You're almost right. Habits don't just show up – we engage in them because they give us something useful back. The trouble is this useful thing is often optimised for the short-term, and habits can have negative long-term consequences.
The alcohol thing is a good example: when not pregnant, it gives us short-term pleasure, at long-term cost. When pregnant, the cost of alcohol is moved up to the now and so it's easier to get out of the habit. It's not about strength of motivation, it's about immediacy of consequences.
I have heard rumours that some people are able to channel motivation to pursue what's good in the long term even when it goes against short-term gains, but I believe this ability is more rare than it may appear. For many, it's more effective to try to re-arrange the environment such that the consequence profile aligns with the long-term goals.
Yep, all great points. If you want to go deeper, I think we can actually trick ourselves into being "pregnant" by creating some sort of urgency in our lives. An investor I worked with once told me the best way to be a successful entrepreneur is to become unhirable (through scandal or something like that) because then you would absolutely have to make it in business on your own.
When you live a high agency life, you have to screw it up in strategic ways to push you towards success. I actually chose to have children when I felt like I was making too much money and it was making my life a little too easy. (It wasn't the only factor, but it was a conscious factor).
And it worked - I have way less time, way more important things, and my software projects have become much more hyper focused and I goto market and test things much earlier, I simply dont have the luxury to sit around and think like I used to.
The alcohol thing is a good example: when not pregnant, it gives us short-term pleasure, at long-term cost. When pregnant, the cost of alcohol is moved up to the now and so it's easier to get out of the habit. It's not about strength of motivation, it's about immediacy of consequences.
I have heard rumours that some people are able to channel motivation to pursue what's good in the long term even when it goes against short-term gains, but I believe this ability is more rare than it may appear. For many, it's more effective to try to re-arrange the environment such that the consequence profile aligns with the long-term goals.