How to Completely Change Your Life in One Day?
If you’re like me, you find New Year’s resolutions to be silly—because most people go about changing their lives in completely the wrong way.
They make New Year’s plans just because everyone else is doing it—we assign a shallow meaning to this status-seeking game—but these plans don’t meet the requirements for real change. A true transformation isn’t about convincing yourself to be more disciplined or efficient this year; it’s much deeper than that.
I’ve given up on goals ten times more than I’ve achieved. I think most people are the same. But the fact is, people try to change their lives and almost always end up failing completely.
New Year’s resolutions are silly, but reflecting on the life you hate is always wise, so you can move in a better direction, and we will discuss this below.
So, whether you want to start a business, change your physique, or dare to pursue a more meaningful life without giving up two weeks later, I want to share 7 ideas about behavior change, psychology, and productivity that you may have never heard of, so you can achieve this by 2026.
This will be a comprehensive piece of work.
This isn’t the kind of letter you read once and forget.
This is something you need to save, take notes on, and set aside time to think about.
The final step (digging deep into your inner world to discover the life you truly want) will take about a whole day to complete, and its effects will last much longer.
Let’s get started.
1. The reason you haven’t reached where you want to go is that you’re not the kind of person who would stay there.
When setting lofty goals, people often focus on one of the two necessary conditions for success:
Change your actions to make progress toward your goals (the least important, secondary factor)
Change your essence so that your actions naturally follow suit (the most important, primary step)
Most people set a shallow goal, pump themselves up to stay disciplined in the first few weeks, and then effortlessly revert to their old ways because they’re trying to build a beautiful life on a rotten foundation.
If that’s not clear enough, let’s look at an example.
Think of those successful people. They could be a muscular bodybuilder, a founder/CEO worth hundreds of millions, or a charismatic person who can talk to a crowd without feeling anxious.
Do you think a bodybuilder has to “struggle” to eat healthily? Does a CEO have to be disciplined to show up on time to lead their team? It seems that way on the surface, but the truth is they can’t imagine living any other way.
A bodybuilder has to struggle to eat unhealthily.
A CEO has to force themselves to stay in bed past the alarm, and they hate every second of it (there are many nuances here, let me explain).
Some people think my lifestyle is a bit extreme and too disciplined. For me, it feels natural, and I’m not saying this to pit it against other lifestyles. I simply enjoy living this way.
When my mom advises me to take a break and go out… I hold back from saying, “If I don’t feel happy, why should I do these things?”
The next statement sounds simple, but it’s perplexing how many people don’t understand it.
If you want to achieve a specific outcome in life, you must have the lifestyle that can create that outcome long before you achieve it.
If someone says they want to lose 30 pounds, I usually don’t believe them. Not because I think they can’t, but because too often, these people say, “I can’t wait to lose weight so I can enjoy life again.”
I have to tell you, if you can’t maintain the lifestyle that helps you lose weight and find a reason more appealing than continuing your old habits, you will eventually return to square one, and you will regret wasting an irretrievable resource: time.
When you truly change yourself, all those habits that are of no help in achieving your goals become repulsive because you deeply realize what those behaviors will ultimately turn your life into.
The reason you feel satisfied with your current lifestyle is that you don’t fully understand what they are or what consequences they will lead to.
We will explore how to uncover these truths, but it requires a step-by-step approach.
You say you want to change, you say you want “financial freedom” and “a healthy body,” but your actions are exactly the opposite, and there must be a reason for that. Moreover, the reasons behind it are far deeper than you might think.
2. The reason you haven’t reached where you want to go is that you don’t really want to stay there.
Only believe in action. Life happens on the level of events, not words. Believe in action. — Alfred Adler
If you want to change yourself, you must understand how the brain works so you can start reprogramming it.
The first step in understanding the mind is realizing that all behavior is goal-oriented, that is, teleological.
Think about it carefully; it seems obvious, but when we delve deeper, most people are unwilling to accept it.
You take a step forward because you think you’re going to a certain place.
You scratch your nose because you want to stop the itch.
These goals are clear, but most of the time, your goals are unconscious.
For example, you might not realize that when you’re sitting on the couch at noon, you’re actually preparing for the next task, trying to kill time.
On a deeper, unconscious, and complex level, you may pursue goals that could harm you, but you will justify your behavior in a socially acceptable way so that you don’t appear to be a failure.
For instance, if you always procrastinate on work, you might justify it with “lack of discipline,” but in reality, you’re still trying to achieve a certain goal. In this case, your goal might be to avoid the judgment you would receive after completing and sharing your work.
If you say you want to quit that dead-end job but have no real reason to stay there, you might start to think you lack the courage or that you’re just not a “risk-taker,” but the truth is you’re pursuing security, predictability, and an excuse that doesn’t make you appear to be failing in the eyes of others, because in their view, having a dead-end job is a sign of success.
This indicates that real change requires changing your goals.
I’m not talking about setting some shallow goals, as doing so would foster a subconscious desire that is harmful to you. This has been discussed enough in the realm of efficiency improvement.
I’m talking about changing your perspective. Because goals are essentially about changing your perspective. Goals are a vision of the future; they act like a lens that allows you to notice the information, ideas, and resources that help you achieve your goals.
Now let’s delve deeper, because if you don’t understand this, it will only make it harder to break free.
3. The reason you haven’t reached where you want to go is that you’re afraid to get there.
What you need to remember most is that it doesn’t matter how you got this idea or where it came from. You may have never seen a professional hypnotist or undergone formal hypnosis.
However, if you accept a certain idea—whether it comes from yourself, your teachers, your parents, friends, advertisements, or any other source.
If you firmly believe that this idea is correct, then its impact on you is as powerful as the words of a hypnotist on a subject.
— Maxwell Maltz
This is how you become who you are today and how you will become who you will be tomorrow.
This is the composition of identity:
You want to achieve a goal.
You view reality through the lens of that goal.
You only notice the “important” information and ideas that help you achieve your learning goals.
You take action toward that goal and receive feedback indicating you are making progress.
You repeat this behavior until it becomes automatic and unconscious (a conditioned reflex).
This behavior becomes part of your self-perception (“I am that kind of person…”).
You defend your identity to maintain psychological consistency.
Your identity shapes new goals, thus restarting the cycle; if this identity is detrimental to a good life, the situation will quickly deteriorate.
Regrettably, you must break the cycle between steps 6 and 7, but this process begins when you are still a child.
Your goal is survival.
You rely on your parents to teach you how to survive. You have to comply. And most people’s education is based on clear rewards and punishments, so unless you adopt their beliefs and values, you will be punished. Only when you see through all this can you truly think independently.
But your parents also went through the same process in their lives. That’s the danger. Unless they broke this pattern themselves, they would all be influenced by the widely accepted notions of success in the industrial age. They also inherited the best and worst ideas from their parents and grandparents.
Deeper still, once you meet your physiological survival needs (which is easy to do in today’s world; you are almost born into safety), you begin to survive on a conceptual or ideological level.
You may not be trying to protect and propagate your body, but you will absolutely protect and propagate your thoughts. It’s not hard to see the battle of ideas on the internet, with participants having both individual and group identities.
When your body feels threatened, you enter a fight-or-flight state.
The same thing happens when your identity is threatened.
If you identify too deeply with a certain political ideology (as we just discussed), when someone challenges your beliefs, you feel threatened. You feel real pressure, as if you’ve been slapped hard. Since most people don’t analyze their emotions for the truth, you often fall into an echo chamber effect and become more stubborn, ultimately harming yourself and others.
If you grew up in a religious family without the ability to think independently, when someone threatens your psychological safety in that small circle, you will attack and resist.
The same thing happens when you unconsciously see yourself as a lawyer, gamer, or someone else who won’t take action to pursue a better life.
4. The life you want exists at a certain specific mental level.
Human thinking evolves through predictable stages over time.
You are born like a small survival sponge, absorbing all the beliefs you can come into contact with (these beliefs are largely influenced by your culture) to gain a sense of security.
If you’re not careful, your thinking may become rigid, making it difficult to live a meaningful life.
This is well documented in models such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Grout’s stages of self-development, spiral dynamics theory, and holistic theory, which borrow from each other and are easily observable in society.
Impulsive—there is no boundary between impulse and action. Black-and-white thinking. For example, toddlers hit when they’re angry because, to them, the feeling of anger and the act of hitting are one and the same.
Self-protective—the world is full of dangers, and you must learn to protect yourself. For example, children learn to hide report cards, lie about chores, and figure out what adults want to hear.
Conformist—you equate yourself with your group, and the group’s rules are reality itself for you. In other words, you really can’t understand why someone would vote for someone different from their family or group.
Self-aware—you realize that your inner world doesn’t align with your outward behavior. For example, sitting in church, you become aware that you’re not sure if you believe what everyone around you seems to believe, but you don’t know how to deal with that feeling.
Seriously responsible—you establish your own set of principles and strictly adhere to them. For example, leaving your family’s religion after careful study and adopting a personal philosophy you can defend; or creating a career plan with clear milestones because you believe that putting in the right effort will yield the right results.
Individualist — You realize that your principles are shaped by your environment, and you begin to view them more flexibly. For example, you recognize that your political views are more related to your upbringing than to objective truth; or you discover that your ambitious career goals are actually aimed at winning your father's approval.
Strategist — You employ various systems while being aware of your role within them. For instance, when leading an organization, you actively reflect on your blind spots; or when engaging in political activities, you recognize that your perspective is one-sided and influenced by biases you cannot fully see.
Constructive Awareness — You view all frameworks, including your identity, as useful fictions. For example, you hold your spiritual beliefs metaphorically rather than literally, understanding that a map is not the same as the territory itself, or you view your role as a "founder" or "thought leader" with a gentle sense of humor.
Unity — The separation between self and life dissolves. In other words, work, rest, and play feel like the same thing. There is no longer a need to become a certain kind of being; there is only presence itself, responding to everything that happens.
For most of you reading this article, I assume your values range between 4 and 8, which is a significant gap. Those closer to 8 are reading this either to learn something or to pass the time in a harmless way.
Those closer to 4 genuinely desire change. You feel you should have more, but you cannot fully understand it yet, as clearly many factors are at play.
The good news is that which stage you are in doesn’t really matter, as experiencing any stage follows a certain pattern.
V — Intelligence refers to the ability to obtain what you want from life.
The only true measure of intelligence is whether you can achieve your life goals. — Naval Ravikant
Success has its secrets.
One of the elements is autonomy.
Another element is opportunity (many people like to confuse opportunity with "privilege," as they think opportunity is just another factor).
The final element is wisdom.
If you have a high degree of autonomy but few opportunities, it doesn’t matter how likely you are to take action toward your goals, because that goal won’t yield much.
If you have opportunities and autonomy but low intelligence, you will never fully utilize those opportunities.
First, we’ve discussed autonomy before. As for opportunities, I can’t suggest you change your actual workplace, but if you can’t see the abundant digital opportunities in front of you, I don’t know what else to say.
In summary, I want to focus on what intelligence is in the context of combining these two elements and the context of this letter. For this, we need to turn to cybernetics.
The term cybernetics comes from the Greek word kybernetikos, meaning "to steer" or "to be skilled in steering."
It is also referred to as "the art of getting what you want."
So, if the Navy defines intelligence as getting the life you want, then understanding cybernetics can help you achieve that goal faster.
Cybernetics explains the characteristics of intelligent systems.
- Have a goal.
- Act toward that goal.
- Feel where you are.
- Compare it to the goal.
- Take action again based on feedback.
You can judge the intelligence of a system by its ability to experiment repeatedly and correct itself persistently.
A ship blown off course by the wind then corrects its heading and sails toward its destination. A thermostat senses a temperature change and activates. The pancreas secretes insulin after a spike in blood sugar.
How does this relate to how you achieve life goals? Everything.
Acting, perceiving, comparing, and understanding systems from a meta perspective is the foundation of high intelligence (as we define it here).
High intelligence refers to the ability to try repeatedly, persist, and understand the big picture. A hallmark of low intelligence is the inability to learn from mistakes.
Low intelligence individuals often get bogged down in the problem itself rather than solving it. They give up when they hit a bottleneck. Like a writer who cannot build an audience due to a lack of ability to try new things, experiment, and find what works for them, ultimately giving up (thinking there is no effective method, no matter how limited your cognition, is wrong; thus, this mindset belongs to low intelligence).
High intelligence means realizing that any problem can be solved over a long enough time scale. In fact, as long as you are determined, you can achieve any goal.
Wisdom lies in realizing that you can make a series of choices that ultimately lead to your goal. You understand that thoughts are hierarchical, and you cannot leap from papyrus directly to Google Docs. Even if this goal seems impossible now, you are merely temporarily lacking the necessary resources—resources that may appear in the coming years.
When I talk about "goals," as I will continue to repeat, I am not discussing it from a typical self-help perspective, although sometimes adopting that perspective is helpful.
I view this issue from a teleological or Greek cosmological perspective—everything has its purpose, and everything is part of a larger whole.
Goals determine how you view the world.
Goals determine your definition of "success" or "failure."
You can try to "enjoy the process," but if the goal you are pursuing is wrong, you cannot enjoy the process.
Your thinking is the operating system of reality.
This system is composed of goals.
For most people, these goals are imposed on them by others, like code pre-set in your subconscious.
Go to school. Find a job. Feel wronged. Play the victim. Retire at 65.
A known but unworkable path.
To become smarter, you must:
- Reject known paths
- Dive into the unknown
- Set higher, newer goals to expand your thinking
- Embrace chaos and allow for growth.
- Study the universal laws of nature
- Become a well-rounded polymath
I know this may not be a traditional definition of intelligence, but this series of steps can indeed create extraordinary connections in your brain, leading to what we typically call smart people. Coupled with autonomy, you are halfway to success.
This naturally leads us to the next section.
Six: How to Start a Brand New Life in One Day
The best times in my life always happen after I become thoroughly tired of feeling no progress in myself.
How do you dig deep into your inner world?
How do you become aware of the constraints you face?
How do you gain profound insights and truths that can change the trajectory of your life?
Through simple yet often painful questioning.
Few people do this, as can be seen from the way they speak or their views on a particular topic. Questioning is also a form of thinking, but few people engage in it.
I want to give you a comprehensive plan that you can use each year to reshape your life and kickstart a period of rapid progress. This plan will help you ask the right questions.
These questions will cover all levels, from macro to micro: where you want to go, what you need to do to get there, and what immediate actions you can take to start moving toward that goal.
This will take a whole day to complete, so I recommend you strictly follow the steps. You will need a pen, a piece of paper, and an open heart.
I have observed that those who successfully transform their identities often go through a certain pattern: this transformation usually occurs rapidly after a buildup of tension. Specifically, I have noticed that people often go through three stages.
Cognitive Dissonance — They feel they do not belong to their current life and are very tired of the lack of progress.
Uncertainty — They do not know what will happen next, so they either try or feel lost, feeling worse.
Exploration — They discover the goals they want to pursue and make progress in 6 months that would normally take 6 years.
Thus, the goal of this plan is to help you reach the critical point of cognitive dissonance, overcome uncertainty, and discover the goals you truly want to achieve, so that this clarity leaves you profoundly shaken, and various distractions no longer hold influence.
The structure of this plan is designed to be completed in one day.
In the morning, you will engage in a psychological excavation to reveal your hidden motivations.
During the day, you will periodically interrupt yourself to break free from autopilot mode and reflect on your life.
In the evening, you will synthesize these insights to form a direction for action the next day.
I cannot guarantee that this method will work for everyone, as I cannot ensure that every reader is at the right stage in their life story for these insights to have an impact. You cannot place the climax at the beginning of a book and expect it to be engaging.
Part One) Morning — Psychological Excavation — Visual and Anti-Visual
First, we must create a new framework or perspective for your thinking.
It’s like creating a new shell, leaving the old one, and gradually adapting to it over time. At first, it may feel ill-fitting, but that’s actually a good thing.
Please take 15-30 minutes to think and answer the following questions.
Do not try to outsource the thinking work to artificial intelligence. I want you to break through the limits of your thinking. If you cannot answer these questions now, you can come back to them later.
What is the dull, persistent dissatisfaction that you have learned to endure? Not the kind of deep pain, but the kind of dissatisfaction you have learned to tolerate.
(If you don’t hate it, you will tolerate it.)
What are the things you always complain about but have never truly changed? Write down the three things you complained about the most in the past year.
For each complaint: What conclusion would an observer of your behavior (rather than your words) draw about what you truly want?
What truths in your life can you not confess to someone you deeply respect?
These questions are designed to make you aware of the pain in your current life. Now, we need to transform this pain into what I call an "anti-vision," which is a brutal recognition of the life you do not want.
This way, you can harness this negative energy to direct your efforts toward a positive direction and act out of intrinsic motivation.
If everything remains the same in the next five years, describe what a typical Tuesday looks like for you. Where do you wake up? How does your body feel? What is the first thing that comes to your mind? Who is around you? What do you do from 9 AM to 6 PM? How do you feel at 10 PM?
Now, try to extend the time frame to ten years. What have you missed? What opportunities have slipped away? Who has given up on you? How will people evaluate you when you are not around?
You have reached the end of your life. You have lived a stable life, never breaking the established patterns. What price did you pay for this? What have you never allowed yourself to feel, try, or become?
Who around you has already achieved the future you just described? What about those who are five, ten, or twenty years ahead of you, walking the same path? How do you feel when you think about becoming one of them?
To truly change yourself, what identities do you need to let go of? (“I used to be that kind of person…”) What social costs will you incur by no longer being that person?
What is the most embarrassing reason you have not changed to date? That reason that makes you sound weak, afraid, or lazy, rather than reasonable?
If your current behavior is a form of self-protection, what exactly are you protecting? What price has this protection cost you?
If you have answered these questions honestly and are at the right stage in your life, you will feel a deep unease with your current lifestyle, and you may even feel disgusted.
Now, we need to channel this energy toward a positive direction. We need to formulate a minimum viable vision because your vision is like a product. It may not be clear at first, but as time and experience accumulate, it will become clearer and more powerful.
Temporarily set aside practical factors.
If you could snap your fingers and live a completely different life in three years, think about what you truly want, rather than what is realistic. What would an ordinary Tuesday look like? The level of detail should be the same as in question five.
What beliefs do you hold about yourself that make that kind of life feel natural rather than forced? Please write down your self-identity declaration: "I am the kind of person who…"
If you are already that kind of person, what will you do this week?
Answer all these questions first thing tomorrow morning.
Part Two) All Day — Breaking the Autopilot Mode — Disrupting Unconscious Ways of Acting
These journaling exercises are interesting, but what we want is real change.
To be frank, nothing will happen if you don’t break the unconscious patterns that are currently holding you back.
Today, I want you to seriously reflect on everything you recorded in the first part of your journal. In addition, I want you to remember to think. Take this seriously.
If you do the same things your whole life, you won’t change. You need to consciously break old patterns.
Take some time now to create reminders or calendar events on your phone. Add this question to the reminder or event so you can start thinking about it immediately.
The more random and non-conflicting with your schedule, the better.
11:00 AM: What am I currently avoiding?
1:30 PM: If someone filmed the last two hours, what conclusions would they draw? What kind of life do I want?
3:15 PM: Am I moving toward a life I hate, or toward a life I want?
5:00 PM: What is the most important thing I pretend is not important?
7:30 PM: What did I do today to protect my identity rather than out of genuine desire? (Hint: Most of what you do is like this.)
9:00 PM: When did I feel most alive today? When did I feel most numb?
To further stimulate your thinking, consider scheduling these questions during your commute, while walking, or when sitting idly.
What would change if I no longer needed others to see me as [your current identity]?
In what areas of my life have I sacrificed vitality for safety?
What is the most basic "kind of person I want to be" that I can become tomorrow?
Part Three) Evening — Synthesizing Insights — Entering a Season of Progress
If you follow this process, I am confident you will gain at least one profound insight that can change the trajectory of your life. Now, we need to express these insights, integrate them into ourselves, and take action to embark on a journey toward a higher mental realm.
After today, what do you think is the most genuine reason you have been stuck?
What is the real enemy? Identify it clearly. It is not the environment, nor other people, but the internal patterns or beliefs that dominate everything.
Summarize the current state of life you absolutely will not accept in one sentence. This is your vision for the future. You should feel something when you read it.
Summarize the goal you are building in one sentence, knowing that it will continue to evolve. This is your vision MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Finally, we need to set goals.
Again, these goals are not set to be achieved, as goals are merely expectations. They are unreliable and can make you feel bound by something that will eventually change.
Instead, you should view goals as a perspective, a way to adjust your mindset and escape an unwanted life. Don’t worry about the so-called finish line, because we will find that it doesn’t exist. The real joy lies in the process.
One-Year Perspective: What must be true one year from now for you to know you have broken the old patterns? One specific thing.
One-Month Lens: What conditions must be met in one month for the one-year lens to remain viable?
Daily Reflections: What 2-3 things can you schedule tomorrow that the kind of person you want to be would do without hesitation?
That’s quite a bit.
I hope this helps you.
But we still need the final piece of the puzzle to finalize everything.
Follow me.
Chapter Seven — Turn Your Life into a Video Game
The optimal state of inner experience is one where consciousness is orderly. This state is achieved when psychological energy (or attention) is invested in actionable goals, and skills match opportunities for action.
Pursuing goals brings order to consciousness because one must focus attention on the task at hand and temporarily forget everything else.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
You now have all the elements needed for a beautiful life.
Now, it may help to organize all your insights into a coherent plan. Please take a new sheet of paper and write down the following six components:
Anti-Vision: What is the root of my existence? Or, what is the life I never want to experience again?
Vision: What does my ideal life look like? How can I continuously improve this life through effort?
One-Year Goal: What will my life look like one year from now? Is this closer to the life I want?
One-Month Project: What do I need to learn? What skills do I need to master? What can I build to bring me closer to my one-year goal?
Daily Key Factors: What are the priorities that can drive project progress and bring the project closer to completion?
Constraints: What am I unwilling to sacrifice to achieve my vision from scratch?
Why is it so powerful?
Because these elements actually construct your own little world. If you are destined to pursue this series of goals at this stage of life, you have no choice but to fully commit. You will feel a desire for higher goals. You will think that any other choice is irrelevant.
You have turned life into a video game.
Because games are the epitome of obsession, enjoyment, and flow states. They contain all the elements that bring focus and clarity of thought, so if we reverse-engineer what these elements are, we can live in deeper enjoyment, with fewer distractions and greater success.
Your vision determines your victory or defeat. At least until the rules of the game change.
Your anti-vision is what matters. What will happen if you fail or give up?
Your one-year goal is your mission. It is your only top priority in life.
Your one-month project is about defeating the final boss. How will you gain experience points and loot?
Your daily leverage is tasks. This is the daily process of unlocking new opportunities.
Your constraints are the rules. It is these limitations that spark creativity.
All of this is like a set of concentric circles, like a force field, protecting your mind from distractions and shiny objects.
The more you play this game, the stronger this force becomes, and soon it will become a part of you, and you won’t want it to be any other way.
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