Everyone, without exception, has bad habits—me, you, everyone.
The gold-medal Olympian who embodies peak fitness? Has bad habits.
The physician lecturing you about health and lifestyle? Also has bad habits.
The postal worker delivering your mail? Yep, struggles with bad habits.
But the real question is: Why?
If bad habits are so universal that they influence an Olympian just as much as a postal worker, what is it about them that makes them an unavoidable part of being human? Why do all humans struggle with bad habits?
Or, to put it more bluntly—why do you struggle with bad habits and why can’t you stop forming them?
Is it because you’re lazy? No, it’s not.
Is it because you lack willpower? No, willpower has nothing to do with it.
Is it because you don’t want to change? No—you’ve tried to change.
So why do bad habits persist, no matter how much effort you throw at extinguishing them? Hint: it’s not the reason you think.
Habits: The Ongoing Discussion
First, let’s see what the books say about habits…
Works like Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg provide helpful and actionable insights into habit formation. They offer strategies to build good habits by reinforcing small, repeatable behaviors—“Follow these steps, repeat them daily, and your good habits will solidify over time.”
While these works offer valuable guidance, they fail to fully address two key questions:
- What is the fundamental reason behind their advice? Not just what they tell you to do, but why their strategies work—or don’t.
- Why do bad habits persist, no matter how far along you are in forming new ones? Why does overcoming bad habits feel like a battle that never truly ends?
These books focus on how to build good habits, but they rarely explore the deeper forces driving habit formation—good or bad.
Most habit books focus on habit formation and replacement, assuming bad habits can simply be overwritten. But every single one of us knows the truth—bad habits don’t just disappear. They resurface, adapt, and attempt to take root in our lives over and over again.
Even the gold-medal Olympian still has mornings where their mind says, “Forget the 4 a.m. workout today. Let’s just sleep in.” And some days, I’m sure it wins.
If even an Olympian—someone who embodies the very essence of discipline and training—still struggles with habits, what does that really say about how habits form and are understood?
The main takeaway is this: Habit books can tell you what to do to form habits, and their advice may work for a time. But if they don’t teach you why it works—or why habit formation, both good and bad, functions the way it does—then they leave you unequipped for the real struggle.
The Truth Behind Your Bad Habits
Now that we’ve seen what the books have to say, let’s dive deeper. The common misconception is that good habits are hard to build, while bad habits form effortlessly.
This is false. Not partially incorrect—completely incorrect.
At their core, all habits—good or bad—form and function the exact same way. The effort required is secondary to the deeper force that governs habit formation itself.
It’s the lack of understanding of this force that creates and perpetuates this misconception. What people fail to realize is that no matter what you’re doing—or not doing—you’re refining a behavior. Even if you spend every day wasting away on the couch, doing nothing, you’re still reinforcing a pattern of behavior. You’re still refining a habit. In this case, a habit of stagnation.
Why?
Because the same force that strengthens and solidifies your good habits through repeated effort is also reinforcing and solidifying your bad habits in the exact same way—whether you’re aware of it or not.
The reason you can’t stop forming bad habits is simple: they aren’t just forming—they are being refined. Every action, every behavior—whether intentional or mindless, whether conscious or unconscious—is constantly being optimized by the force that governs habit formation itself. That force is commonly known as the Will to Power.
- Skip the gym once? You’re refining the habit of skipping.
- Stay up late watching TV? You’re reinforcing the behavior by making it easier to repeat.
- Try to quit smoking but “just have one”? You’re optimizing the habit to withstand resistance.
This is why bad habits seem to creep up and take root in our lives over and over again, as if from nowhere. We’ve been conditioned to see habit formation through a modern, incomplete lens—one that fails to recognize that all behaviors are constantly being refined and reinforced by the true underlying force that governs habit formation.
A force that 99% of people—including the authors of the books we mentioned—are completely unaware of.
This is why I wrote The Reason for Everything.
Not to give people step-by-step checklists for building habits, but to reveal how the Will to Power truly drives habit formation in all its forms.
Instead of memorizing an outline to follow, you’ll learn about the fundamental force at the core of all habit formation and change. And once you understand it, you’ll never need another habit book or guide again.
For the first time, you’ll see not just how your habits form, but why they form in the first place; you’ll finally understand why willpower and motivation have nothing to do with it; and why it seems like your mind fights you every step of the way.
If you’re ready to learn about the force that truly drives and refines not only your habits, but your thoughts, relationships, and life itself, then The Reason for Everything was written for you.
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