Often times stagnation in life can feel like a result of emotional turmoil or too much pressure from outside forces. Those are both very real forces, but the only possibility for escape from them is to take on the real source of stagnation: self-destructive actions.

There are only 2 types of types meaningful actions you can take: self-destructive actions and positive actions. There are of some neutral actions like going to the bathroom, but they are surprisingly few. Even basic actions that we take casually, like eating (particularly what we choose to eat) can be either healthy (positive) or self-destructive.

Positive actions are actions that inspire you and move you measurably towards your important, desirable goals. Self-destructive actions cause you to feel either bored or guilty and make you stagnate or move away from your important, desirable goals. Depending on which actions you take, you will tend to feel better or worse. You don’t have much control over those feelings once you’ve acted, but thankfully you have some control over what actions you choose to take.

Before you take action there is only the potential for those actions to be positive or self-destructive. The world of pre-action potential can be represented as below.

Once you’ve decided to act, your actions will either be positive and make you feel good, or they will be self-destructive, and you will feel bad. In a perfect world, the Venn Diagram of actions you take would look like this:

But realistically, we tend to take a mixture of self destructive actions and healthy actions.

Unfortunately people are strongly drawn towards self destructive behaviors. They are usually easier and often highly gratifying in the moment. Unfortunately they also often cause emotional discomfort. Eating an entire cake, sleeping with the wrong person, blowing up at a loved one, and watching TV for 8 hours straight can all feel great in the moment, but they can cause long term regret and suffering that outweighs the initial good feeling. Nonetheless people exhibit those destructive behaviors regularly.

It also seems a bit impractical to take ALL of the inspiring actions one can conceive of. There are only so many hours in a lifetime, after all. So your life doesn’t usually look like the circles above.

If you’re like most people the Venn diagram of actions you take looks more like this:

To make improvements, the first step is to identify your self destructive actions. Some are very apparent and can be obvious, but others take a bit more effort to find.

Using tools that get you in touch with what inspires you can be helpful. Once you know what inspires you you can determine what actions you take that push you in the opposite direction. For instance, if you are inspired by kindness but you often snap at people or behave selfishly then those should be considered self-destructive actions. By the same token if you are inspired by those who stand up for themselves, but you always say yes out of politeness or stay silent when you feel taken advantage of, then those can be considered self-destructive behaviors too.

Eventually, if you are able to find something that is meaningful enough to cause you to take actions to improve your life, you’ll probably start by taking fewer actions that are self destructive. Adding inspiring actions on top of existing vices is very hard. Much harder than clearing a slate of bad habits to make space for better ones.

Fortunately, the same process of getting rid of self-destructive behavior also causes a natural and equal increase in behaviors that inspire. For instance, eating less junk food means that you try to snack and eat more healthily which aligns with your values. The process looks like this:

Making the changes shown above can be very hard if you don’t build a structure around the attempt, but if you continue the process with consistency, you will eventually significantly reduce the number of destructive actions you take. If you foster the structures and skills that allow you to resist urges to take self-destructive actions, you become acclimated to the strain of delaying gratification.

Eventually your life looks more like this:

The arrow indicates that as you continue to stay away from self destructive behavior, you are able to integrate more and more inspiring actions and behaviors.

Along with the natural and easy integration of inspiring actions that comes with reducing self-destructive actions, another happy coincidence is that the longer you can keep away from those behaviors, the easier it becomes to do so. Similarly, the longer you habitually take actions that are purposeful, the easier it becomes to continue doing so. The resistance you feel to taking positive action, and the draw you feel to take negative ones, both fade naturally with practice.

The initial period of transitioning is the hardest part, but you can benefits from a natural momentum of action: you tend to get used to doing whatever you’re doing, and to not doing whatever you’re not doing.