It's the middle of the year. How many New Year's resolutions have you forgotten?

New Year's resolutions are miniature forms of self-change and self-programming. What I've learned from my own self-programming is that not every trait is worth changing. Some habits are just impossible to break.

This failure comes from improperly placing our efforts. My theory is that New Year's resolutions and other attempts to change ourselves fail when we only target the symptoms, as opposed to the causes, of a behavior. I've come up with a diagram to explain how to go about changing ourselves and therefore our destinies.

Here is a legend:

Here is a sample model of the interaction of various traits:

In other words, not all traits are created equal. Some traits are more like roots that support the whole behavior of the person. Others are just leaves, depending on certain core characteristics.

If you want to change who you are, your best bet is to operate on causes. These are likely to be core beliefs and biases that instruct the rest of your behavior. We are webs of traits. If you make the right change, you can affect the whole system by targeting only one node.

For example, I have an idealism-bias that constantly forces me to be dissatisfied with conversations, projects, and life. I sometimes try to mask my irritation, but after a day or two, I'm back to my same ol' dissatisfied self. I need to go to the source and target my core, fundamental values that I have blindly held most of my life. If I attack a few cornerstone fallacies in my thinking, I have the potential to affect my entire fate.