I avoid negative situations in my life

Half of what looks like willpower is really routing. Someone who walks home a different way — three minutes longer, missing the street where the old job was — hasn't strengthened anything. They've just stopped spending forty seconds a day in a mood they never chose.

Plenty of hard things can't be routed around. Family, illness, the job you need for another eleven months. Those stay, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

But the optional ones are more numerous than they look, and they're oddly invisible because they've always been there. The chat that leaves you flat every time. The account you keep checking. Nothing dramatic is required — only noticing which doorway the mood always changes in.