In the IRC, there was a conversation about goal setting and habits. I was also messaging another Redditor about the same thing. This is his message to me. (These are not my words. I would credit the user but I'm not sure they'd want to be mentioned on TRP)

"I am still lurking around as it happens. I'd say from my own experience that the root of the apathy around growing and learning skills is perfectionism and ego. I'll use physical fitness as my example because I see people struggle with that one on a daily basis and I think I have some insight on the subject.

Humans, and this is at least thrice as true for introspective people, are creatures of fantasies. All people day dream, wonder and fantasize, but introspective and introverted people tend to be the ones who spend the most time doing so. Often, I find, introspective people are not very present oriented minds...they usually drift to analysis of the past like some kind of Sisyphan, repetitive torture picking apart choice. Or they soar into the future and imagine all the things they could be and how things will be better (or worse if anxiety creeps in like a poison.) The point is that while fantasies are absolutely vital to human mental health on a certain level, they are a vicious trap.

Someone who wishes to be different than they are, the kind of person who wants to acquire a skill they see others have, is very often someone looking at the future and fantasizing. The trouble with fantasy is that it's easy...we can be muscular and fit, popular and funny with a single thought. We can win every argument, we can convince Donald Trump to turn into Mahatma Gandhi in a ten minute conversation. The problem is that nowhere in here does a real road map to change occur...you just get to become the thing for free.

After a few times where you come out of a fantasy and decide "I'm going to change" and then slam against a wall your mind activates a kind of...defense mechanism. This would be the apathy. It informs you that the wall is impassable. Too high, too wide. Some people just naturally exist on the other side, where you want to be, but not you. To preserve your ego it invents yet another fantasy where you're just different, and people just are who they are, instead of these fantastically malleable and adaptive beings.

Apathy is the insidious poison of ego. It's the defense mechanism your ego's perfectionism uses to get you to simply not try to do something...either because your ego is low and you're not good enough and never will be or because it's too high and it's "beneath" you.

Coming back to the physical health standpoint the apathy of someone who wants to be strong, chiseled, fast, fit or simply healthy might sound like this. A low ego feels the apathy of impossibility. Somehow the guys and girls in the corner are just naturally strong, healthy and fit. They were always that way. Look at you...you can't even carry half the weight they can. They can run and you huff after a walk. This isn't for you. You can't do this. There's nothing here. You're lost in the desert of impossibilities with no compass and no sun to guide your way.

The poison of a high ego calls the people who mare strong and muscular "idiots". People who work out are vain. They're stupid. All of them are bad nasty people who you wouldn't want to be anyways. People are either smart or strong and you're smart...and that's better anyways. So fuck the gym. Fuck all those dumb vain muscle heads because they're literally people cancer. You'd die before becoming them.

My examples are severe...and the "you" I'm using is meant as me, not as me pointing a finger at you. Because I've been both places before. The fact is, smart and strong actually work the best together because nutrition and research help so goddamn much. Everything the apathy told you was a goddamn lie...both low and high ego versions. The strong people might have been any kind of person before. A lot of the most driven fitness freaks were heavy, or unhealthy, or just really weak before. And what they did, all they did, was form a habit.

That's the hard part. The good news is introspective people are easily some of the best at figuring out new habits. There is a quote in Buddhism that breaks down to the idea that you are always in a state of becoming. Every day. Every minute. If you choose to study books every night you are in a state of becoming smarter. If you lift weights everyday you are in a state of becoming stronger. If you talk to people everyday you are in a state of becoming more charismatic.

That's the core lesson. "Becoming." Treasure that word. That might be the single best word in all human existence. A lot of introverted and introspective people like fiction. And a lot of them like action movies or anime. I sure do. But they are considered "low brow" for one simple reason in my opinion. They have this idea of "awakening". One die under sufficient stress, or after an epiphany, or a spider bite you "unlock" some secret ability and become special instantly for free. Our heroes so often just get really sad or angry and then, BOOM, they are wreathed in blue fire with angel wings or they turn into a green hulking man who is invincible.

That's so unfair to the truth! The truth is in aligning your self into a state of becoming a little bit everyday...an hourglass does not instantly fill the other half when flipped. It goes grain by grain. Only a tiny increment of progress. But in the end it is entirely changed, every grain has passed through. Understand and accept perfectionism is an inner demon. It is the dark voice of ego. Human beings change all the time...and they do so very slowly. So very slowly. Like water slowly dripping until the basin is full.

So enough symbolism and metaphor. If I have done well you hopefully understand that sometimes your mind is the enemy.

Sometimes we peer too deeply into the abyss of our thought and it gazes back into us. The good news is you are introspective...you know how to think because you're practiced. So decide what skill you want. Whatever one you want. Then research to find a road map...small steps you can do every day. Then decide a pace...slow, medium but never fast. Fast doesn't exist remember! Not for humans! In the gym example, getting strong entails learning certain routines. A strength routine usually has bench press, dead lifts, pull ups, overhead press, rows and maybe one other lift. The rest of the stuff you see at the gym isn't important to learn right away. And if you do your research you learn all that's necessary is 3 days a week for 45 minutes! Seriously, that's it! You'll get almost twice as strong in a year doing that. The apathy will try to poison you really badly for the first 2 weeks, a little less in the next 2, and when you don't see immediate results at the end of a month your ego will scream at you. Ignore it and just keep staying in a state of becoming. Empty your mind and become a robot who is programmed to go to the gym 3 days a week for 45 minutes. By the end of month 2 you have a new habit! And it will be the easiest thing in the world! But the secret is seriously that you have to understand that your ego is a a figurative lying demon. It's Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings. It wants you to stay the same because humans are, at their base, lazy and vain and unwilling to take risks.

And it's ok! The other half of learning a skill is to learn to fail! When I started lifting for example I had a few times where I failed to lift the weight because I got tired. And somebody would bail me out. What I did was laugh it off with them, lower the weight, and immediately go again. My friends now all know me as the guy who fails gracefully since I learned how to...well...learn skills. If we're playing board games, I laugh and congratulate the winner when my carefully laid plans fail. I'm not an idiot, my plan was good, but they surprised me and that's good. When my character in a tabletop RPG goes unconscious, I make it funny and don't get grumpy and then encourage the others at the table to win for me!

If I fail to lift the weight I smile and shake my head and drop down the weight. When I was dating around when a date fizzled or a girl wasn't interested I just shrugged, wished her well and moved on. I got good at failing. But I never mastered it. I always felt anxious and hurt a little inside. But the simple act of refusing to end at failure means I start becoming positive immediately after. There's a hundred times in the last year I failed at something...and I don't remember any of it. But I remember all the times I decided to do something. That's what you need to do. Try to stop thinking and throw yourself into an action that you know you want to do (know is safe too!) and damn the consequences (if they are safe consequences).

After that...honestly...it's let go of ego and rinse/repeat. Get better as slowly as you can. Don't rush things. Try to focus on exactly what you're doing in the present and avoid analysis. Realize that if you go slowly enough and learn the right order to do things in, you actually can do almost anything. If you are willing to move really slowly and learn the material in a good order you can learn astrophysics on your own. But it will be crazy hard to start and slow for your entire life. That's the attitude you have to enter with.

Anyways, that's entirely too much information...but hopefully it helped you. Best of luck in embracing your state of becoming."