1st?” I ask, as I don’t intend to question her, but to ask her the right question.
And I think to myself, what if it’s always so? That we often postpone what we know we would benefit from starting now. That we wait for a new New Year’s resolution, when all we really need is an everyday intention.
The calendar and the crisis
Every year, I meet highly ambitious people who tell me they’ll start that thing they know they would benefit from doing on January 1st. Sometimes that telling happens in mid-October, and that might be just what it is: telling. Telling us something deeper.
Today, Tuesday, October 27th, is a very special day. And the fact that you might ask yourself what’s so special about this day is, in and of itself, working in your favor, giving your brain’s filter, the RAS, a reason to search for what’s good.
But if there were a “right answer” to the question, it would be that today marks 66 days until New Year’s Eve. The night so often reserved for new New Year’s resolutions, for endings and new beginnings. For the starting of new habits, and the letting go of old ones.
Accompanied by the calendar is the crisis, the other moment that tends to become a catalyst for change. What we have refused to become the force for will eventually force us, leaving us to choose between being the victim of our own circumstances and owning up to the fact that we can choose to be the creator of them.
What we have refused to become the force for will eventually force us.
I speak from experience when I say that I’ve been left to make this choice myself, most clearly in 2014, when a diagnosis became the catalyst for my real change, and eventually set me on something bigger than healing an autoimmune condition: conditioning my mind, and learning how our body, mind and spirit work together.
The common denominator between the calendar and the crisis is that they’re both external circumstances we wait for to bring internal change. What if sustainable change was always the other way around? That it’s the internal changes we make that eventually change our external circumstances?
Because the real question isn’t whether we choose the calendar or the crisis as our catalyst, but why we would wait for either of them.
The third way
In truth, we don’t need a new New Year’s resolution, nor do we need a crisis, as the catalyst for change. Nor do we need a “first” to do something for the first time. We simply need to start, and to make it simple to start.
The foundation of starting is the belief in possibility: believing that what we desire is possible for us to achieve. I’ve written about the Bannister effect, and about how its story can help us understand our limitlessness and expand our minds to see the possibilities for ourselves.
Yet research by psychologist John Norcross shows that within three months, more than half of us have given up our resolutions, and after two years, fewer than one in five are still keeping them.
The question becomes: is it that “it” isn’t important enough, or that we don’t see ourselves as important enough? And before we reach the point of no return, when we’ve had enough, how can we realize that we are? How can we return to ourselves and make the shift once and for all, instead of trying to do it all at once?
We often look to verify our own excuses for why “now” isn’t the right time. And while there are cases when this can be true, the truth is that “now” is the only time we know we have. And often, the price we pay for postponing what we so deeply desire is much greater than the cost of it.
I’ve mentioned belief in possibility as the foundation of starting. But what stops us from starting over is the shift from “re-solution” to a clear intention. When we set the larger intention, the why beneath the why of what we do, we set the anchor to our desired outcome: something to rest on when the winds of the world try to make us drift away from our own core.
Resolutions are often focused on getting the outcome we desire, while intention is about our becoming. Many resolutions fade within weeks, which is interesting, as research shows that it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Perhaps we rarely give our resolutions enough time to become a behavior.
But what we also know from the research of Albert Bandura is that we act on what we believe we can do. Behavior follows identity. To reach our desired outcome and make sustainable behavior change, continuity over time alone isn’t enough. We have to change our identity: how we see ourselves, and what follows the “I am” statements we use. To look to affirmation rather than confirmation.
The algorithms of our lives
In a world overflowing with information, we rarely need to know more, but to embody more of what we already know. To close the gap between inspiration and integration, and become the kind of person for whom our desired outcome is natural.
So why do we so often spiral back into old behaviors, when we know what we “should” be doing?
Much of what we do each day runs on autopilot, guided by our subconscious mind: our beliefs, automatic behaviors and habitual actions. Shaped early in life by our surroundings, it is now running our lives. Our subconscious mind is built to protect us. It prioritizes what’s familiar and reads it as safe, even when safe means stuck.
In reality, we don’t see the world as it is, but as who we are: through the lens of our beliefs, which dictate not just where we set clear boundaries, but where we set limitations for ourselves. Just like the algorithms of social media, we train our minds to show us more of what we already believe. Our brain’s filter, the reticular activating system (RAS), lets through the information that is relevant to us. What is relevant is determined by our intention and our identity, and that is something we can change. Just as with social media, we can choose to engage with the algorithms of our lives differently: by setting a clear intention, and by making choices that strengthen the identity aligned with our desired outcome. Our intention sets the algorithm of our life, and makes it work for us in ways our intellect often struggles to describe.
The beautiful thing about our subconscious programming is that we can reprogram it, and install new software that makes our desired behavior run on autopilot. We can use our minds, instead of being used by them.
To do so, we can use the power of “I am,” combining visualization and affirmation with emotional intensity, repeated over time. Bringing awareness to our limiting beliefs and behaviors, and using the practices at the end of this article, is a starting point.
Because we become what we repeatedly reinforce, and as we do, we become a force for what we desire. This is what the 66 days are for: not to count the days, but to make the days count, setting up the algorithm of our lives to work for us.
Why we shouldn’t try
At a Q&A after an event in New York City last year, a woman spoke about “trying” to start a new habit, and I told her that she should stop trying. I didn’t mean that she should stop the new behavior, but that she should remove the “trying” from the equation, as it was what blocked the process of becoming.
We often speak about how we “should” “try” to wake up earlier to work out in the morning. How we will “try” to eat more nourishing foods, or “try” to set aside 30 minutes a week for that project we tell others we dream about. When in fact, “trying” is often what keeps us from the outcome we intend to install. Because telling our brain that we will “try” something is the weakest instruction we can give the algorithm: it leaves the outcome optional, instead of instructing it to work for us.
While we cannot guarantee the outcome, we can guarantee the behavior we are in charge of. Therefore, we have to decide that we are the kind of person who wakes up early to work out. It’s not something we try, it’s a decision we make, changing the inner dialogue from “I will try” to “I am.”
Because behavior follows identity. And so the question remains: how would that kind of person show up today?
Creating the tests we cannot pass
A decade ago, I read The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav for the first time. What struck me was the idea of creating a test we cannot pass. It made me think of how often we set up tests for ourselves that we know we won’t be able to pass, and in doing so set ourselves up for “failure.”
The trick, instead, is to recognize when we do it, and on a deeper level why we do it, and to make the choice to choose differently. It can be telling ourselves that it’s better to work out in the evening instead of the morning to get to work earlier, when in fact we know that by the time we finish work we’ll be hungry and tired, and tend to skip the workout.
It can be buying the wine, the candy or the cake on a Tuesday, telling ourselves we’ll save it for Saturday, when we know that a stressful day at work can make it seem impossible to resist. We create the tests even though we know we cannot pass them, passing our accountability away.
Another common excuse for postponing our desired outcome is telling ourselves that we don’t have time. Yet according to DataReportal’s Digital 2025 report, we spend an average of 113 hours a month online on our phones. Over the last 66 days of the year, that is close to ten full days.
That is no coincidence. Our phones are designed to make returning to them effortless. What would happen if we used the same principle in reverse?
The power of making it hard
Traveling reminds us of how easy it is to change a behavior when we change our external environment. Pulled off autopilot in the most ordinary things we do, we are forced to do old things in new ways, and to find new things to bring home to the old.
Just as we don’t need the calendar or the crisis to change a behavior, we rarely need to travel across the world for a new environment to install new behaviors. Instead, we can create a new environment within the one we’re in: one that strengthens our identity and makes our intention easier to integrate naturally. An environment where we make the unwanted behavior hard to do, like not bringing the wine or candy home, or uninstalling the social media app from our phone. And where we make it easy to act in alignment with our desired outcome, like going to bed with our workout clothes resting beside us. Reminding us, as we wake up with a clear mind, that we mind our wellbeing, and that we are the kind of person who shows up for ourselves.
From confirmation to affirmation
We often look to others to confirm our “bad” behaviors, asking “Is it okay if I eat this, or do that?” But the question isn’t “Is it okay if I do?” but “Am I okay with it?” Okay with the price we eventually pay for the cost we’re unwilling to take on now, waiting for the calendar or the crisis to catch up with us, instead of catching ourselves.
The question isn’t “Is it okay?” but “Am I okay with it?”
Just as we don’t need a first to do something for the first time, we don’t need other people’s confirmation. We need our own affirmation. We need to remind ourselves that we are important enough to prioritize that “it.” To set a clear intention, and align our identity with that intention by choosing what follows our “I am.” To stop waiting for a new New Year’s resolution, remembering that what we need is an everyday intention, and to show up for ourselves consistently over time, with coherence between our intention, our identity and our integration.
“But it’s the end of October.” And today, Tuesday, October 27th, is a very special day, as it marks 66 days until New Year’s Eve. “Who would you be by January 1st, if you started today?” I ask you gently now, as I don’t intend to question you, but to ask you the right question.
From inspiration to integration
I’ve gathered a few pages, inspired by what I use in my workshops and events, that you can download for free here. Set your intention for your 66 days of becoming, and let the I Am Letter be the starting point of your identity shift.
The 66 days list is not a way to track yourself, but to hold yourself on track. Print it and put it where you can see it. It’s so simple it sounds stupid, and that might be the very reason so many of us miss out on its power.
Journal prompts
What is your intention for the next 66 days?
What is one thing you will start, and one thing you will stop?
What “I am” would make it natural?
Where are you currently creating a test you cannot pass?
The I Am Letter
Write a letter to yourself from the person you are 66 days from now. Write it in the present tense, beginning with “I am,” as if it is already your reality. Write about all areas of your life, and go into detail about how it feels in your body. How do you feel? What do you think? How do you show up for yourself each day? Visualize it as you feel the gratitude of already having it all.
Seal it, and open it on day 66.
For the next 66 days, come back to your intention, to the identity you have chosen, and to the ways you show up for yourself, daily.
The Algorithms of Life
A 66-day guided journal for intention, identity and integration. The practice behind this essay, one day at a time.