People are not shaped by abstract wishes, but are instead gradually chiseled into being by their “ideal self-image”—the version of yourself they keep imagining and stepping into again and again. What kind of person you like to become, in essence, is a continuous rehearsal of that self: how he thinks, how he solves problems, how he expresses himself, and how he shows up in the world. And these rehearsals gradually rebound and start to constrain your choices and behavior, until—without you even noticing—you find yourself walking toward that image. What’s called “liking” is not the starting point, but the outcome of long-term self-identification; the real deciding factor in who you become is whether you act every day according to that version of yourself.