I tried to quit sugar many times. Willpower. Cutting back. Making rules. Nothing worked. I’d last a few days, maybe a week, then find myself back where I started.

Then a mentor said something to me — I don’t remember her exact words. Something simple. Maybe just: “Why don’t you give up sugar?” But something in that moment shifted. Not my willpower. Not my strategy. My identity.

That was many years ago. I haven’t had refined sugar since.

Once I became someone who doesn’t eat sugar, checking labels and passing on the cookie just happened. I wasn’t fighting myself anymore. The doing flowed from the being.

What if you aren’t getting what you want — not because of your skill or your effort — but because you’re approaching it from the wrong direction?

Most people work from a simple assumption: if I have the right things — talent, connections, experience, money — I can do what I want, and eventually be who I want to become. Have → Do → Be.

A salesperson thinks: if I had a nicer car, I’d do more sales calls, and I’d be more successful. An executive thinks: once I have the right team in place, I’ll do the hard work, and the company will be what I want it to be.

This feels logical. It’s also backwards. And when you believe it, you give up without realizing it — because you’ll never have enough to start.

The sequence runs the other way. You start with BE — your identity, how you see yourself, who you’re committed to becoming. That identity drives DO — the actions that flow naturally from who you are. And consistent action produces HAVE — the outcomes, the results, the life.

Be → Do → Have. Identity first. Always.

If you take on the identity of a dictator, you start acting like one — and you’ll get the results a dictator gets. If you take on the identity of a collaborative leader, you seek input, build buy-in, and get different results. Neither is inherently right. Sometimes you need to be a dictator. If the building is on fire, you don’t ask for consensus on which exit to take. But you’re choosing the identity deliberately — not defaulting to it.

In my work at ITX, when I’m pushing ideas that are more doing than being, I feel the difference. The effort is higher. The results are thinner. When I connect to a clear way of being first — something like I am a leader who brings out the best in people to deliver ever-increasing value to our clients — the doing gets easier and the results get better. Less force. More flow.

The declaration matters. Naming your identity out loud — to yourself, to your team — changes how you act. Not because you’re performing it, but because identity shapes perception. You start noticing things you couldn’t see before. Options appear that weren’t visible when you were grinding at the level of tasks and goals.

So here’s the question worth sitting with: where in your life are you working at the level of doing or having — and wondering why nothing is changing?

What identity would make the actions you want to take feel natural instead of forced? Who do you need to be — so that the doing just follows?

You don’t need more willpower. You need a different starting point.