“We are what we repeatedly do, therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle
“How you do anything is how you do everything.” – Unknown
If you’re always looking for the easy way out, cutting corners, or taking shortcuts, you’ll never reach your full potential. But, just as the two quotes above say, you are what you repeatedly do and how you do anything is how you do everything. Work to eliminate your bad habits (cutting corners) and replace them with forming and repeating good habits. There is no such thing as a magic pill.
For example, say you are looking into getting gastric bypass surgery to lose weight. That only addresses the symptom (obesity), not the root cause (eating too much and living a sedentary lifestyle). If you haven’t changed the habits that got you to where you are, having the surgery is likely to only be a temporary fix. The surgery will help you lose weight (the easy part in this scenario), but you didn’t have to earn it. You didn’t have to change your habits (the hard part) to get your desired result. Over time, if you haven’t changed the bad habits that got you to where you are, you will revert to being overweight. You become what you do.
Make sure to always look for the root cause of the issue you’re experiencing and try to solve for that, not the symptom. Once you determine what habits need to be stopped and what habits need to be created, begin implementing them on a daily basis and you will be more likely to see a long-term solution.