One of the most dangerous sentences you can say

For most of my life, I said I didn’t like sports.

Not as a complaint. As a fact. It was just the way I was. I was a books person, not a sports person. I liked cities, not mountains. I’d made my peace with it.

Then I moved to Switzerland.

The sentence that stops growth

“It is just the way I am.”

It’s one of the most dangerous sentences you can say — because it sounds so reasonable. It feels like self-knowledge. It’s framed as honesty.

But it’s usually a story, not a fact.

And once you treat a story as a fact, you stop questioning it. You stop testing it. You organize your life around it. And the gap between who you are and who you could be quietly widens — not because of any real limitation, but because of an unexamined belief.

What happened in Switzerland

A friend heard me say it once — “I’m just not an outdoor person” — and paused.

“Be careful,” she said, “with sentences that start with ‘I’m just not.’”

The Swiss landscape didn’t care about my story. The trails were there. The mountains were there. The people going out every weekend were there.

So I went. Reluctantly at first. Then with curiosity. Then with something that, if I’m honest, felt a lot like love for it.

I had been “not a sports person” for 30 years. It turned out I was a person who hadn’t found the right sport.

The difference between character and habit

We’re very good at confusing habits with character. Things we’ve always done become things we inherently are. Patterns we’ve fallen into become identities we defend.

The distinction matters because habits can be changed and character rarely can.

Before you say “I’m just not good at this” or “this isn’t for me” or “that’s just who I am” — ask: is this actually true? Or is it a habit I’ve stopped questioning?

The answer might surprise you.