At the gym today, I noticed something. Everyone’s always on their phones. Between sets, between reps, sometimes just sitting there. I wonder—how much time does it actually take them to get things done? If gyms charged by time spent instead of memberships, would they be losing money? Probably.
Anyway. There’s something interesting about how certain things just happen when the energy is mutual. When the thing you’re obsessing over wants you back just as much. It’s like a pull, a kind of resonance where your effort is matched by something on the other side. You see it in relationships—when the attraction is equally strong on both sides, the tension is almost unbearable, but it pushes things forward.
But it’s not just romance. The same thing happens in learning, creativity, even ambition.
Like solving a difficult problem. When the answer finally clicks, it’s not just because you were fighting to find it. It’s like the problem itself decided to open up to you. A meeting in the middle. This happens everywhere:
• In learning – When you’re genuinely curious, the subject itself seems to open up. You start seeing patterns you missed before.
• In mastery – The best athletes, artists, and thinkers talk about being in flow, where their effort is met with an almost equal response from what they’re doing.
• In ambition – The things we deeply want seem to pull us toward them when we give them our full attention.
And at the center of all this? Intrinsic motivation. You don’t get to this state of mutual pull by chasing things half-heartedly. You have to want it fully, deeply—so much that it starts wanting you back.
This isn’t just about effort. It’s about the quality of desire. If you’re forcing yourself, there’s resistance. But when you’re obsessed—when you truly love what you’re doing—the resistance fades. The thing itself starts revealing answers, opportunities, insights you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Maybe the trick isn’t just chasing things. It’s wanting them so fully that they start chasing you too.
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