The Master Identity Loop
Every habit you keep is held in place by a loop. Here's the one that sits above all the others.
Identity → behaviour → evidence → identity
The loop is simple and relentless. Your identity produces a behaviour. That behaviour becomes a piece of evidence. The evidence reinforces the identity. And the strengthened identity produces the behaviour again, more easily than before.
This is why habits feel effortless once they're established: the loop is doing the work. It's also why bad patterns are so sticky — the same machinery holds them in place.
Where to intervene
Most people try to break the loop at the behaviour, using willpower to stop an action mid-cycle. It's exhausting and it rarely holds. The more durable intervention is at the evidence stage: deliberately create small actions that the loop reads as proof of the new identity, and let the cycle carry the change forward on its own.
This idea is one thread. The full method is in Identity Over Discipline.