Toronto is gray today.
That kind of quiet, overcast gray that doesn’t ask anything of you.
We’re here visiting family. March has that in-between energy. Not winter. Not spring. Just… suspended.
And it hit me this morning, sitting with my coffee, looking out at streets still damp from last night’s rain…
We are almost 90 days into the year.
Ninety.
Not day one energy. Not fresh start energy. Not “this is my year” declarations written in new journals with untouched pages.
This is the part of the year where reality quietly takes the wheel.
And for most people…
the habits they swore they would change have already settled back in like they never left.
Justin Whitmel Earley said it in a way that doesn’t leave much room to hide:
“Habits are best understood as the water we swim in. They are the things that so surround us that we cease to notice them, and often the things we notice the least form us the most.”
It’s not the loud habits that shape you.
It’s not the obvious ones.
It’s the silent ones.
The ones that don’t feel like decisions anymore.
The “I’ll get to it.”
The “not today.”
The “this week is just busy.”
The “I’ll start again Monday.”
The “maybe next year.”
Those aren’t thoughts.
They’re rituals.
And they repeat so often they become identity.
By now, most people have already negotiated themselves out of the life they said they wanted in January.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
Quietly.
They didn’t wake up and say, “I’m giving up.”
They just started making really reasonable excuses.
Time.
Money.
Stress.
Health.
Family.
Work.
All valid. All real.
And all incredibly convenient.
Because reasons feel responsible.
Excuses feel like logic.
And both of them, if repeated enough, become the very habit that replaces the original desire.
We rarely look at this, right…
Not the failure.
The replacement.
The moment where desire gets traded in for explanation.
There’s a line in scripture that cuts straight through all of this:
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” — Proverbs 23:7
Not as he wishes.
Not as he plans.
Not as he declares on January 1st.
As he thinks.
As he repeats.
As he lives, quietly, daily, when no one is watching.
You don’t become what you want.
You become what you rehearse.
I’ve lived this in more ways than I care to admit.
Not just in business or discipline, but in love, in my body, in intimacy, in the way I stayed too long in spaces that asked me to shrink.
Habits aren’t just about what you eat or how often you go to the gym.
They are how you tolerate.
How you speak.
How you avoid.
How you numb.
How you reach.
How you disconnect.
I spent years in dynamics where the habit wasn’t chaos. It was accepting chaos.
That’s a different level of conditioning.
Where you don’t even question what hurts anymore.
You just learn how to function inside it.
That’s what habits do when they go unchecked.
They don’t just shape your behavior.
They shape what you believe is normal.
There’s a teaching often echoed in spiritual circles:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle said it, but it’s been echoed through yogic teachings, Buddhist disciplines, and every lineage that understands the body as a vessel of repetition.
Not aspiration.
Repetition.
You don’t rise into a new life.
You condition into it.
And conditioning is rarely glamorous.
It’s showing up when it’s inconvenient.
When it’s boring.
When it’s not working yet.
When there’s no immediate reward.
Especially then.
Napoleon Hill wrote in Think and Grow Rich:
“Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”
There’s nothing sexy about that sentence.
No shortcuts.
No manifestation hacks.
No “just align your energy and it will arrive.”
It’s work.
It’s repetition.
It’s staying in the process long enough to become someone who can actually hold the thing you say you want.
The truth is simple my friend…
If you were handed everything you desire right now, without the habits to sustain it…
you would lose it just as quickly.
Anything gained with ease is often lost with the same ease.
Not always.
But often enough to pay attention.
Because the real transformation was never the outcome.
It was the capacity.
And capacity is built through habits.
This is where people quietly opt out, because they don’t want the version of themselves required to maintain it.
That version wakes up differently.
Speaks differently.
Chooses differently.
Stays when it’s hard.
Leaves when it’s misaligned.
Holds standards.
Keeps promises.
To themselves first.
And that’s where it gets uncomfortable.
Because no one sees that part.
No applause.
No validation.
No immediate return.
Just you…
and the water you’re swimming in.
So here we are.
Late March.
Ninety days in.
The question isn’t, “Did you fail your habits?”
It’s —
Which habits quietly replaced the ones you said you wanted?
Because something always fills the space.
Always.
Toronto is still gray outside my window.
People moving. Cars passing. Life happening.
And I’m thinking about how easy it is to drift.
How natural it feels to let the current take over.
And how rare it is for someone to stop mid-stream and say —
No. Not this direction.
That moment…
that decision…
that interruption of pattern —
That’s where everything changes.
Not overnight.
But inevitably.
You don’t need a new year.
You don’t need perfect conditions.
You don’t need more motivation.
You need awareness.
And then you need to choose, again, with clarity —
What kind of water you’re willing to live in.
Because you will become it.
Quietly.
Slowly.
Completely.
And one day, you’ll look around and realize —
It was never one big decision.
It was the small ones…
you stopped noticing.
→ What’s one habit you know is quietly shaping your life right now?
Name it below.
Awareness is where it starts.
As always loving and praying for you and your truth,
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Rene’ Schooler(Author)
