I once believed I had an Instagram problem. Too much scrolling, too little doing. The solution? Obvious. Delete the app, set screen time limits, maybe develop some self-control. But instead, I told myself a different story: “I’m curating my feed for inspiration.”
Inspiration for what? For the life I was too busy watching other people live?
We do this all the time. We take behaviors that sabotage us and wrap them in justifications that make them easier to live with. “I work better under pressure” is just a poetic way of saying “I procrastinate until I have no choice.” “I’ll start Monday” is just “I don’t want to start.”
The more clever the excuse, the more dangerous it is.
For years, I struggled with running. I told myself I wasn’t built for it, that my body just didn’t cooperate. It wasn’t untrue. Running felt terrible. But that wasn’t the full story. The full story was that I hated being bad at it. And as long as I told myself it was a physical limitation, I didn’t have to admit that I was simply avoiding discomfort.
We think change is hard. And it is. But what makes it nearly impossible is the way we frame it. We don’t just struggle with consistency, discipline, or follow-through. We struggle because we refuse to see our habits for what they really are.
The stories we tell ourselves can either keep us stuck or set us free. The trick is to stop settling for the comforting version and start looking for the honest one.
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