Good Morning Everyone! I hope Monday went well for you all. If you’re lucky, this is your last full day of work for 2025!! Get after it, finish the year strong, and use this time to reflect on how you want 2026 to look for you.

Today, for our main course, we’re going to look to Aristotle and see how our habits play an important role in who we become. We’ll also be considering James Clear’s philosophy on it, to give it a more modern feel. To burn that off and bring it to life, we’ll do a thought exercise called the Habit Mirror. Wrapping it up with our Book Nook, we’re going to open up Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics.

Pull up your seat. Thought Breakfast is served!!

To Aristotle, we don’t become virtuous by deciding; we become virtuous by doing.

When it comes to New Year’s and we think about new beginnings, resolutions, etc. The goal is always to become a better person by reaching towards certain virtues. A lot of people make fitness goals, indicating a desire for increased discipline. Some people might make resolutions to be more kind to people, which is a virtue in itself.

However, we see the crowded gyms start to empty out after a couple of months. Suddenly, people on the street aren’t as kind as they might’ve intended to be at the beginning of the year. Aristotle recognized this pattern, which is why he attributes “becoming” (realizing goals or developing the self) with practice, not intention. You can’t simply set an intention and drift into character; you have to rehearse it until it becomes habit.

Aristotle’s central claim from Nicomachean Ethics is that we are not born either virtuous or vicious. We become who we are through repeated actions. Our habits, therefore, shape our souls. He says that we become just by repeatedly doing just things, brave by repeatedly doing brave things, and on and on through the entire list of virtues. There’s an important distinction here that people often miss. Virtue is not a one-time effort, an intention, or even motivation. Instead, it’s a repeated choice, practiced alignment, and a trained craftsmanship of the will.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, comes in as a contemporary echo of Aristotle’s ancient wisdom. Clear asserts that every habit casts a vote for the kind of person you’re becoming. Identity, then, is not decided; it accumulates.

Our habits create our moral formations through repetition. The habit of doomscrolling forms restlessness. The habit of complaining forms grievance. Consistently showing up forms reliability. Consistent generosity forms charity. Habits don’t just change our outcomes; they change who we are available to become.

Habits train our attention, desire, and emotional tone. They can cultivate or erode all of the Aristotelian virtues. It starts with one small choice to act. The pattern stabilizes as that action is repeated, and identity is formed when the soul begins to align around that repeated action.

This is why New Years “resolutions” rarely work. They rely solely on willpower, but character is formed and carried by rhythm. We don’t rise to the level of all our intentions; we fall to the level of our habits.

This doesn’t mean habits should be purely moralized. You’re not always failing because you lack discipline. You are simply becoming what you’ve rehearsed.

If repetition forms identity, then small faithful actions still matter. The question is no longer “What do I want to be this year?” but “What habit deserves to shape me?”

List three habits you repeat daily (even small ones).

For each, ask yourself:

Then ask:

Which single habit, if strengthened, would quietly shift my identity?

“We become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions. For the virtues are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature, but by our habits.”
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.1

Aristotle argues that virtue is not an idea or belief, but a practiced pattern of action. We don’t become patient by thinking about patience; we become patient by repeatedly acting patiently in situations that test us. Our character then forms the same way that muscles do: through repetition under tension.

Our habits aren’t morally neutral. They are a daily moral training.

The smallest of actions quietly move our identities in one direction or another. Repeated generosity makes us generous. Repeated resentment makes us bitter. Repeated discipline makes us capable. Repeated avoidance makes us fragile.

Aristotle’s key insight here is that we are not simply free-floating selves who occasionally act. We are the sum of the actions we rehearse.

This means that habits shape identity before beliefs do. You can fully believe in courage while training in cowardice daily. You can value presence, but rehearse distraction.

James Clear echoed this thousands of years later, asserting that every repeated action says, “This is who I am becoming.”

Munch on that for today. Instead of asking yourself “Who do I want to be next year?” ask yourself “What habits are already turning me into someone? Do I agree with that direction?” Have a great day. Try and break those habit loops that train you to be something you don’t want to be. Come back tomorrow for another steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast!

Consider this your wake-up call.

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Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast