Why Do I Start Things and Never Finish?
A practical guide to breaking the start–quit cycle for good
From: Alex — 34, Bristol
Subject: I Start Everything and Finish Nothing
Dear Eyeball,
I’m brilliant at starting things — habits, projects, routines.
But once the initial fire cools, I’m gone.
My life feels like a museum of half-finished ideas.
Why is beginning so intoxicating, and finishing so impossible?
How do I finally stick with something?
— Alex
Dear Alex,
Ah, yes. The sacred art of sprinting the first ten metres of every marathon.
I know this terrain well
Let me affix my ceremonial fake goatee with gaffer tape, adjust my horn-rimmed hedgehog-ivory spectacles, slip into a budget Austrian accent, and open the cosmic file.
When we’re born, we’re basically spaciousness wearing a small body.
Clear sky with a pulse.
Wide-open senses, no filters, zero buffering.
Children live in a kind of trance — taking in not just sights and sounds, but the whole energetic weather of their environment.
Every gesture, every argument, every relocation becomes a tiny spell pressed into the subconscious.
As we grow, these spells accumulate.
Childhood is dense.
Adulthood is denser.
We feel it — the thickening of patterns, the weight of inherited momentum.
Almost everything we do is the subconscious steering the ship while we sit on deck thinking we’re the captain.
You think you decided to make coffee, but the thought of coffee just arrived.
You didn’t choose it.
There was no pre-thought like:
“Now I will think: I want coffee.”
It appeared because your old programming pushed it to the surface.
So why do you keep starting things and abandoning them?
Because new beginnings feel like open space — and your ego is trying to escape suffering by leaping toward anything that feels like freedom.
Continuation, commitment, completion — these feel dense, risky, emotionally loaded.
Maybe as a child, your life involved movement:
new houses, new schools, new energies.
Tell me about your father, Alex (accent deepens).
Children assume their parents are the blueprint for life.
If your blueprint was constant re-beginning, then your nervous system learned that momentum equals safety.
But adulthood demands something different, so the old code clashes with the new life.
How do we rewrite it?
Not by affirmations.
By altering the ritual of action.
Imagine walking past someone begging.
Your mind fires its old defensive script:
“Don’t give.”
You give anyway.
The mind screams — you’ve disobeyed the ancient program.
A week later, you give again.
The mind bargains, negotiates, panics — but you see through it.
Another offering.
This time a crisp 100.
The ego shrieks like a parrot thrown into cold water.
Then, one day, you give and the mind doesn’t resist — it rewards you.
A new groove has formed.
The system updates.
This is how the cycle works:
Actions → habits → beliefs → actions.
Thoughts are the middle of the river.
Action is the bank.
You can climb out from there.
So when you feel the spark fade and the urge to abandon rises:
Notice it.
Name the old pattern.
And ask:
Does this impulse align with who I want to become?
If yes, follow it.
If no, take the action that belongs to the version of you you’re trying to grow into.
You’d be astonished how quickly the inner machinery can rewire when you give it a consistent signal.
Good luck, wanderer of beginnings.
— The Eyeball ✶👁✶
Got a half-finished life pattern gathering dust?
Send your letter to transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com.
We’ll poke it gently and watch which way it tries to run.
