Thank the younger you for the work you did last year. You’re living off some of it right now.

You are currently benefiting from decisions made by a version of you who got no reward for them. The practice put in last winter, the class you did not drop, the habit you started and hated is paying out now, and whoever did that work cannot know it worked. Gratitude usually points outward. Some of it has a legitimate internal address.

Name one thing in your life this week that exists because of effort you made months ago, and call it that rather than luck. Then do the symmetrical thing: start one piece of work that only future you will collect on.