Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

by James Clear

Your brain constructs an emotion or feeling to describe your current situation, and that means a craving can only occur after you have noticed an opportunity.

When you observe a cue, but do not desire to change your state, you are content with the current situation. Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure (which is joy or satisfaction), but about the lack of desire. It arrives when you have no urge to feel differently. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.

If you do not desire to act on what you observe, then you are at peace.

Being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action. Being smart will never deliver results on its own because it doesn’t get you to act. It is desire, not intelligence, that prompts behavior.

With craving, we are dissatisfied but driven. Without craving, we are satisfied but lack ambition.

Self-control requires you to release a desire rather than satisfy it.