Forget Habits, Build Your Keystone First
A crucial part that most habit articles blatantly miss
I incinerated my college years through binging anime, games, YouTube, porn, and processed junk.
The only positive was my religious zeal for working out — I was the proverbial gym rat.
But during the lockdown, I augmented my life with a menagerie of extra dimensions—philosophy, finance, music, writing, and restarting reading.
With gyms closed, I got inconsistent with working out and justified it with, “Why be obsessed with fitness? There’s so much more to life”. I remember gloating to people over how I was no longer a gym rat.
Boy, was I wrong!
Life soon became an unproductive downhill — I sucked at all my newfound “dimensions”. Around this point, an article and deep introspection gave me a mini-epiphany.
Working out wasn’t “just another thing”. It was the thing — my life’s keystone.
By disregarding it, I was disregarding life itself.
Your Keystone Shapes Your Entire Life
I owe most of my confidence and self-esteem to lifting weights — it gave me my first taste of popularity. It led me down the self-improvement rabbit hole. It also gave me most of my hit articles.
Good sleep, clean eating, discipline, proper posture, looking good in any clothes, higher masculinity, a quicker mind, and perseverance are all products of working out.
Let’s say you’re a painfully shy introvert that loves playing the guitar.
Your only friend finds out. He tells others. Intrigued, they pester you until you play for them. Cheering and clapping, they laud your skill. Word gets around.
You’re invited to the music club. Your confidence gets a major boost. You make new friends. You’re even more motivated to play. You’re drafted into a band. You tour other colleges. You get gigs.
Before long, you’re a charismatic rockstar with cheering fans.
This isn’t a pipe-dream — it’s the power of a keystone.
How to Find Your Life’s Keystone
In high school, I joined a gym at an overweight friend’s behest — only to perform pre-sunrise cardio, bad-form crunches, and basic stretching.
One day, as my alarm fails me, I go in the evening — and at my jaw drops at the sight of a tall dude with bulging muscles — a sweater-swathed classmate I had paid little attention to.
Motioning me over, he shoves the 2.5 kg dumbbells into my hands. Enamored, my fanboy self complies — and the rest is history. So how did I find my keystone?
Through sheer dumb luck. If you haven’t found your keystone yet, there are only two reasons:
- You’ve Not Explored Enough. Scour the internet. See what your friends and age-group peers are doing. Enroll in classes. Check this amazing YouTube channel out. Get involved in school and college activities. See what the people that inspire you are doing.
- As in My Case, It’s Hiding in Plain Sight. What bursts your stress? What do you look forward to every day? What when done brightens the entire day? What do you feel like doing solely for the sake of doing it? What affords you joy? Keep questing and you will find it out.
Prioritize Your Keystone and Structure Your Life Around It
If anything threatens my fitness regime, I cut it out from my life — healthy meals, 8+ hours of sleep, and 2.5 hours of exercise every day are all non-negotiable in my life.
Only in the direst of circumstances, like the recent hospitalization and death of my grandpa, did I make exceptions. Doesn’t this sound diametrically opposite to standard hustle advice?
It does, but your keystone, by definition, fills you up with joy, positivity, energy, and motivation — and with those four, your life’s conquered.
Start or end your day with your keystone. The former lets you conquer your day while the latter lets you evaporate stress and sleep like a baby — which supercharges the next day.
Another way is to chop your day with it — a motivation recharging interlude that morphs your afternoon slump morphs into a second energetic morning.
Final Words
Success and happiness in life spring from intrinsic motivation — and that’s the source of your keystone. So never sacrifice it for surface things like peer pressure, more money, etc.
Be it playing the guitar, painting, or even juggling fire-sticks, you’ll get so good at your keystone habit that it becomes a monetizable skill.
Millionaire tattoo artists and blacksmiths are testaments to how the habits needn’t even be conventional.
Build and nurture your keystone — it will build and nurture your life.