Goal: quit sugar.
Better goal: eat more fruit. Let your body get the sugar it needs from better sources. Feel fuller from the fiber, the volume, the chewing, the vitamins. Stop being hungry. Stop wanting sugar.
Goal: snack less.
Better goal: eat more protein, more vegetables, more fiber. Get genuinely full. Watch the snacking disappear on its own.
Goal: build a consistent exercise routine.
Better goal: remove what’s getting in the way of the routine you already almost have. Find the timing that fits your actual life not the life you think you should have.
This is reverse causality fueled by FAE.
We assume failure is a character flaw. That we’re lazy. That our discipline isn’t wired right. That if we just tried harder, got a little bit more discipline, we’d finally get the results we want.
Psychologists call this the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE).
We explain our behavior by pointing inward at our deficiencies, when we should be pointing outward at our systems.
The real culprit isn’t you. It’s the structure around you. (That you can change)
You are working harder than you should by working against yourself, your biology, your wiring where you don’t have to.
The overeating happens because there’s no system for eating enough of the right things.
The missed workouts happen because other routines are crowding them out.
The bad sleep happens because of everything you’re doing in the hours before bed that makes good sleep impossible.
The behavior you hate is a symptom. You’re fighting the smoke, not the fire.
And this is the bias, FAE at work: we spend enormous energy trying to change what we see — the behavior/the person — while completely ignoring what’s creating it in the first place.
Change the system. The behavior follows.
Not because you became more disciplined. Not because you finally found your willpower. But because the environment stopped working against you and started helping you.
The question that changes everything isn’t “why can’t I just do this?”
It’s “what is actually causing this?”
Follow that train of thought. Trace the causality chain back far enough and you’ll find a system, or a gap where one should be. Fix that, and your so-called “flawed self” gets a lot better, a lot faster, without more discipline and all the guilt tripping.
Look at one behavior you keep trying to change.
Now ask, what’s causing it? What system, or absence of one, is producing this as a side effect?
Change that.