Strategy means striking at the very root of an industry.
If you can’t reach that root, don’t bother talking about strategy. Don’t dream of growing big and strong. Just do the honest work — maintain your customers, control your costs, keep optimizing, keep refining the details.
The vast majority of businesses in the world operate without strategy, and they do just fine. There’s nothing wrong with building a small, beautiful business or trade.
The same is true for people.
The vast majority of people live without strategy — repeating the same daily routines, staying within familiar circles. What they call “effort” and “persistence” is really just improvement and spinning within the same existing pattern.
If a person wants to evolve, wants to cross into a higher tier, they must have a “life strategy.” And that means striking at the very root of who they are.
If you can’t reach that root, don’t talk about transformation. Don’t dream of making serious money, climbing to a position of status, or crossing into a different class.
Being comfortable with comfort is fine. Living an ordinary, unremarkable life — that’s how the vast majority of people live.
But if you’re someone with ambition, with a flame still burning inside you that you can’t smother, that keeps you awake at night — then you must attempt to strike at your own root: the way you understand the world, your values, your habits and patterns.
Of these, the relatively easier thing to change is habit.
Act against your habits. Study things you don’t understand. Try doing things in new ways. Try doing entirely new things.
Betray your comfort in how you engage with people. Reach out to circles unfamiliar to you. Try, on new journeys, to meet people you’ve never known.
New habits must come first — before new action becomes possible.
And only on the path of action does the possibility emerge: of a reshaped worldview and values, and of the personal transformation that is truly your own.