My parents provided little structure to my life when I was growing up. Randomness ruled ourhousehold. I had no regular bedtime or nap time. We sometimes had breakfast, sometimes didn’t.Sometimes had breakfast food for lunch, dinner for breakfast, and there were occasions when weh ad a break-lunch-ner—a gigantic meal around 3 pm that served as the food for the day. When i upset my parents, sometimes I had to face strict retribution, and sometimes there were caseswhen I was let off the hook for the same transgression. As I said, there was no structure, and nopredictable expectations I could follow as a child. This led to a myriad of problems in my adultlife including being unable to follow a self-disciplined routine of either enjoyable or tedioustasks that led to a more balanced and fulfilled life. My upbringing was a breeding ground for badhabits. And oh boy, I was nourishing these habits very diligently.I was at the mercy of my whims. When I wanted to do something, I got very excited and put insome hard work to get started. But when I got to a point where pure passion didn’t help methrough, I abandoned the endeavor. At times, I started a diet or a workout program just to fallshort in completing. I could make a great first impression to potential employers, friends, andteachers, only to let them down when I was not in the mood to engage.I didn’t understand why I lived such a chaotic life. A great deal of stress, anxiety, and regretaccompanied my behavior patterns. Yet, when the opportunity rose to react differently, I gavethe same old response. My reaction was a deeply ingrained negative habit. And it got reinforcedwith another bad habit, me telling myself, “This is who I am, and I cannot change.”At the age of fifteen, I was accepted to a private high school in our neighboring country,Hungary. My parents were excited about this opportunity and promptly decided that Hungarywas where I must go. They didn’t understand how little knowledge I ha