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The Power of Hard Choices and Helping Others

Mark Sanford, Ph.D.
3 min readDec 29, 2024

Find your single driver to change habits

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

Do you know what’s really fascinating about personal growth? It’s all about those moments when you decide to level up — to drop those habits that aren’t serving you and start treating yourself with more respect. And here’s the thing: just making that choice says a lot about who you are.

Think about it. First, you’ve got to be real with yourself. It takes guts to look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, this needs to change.” That’s not easy. Then comes the tricky part — actually doing something about it. We’re talking about swapping out those comfortable but unhealthy patterns for better ones, which is about as fun as getting a root canal… at first, anyway.

Rewire Your Brain

But here’s where it gets cool: every time you make that better choice, you’re literally rewiring your brain. Scientists call it neuroplasticity, which is a fancy way to say your brain can create new pathways. It’s like blazing a trail through the forest— the first few times are tough, but keep at it, and soon you’ve got a clear path that’s easy to follow.

The real magic happens when you stack up these better choices day after day. Sure, pushing yourself to do the hard thing isn’t fun, but it does two awesome things: it forces you to grow (becoming…

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Mark Sanford, Ph.D.
Mark Sanford, Ph.D.

Written by Mark Sanford, Ph.D.

Ph.D. sociology. I help those working on personal development to attain self-respect and self-affirmation.https://medium.com/@sanfmark/membership

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