Every now and then, I throw a question at my inner circle that gives them existential chills: “You woke up this morning—did it actually feel like a day worth living?”
The result? Less than 5% say YES. The other 95%? They don’t answer with words; they answer with a long, heavy sigh. A sigh that smells like traffic fumes, tastes like bitter deadlines, and carries the suffocating weight of the “daily grind” they’ve resigned themselves to calling… life.
So, who’s the architect of this “life”?
The Sound of the Hamster Wheel
That sigh didn’t just appear out of thin air. It’s the soundtrack to an endless race most of us are running: The Hamster Wheel.
You wake up thinking, “Ugh, another day?” Then you dive into the crowd like an unconscious habit. By nightfall, you collapse and mutter, “That’s just my luck. Life’s a bitch, what can you do?”
But wait—look closer. We plan month-long vacations, we plan lavish weddings, we plan how to grind for a mortgage… but almost nobody has a plan for a single day worth living. We outsource our emotions to the weather, the boss’s mood, or a bleeding red stock chart. Then we call it “Fate.” Sounds poetic, right? In reality, it’s just a sophisticated way of running away.
Is Fate to Blame?
Bill Gates famously said: “If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor, it’s your mistake.”
Let me give that a “Happy Stoic” twist:
“If you live in misery, that’s the fault of your circumstances. But if you don’t have a plan to escape and find joy, that’s definitely on you.”
Look, wealth or poverty, joy or pain—they’re just seasonings in this grand soup of human experience. But here’s the kicker: if you had the choice, would you really let your life be a puppet, tossed from one cliff to another by “fate”? What’s actually stopping you from taking the strings?
Designing Life from the Ground Up
It’s not your boss, your parents, or your ex. You lose your power because you’ve left your life on Auto-pilot. When you don’t build your own set of rules, you default to old instincts and unconscious reflexes—the very things that fuel the Hamster Wheel. To flip the script, you don’t need a miracle. You need a new Operating System (OS), starting with something called “Habits.”
Many people think habits are shackles—boring repetitions that kill spontaneity. But to me, habits are the Core OS that protects your inner peace in a crazy, uncontrollable world.
Habits vs. Blind Ruts
I see habits as “automated decisions.” When you turn a good action into a habit, you stop wasting energy on internal debates. You don’t struggle with “Should I run this morning?” You just lace up and go. Habits free up your brain’s “bandwidth” for the bigger bets in life.
Is it true that habits are the programming language of life?
Absolutely.
In Stoic philosophy, the only thing we truly control is our mind and our actions. Everything else—market crashes, pandemics, or a boss’s frown—is just “external stuff.”
Habits are the anchor. When the world falls apart, habits keep you from being swept away. It’s the compound interest of evolution. A 1% change every day via habits creates a massive leap after a year that will make you go “Wow.”
Case in point: I’ve run over 7,000km in the last year and a half. That’s like running from Saigon to Hanoi four times. Sounds crazy? Maybe. But the math is simple: I averaged 22km a week. Anyone can do that. A mundane weekly routine turned into a “WOW” result over time.
How I “Hacked” My Life with Habits
- Running Daily – The “Freedom Capital” Exercise: Lacing up every day isn’t just about fitness. It’s teaching my brain how to push past physical pain when my legs protest and sweat stings my eyes. It builds grit—the stuff that keeps me from quitting when investments go south or life gets messy. Plus, health is the ultimate “capital.” It allows me to breathe road dust, bathe in streams, sleep in tents, and enjoy real freedom without a broken body holding me back.
- Journaling My “Stupidity” – The Wake-up Call: I read a Harvard study showing that over 80% of graduates who became millionaires kept a journal. So, every day, I write down my investment blunders and the times I let greed or fear take the wheel. This habit forces me to look into the mirror at my own “dark side.” It turns billion-dollar losses into the most valuable textbooks I’ve ever owned.
- Reading to Clear the “Brain Trash”: 30 minutes every night is when I reinstall my brain’s software. Instead of consuming social media drama, I download the thoughts of the greatest minds in history. This helps me spot opportunities while the crowd is panicking. I realize that every “test” I face has already been solved in a book somewhere. I read with pure gratitude for those who wrote them.
You see, habits don’t steal your freedom. They are the boarding pass to true freedom: freedom from fear, freedom from laziness, and freedom in the face of life’s chaos.
The Choice is Yours
Everyone deserves a life worth living. But the difference lies in one single line: Do you WANT to start building your Habit OS today?
Don’t wait for a “perfect day” for things to get better. There are no miracles, except the one called “Action.” Habits will change your life in ways you can’t even dream of yet.
Forget the world out there for a second. Tomorrow morning, wake up, look in the mirror, and say:
“Wow, I’ve got another day worth living!”
Try it. It’s actually pretty cool.
