Jess and I just celebrated out 7th anniversary.

She bought me a bookshelf…….stick with me here.

That gift is far more significant than it may seem.

It represents change.  Permanent change.

We are what we repeatedly do.  

I was never a reader, nor the kid who people would refer to as “smart”.

Not one single person I know growing up would describe me as any sort of “academic” or “intellectual”.

I was the kid who was athletic, and had the work ethic to match it.

For anyone who thinks I’ve overstated my poor academic performance check the attachment.

It’s my college transcript.  And yes at one point I was carrying a 1.63 GPA……

I wasn’t joking when I said I graduated without reading a book or that I graduated as the 7th dumbest person in my class.

That was who I was, not who I am, nor who I will be.

Almost a decade ago, I made the decision I wanted to be something else.

So here’s who I am today:

  I’m the guy who admitted he was really bad at something.

      I’m the guy who decided to change that.

      I’m the guy who knows that it will take just as long to change that as it did to become that, maybe longer

That bookshelf represents nearly a decade of habit building.

It represents reading 10 pages a day.

None of us are stuck being who we are.  We can change it.

We can change it by changing our habits.

We can go from being the guy who never read a book, to the guy people ask what book he is reading.

We can go from being the person who has never trained to the person people ask “how did you do it?”

We can go from being the person with terrible eating habits to the person who gets stalked on social media for recipes and information.

We just have to make the changes.  The small changes over time that reshape who we are.

Those changes become habits.  Habits over time shape who we are.

The book shelf came with a note that read:

“Here’s a little something to help organize your habit”

We are what we repeatedly do.

Fern