Welcome to Quiet Momentum, a short weekly newsletter from someone on the journey alongside you. Each week I share what's working, what isn't, and what's worth thinking about.
I'm sitting in the sports arena after a big win. The crowd was electric. Everyone's high-fiving each other, saying, "We did it." Coaches, players, trainers, other staff, and fans.
That energy spills into the following week. I keep hearing how good the team is at the office, in the building, and around town.
It was probably the 40th time I heard it before it finally clicked.
"We did it."
Fans, and even staff (myself included), associate themselves with a successful team, then disassociate themselves just as fast when the team plays poorly.
You'll hear "We won!" after a victory, but "They lost" after a defeat.
You bask in a team's win like you were on the court, but distance yourself from the loss like you had nothing to do with it. Everyone does this without ever thinking about it.
When you wear the jersey and say "we won," you're borrowing a feeling you didn't create. And that feeling is real. Your mood lifts, you walk with more pride, and you feel connected to something successful. But you didn't do anything. The association did all the work.
That's not always a problem. But it becomes one when borrowed identity replaces built identity.
You see it on résumés.
People attaching themselves to big projects or ideas they were near but didn't create. "Led a cross-departmental initiative" when they attended three meetings. "Drove revenue growth" when they were one of forty people on the project.
When this concept became clearer to me, I went back to check my latest résumé. And sure enough, I had a line guilty of this as well. My line included “helped.” A dangerous word to have on a résumé. I said I helped with something that I had very little to do with. A tiny fraction of the work. Others carried the load.
The borrowed version feels so good, and that is what makes it dangerous. It's not that people are lazy. It's that association is so convincing that most people don't realize they've substituted it for the real thing.
We do this exact same thing within our own journeys.
Following a fitness influencer feels like progress toward getting in shape. Reading about investing feels like progress toward building wealth. Buying books you don't read feels like progress toward becoming smarter. Especially when you tell people how many you own.
The association with those things creates a feeling of forward motion. You're near the thing, so you feel like you're part of it.
But proximity isn't participation.
And it's not just a feeling you're borrowing. It's status. When others see the jersey or the résumé line, the association becomes a shortcut for them to judge you favorably. And when people are already giving you credit, there's less pressure to actually build the thing yourself. The compliments, the nods, the "oh that's cool." They all come from proximity, not performance.
Getting credit for something you didn't earn feels good for a moment. Then it sits wrong. The recognition feels hollow, and you know it belongs elsewhere.
But in self-improvement, you're not just rooting from the stands. You're supposed to be building something. And at some point, the gap between following the journey and living it becomes hard to ignore. The results don't show up. So we distance ourselves.
"That method didn't work."
"That advice wasn't for me."
We move on with nothing built.
The person who actually goes to the gym doesn't need to borrow that identity. They built it. The person who opened the Roth IRA and set up automatic deposits doesn't need to feel like an investor by reading about investing. They are one.
The shift is from “I'm trying to be this” to “I am this.”
That's the key. From associating with progress to actually creating it. From "we won" to "I built this."
Leave the "we did it" for your Madden dynasty.
The Line This Week
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