I started a diet at eight in the morning, By noon I was starving, exhausted, and mourning. Four hours of discipline, pure and divine — Then suddenly everything tasted like mine.
I promised myself I’d eat nothing but green, Be virtuous, holy — nutritionally clean. But one little craving, one thought of a bun, And goodbye to the diet… it had a good run.
My lunch was a salad, composed and petite, I felt like a goddess… until I felt weak. At hour four I surrendered, no time to delay — The fridge heard me coming and whispered, “Okay…”
I swore I’d be strong, I swore I’d be brave, But then someone offered a bite I could save. “Just taste it,” they said — the oldest of lies — And suddenly willpower met its demise.
I counted my calories, tracked every bite, Googled “Is breathing fattening?” late in the night. But math isn’t kind when you’re hungry and stressed — One cookie feels tiny… until you eat the rest.
I lasted four hours, I gave it my best — But discipline failed when hunger expressed. Turns out my body has needs I can’t fight — Like carbs, and comfort, and eating at night.
I told myself, “Monday, I’ll start fresh again,” The same vow I’ve made since I don’t know when. Dieting’s noble, but here’s the reveal — My hunger’s the boss… and it signs every deal.
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On a quiet coastal street, where the houses leaned gently toward the sea, every home had a single lamp mounted by the front door. These were called Tomorrow Lamps.
They were built to glow only when their owners followed through on the intentions they whispered to them each night. But most lamps stayed dark. A whole street of good-hearted people, full of goals and promises, walked through shadows every evening.
One night, Alira stood outside her door, staring at her unlit lamp and the long stretch of darkness reaching down the road. She had intended so much lately: run in the mornings, cook healthier meals, call her grandmother back, finish the course she kept postponing.
Yet the lamp remained still, heavy, asleep.
As she touched the cold metal, her neighbour Rowan walked by, lantern swinging gently at his side.
“Evening, Alira,” he said warmly.
She gave a weak smile. “My lamp hasn’t lit in months. I don’t know what else to promise it.”
He stepped closer, noticing the exhaustion in her voice.
“What did you tell it yesterday?”
Rowan stepped closer, noticing the exhaustion in her voice.
“What did you tell it yesterday?”
She sighed. “That I’d wake up early and go for a run… but I stayed in bed.”
“And the day before?”
“That I’d clean the spare room… but I watched shows instead.”
Rowan nodded, not unkindly.
“We all make grand promises,” he said. “But lamps don’t wake for grand promises. They wake for sparks.”
He lifted the lid of his lantern, showing her a small, flickering glow — no bigger than a firefly.
“My lamp used to sleep too,” he said softly. “I kept telling it I’d change everything overnight. But it only woke when I started giving it tiny, honest intentions — ones I could actually keep. Like this little spark… small, but steady.”
Alira stared at the glow, thoughtful.
“It’s so small,” she said quietly.
“That,” Rowan replied, “is why it works. Big intentions collapse under their own weight. Small ones teach the lamp — and you — to trust again.”
He closed the lantern gently.
“No one can give you a spark,” he said. “But you can give yourself one. Start with something so small you can’t fail.”
Alira looked at her silent lamp — not expecting magic, but feeling a shift inside herself.
She didn’t say, I’ll run five kilometers at dawn.
She didn’t promise, I’ll change my whole routine.
Instead, she whispered,
“Tomorrow, I will put on my running shoes.”
Just that.
And though she hadn’t touched it, the lamp warmed — faintly, almost shyly — as if acknowledging a promise made with sincerity instead of pressure.
The next morning, she did put on her shoes. She didn’t run far—just down the street and back—but the lamp lit brighter that evening.
The day after, she walked to the pier. Another glow.
The next week, she finally made her grandmother’s call. A brighter glow.
Slowly, the entire street began to change. Other neighbours noticed her lamp lighting and decided to try the same. Tiny sparks, Smaller promises were made.
And month by month, the street where intentions had slept for years began to shimmer with steady, living light.
One night, Rowan passed by again and saw Alira’s lamp glowing with a rich, warm flame.
“You’ve done well,” he said.
Alira smiled. “I stopped trying to change my whole life overnight. I just started honouring the small things.”
Rowan winked. “That’s how every lamp wakes.”
Like the Tomorrow Lamps, our lives brighten not through dramatic breakthroughs, but through small, repeatable actions.
The intention–behavior gap appears when:
Our goals are too big
Our motivation fluctuates
We rely on willpower alone
We don’t break goals into actions we can realistically sustain
We feel overwhelmed, tired, or distracted
But transformation doesn’t begin with massive commitments. It begins with sparks:
One clear, specific action
One tiny step toward the thing you mean to do
One task so small you cannot fail at it
Small actions build momentum. Momentum becomes a habit. Habit becomes identity. Identity becomes change.
Small steps wake the lamp. Consistency keeps it shining. And every spark you honour becomes proof that you can trust yourself again.
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Lila was the kind of person everyone wanted around — lively, spontaneous, always chasing something brighter. She had an open invitation to every party in town and an excuse for almost all of them.
At first, her friends adored her unpredictability. “That’s just Lila,” they’d laugh, when she bailed at the last minute or arrived hours late with a story and a smile. She told herself she was living freely — refusing to be boxed in by plans or people who felt too ordinary.
There was always something more exciting, more glamorous, more now. A quiet dinner with her best friend could never compete with a rooftop party. Movie nights were too slow. Beach picnics too calm. And the people who invited her week after week — the dependable, steady ones — began to drift quietly out of her orbit, like satellites finally accepting they’d never be her sun.
It all came undone the night of her friend’s engagement party.
She’d promised she’d be there. But when another friend texted about a new club opening — “Everyone’s going, you have to come” — she reasoned with herself that she’d only stop by for a couple of hours and still make it to the engagement.
Hours disappeared in laughter, lights, and drinks she didn’t need. By the time she arrived at the engagement, the speeches were over, dinner had been served, and the candles half-melted. Most people had left; only a few stragglers lingered.
Her best friend saw her walk in, — bubbly, dressed to impress, with no remorse or thought of what she’d done wrong.
“You’re very late,” she said simply.
Lila tried to joke, to apologize, to charm her way back into grace. But the room had changed. People smiled politely, then turned away. She realized, maybe for the first time, that her absence had weight. That sometimes you need to show up for the people who always show up for you. That your word means something — and that this night, this promise, had meant more than another loud distraction ever could.
As she stood there, the truth hit harder than the silence: over time, the invitations had slowed. The meaningful texts — “Dinner?”“Want to see that new movie?” — had faded.
The people she’d once called boring — the steady, loyal ones who stayed, who remembered birthdays and bad days alike — had stopped asking.
Her chest tightened.
“When did freedom start to feel so lonely?”
That night, she found an old photo — her and her friends at a picnic, laughing, sunburned, carefree. She remembered she’d almost skipped that day too. But she hadn’t — and it had turned out to be one of the happiest days of her life.
Something in her softened.
The next morning, she called her best friend. The line was quiet before a cautious voice answered.
“Lila?” “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “For not being on time and all the times I said maybe and never meant yes.”
Her friend didn’t say much — just sighed, the kind of sigh that sounds like forgiveness starting to unfold.
From then on, Lila began to show up. Not perfectly — sometimes late, sometimes nervous, sometimes tired — but there. She learned that joy wasn’t in chasing the best plan; it was in keeping her word, in being someone others could count on.
There were still nights she had to cancel — life does that sometimes — but she learned to own it, to apologize, to value the people who waited for her with grace.
One evening, as she arrived early to dinner, her friend smiled in surprise.
“You’re on time.” “I know,” Lila laughed. “Feels good to mean it.”
And for the first time, she realized: commitment wasn’t a cage. It was belonging.
Freedom isn’t found in leaving your options open — it’s found in showing up for the ones who believe in you. Our word is the bridge between intention and integrity. There will always be brighter invitations, louder nights, better offers — but love, trust, and friendship live in the quiet spaces where we simply keep our promises.
Body of Brilliance 