I believe that two tools, Goals and Identity, are very powerful instruments we’re pushed into using - but they’re dangerous weapons easily mishandled. Why do we have goals, why do we hold onto an identity? because we see something in them that’ll bring us happiness, or integrity, or connection with others. They’re meta-happinesses, though; they’re guides that may bring us what we want but that all too often we get caught up in satisfying for themselves.

Take weight loss - nobody wants to lose weight. We might want to be more attractive, healthier, fitter, and we may want to move with more elegance and grace and less pain - but the loss of the effects of gravity on the mass of our carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen (with trace elements!) bodies isn’t what we crave.

But still we see a rise of a thousand grams on a pair of scales and we mope back to our couch, forgetting that the exercise and simpler eating we’ve been doing make it easier to move, and the fall into the cushions hurts less - and that we’re closer to the friends we bonded with while we walked six miles.

The goal is not the goal, and you are not your identity.