When someone buys something, it’s because they value it more than the dollars they’re paying.

And for the person selling it, it’s worth less than the dollars they will receive.

Somehow, through the magic of the transaction, more value is created for both parties than was present before. It’s a win-win.

Ideally, it’s the same dynamic in an employer-employee relationship. If I choose to work for a company, it’s because what I am getting in return is worth more to me than my time. Simultaneously, I am producing more value for the company than I’m being paid for. It’s an exchange that creates mutual benefit.

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It’s difficult for many of us to make behavior changes that will benefit us in the long term.

From sticking to an exercise routine to keeping a healthy diet to saving money, we must prioritize the future ahead of our immediate circumstances in order to follow through. This can be very uncomfortable and unnatural, but the payoff becomes evident down the line.

After awhile, we’ve built a new habit and gotten used to this cycle. We learn to associate eating healthy food with feeling good. We come to enjoy the feeling of virtue that comes with following our budget or our exercise plan.

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A colleague of mine told me how she used to spend hours in lesson planning.

Or so she thought. What she was actually doing was stewing in her own anxiety for hours, then spending a relatively short time completing the lesson plan.

As she became healthier, she realized that the hours of anxiety didn’t “count.” In other words, that time wasn’t actually helping her to accomplish anything.

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I recently took up rowing, enjoying a few mornings out on the water in a friend’s Cornish pilot gig.

Boating comes with its own specialized vocabulary — and its own fancy knots.

Our coxswain, Susan, is a patient and encouraging teacher. She was showing me how to secure the oars after one of our outings.

The sequence was long: The rope went under here, over there, around this, through that, and so on.

I had a moment of panic. I didn’t think I could learn this on the fly. I would need time and lots of repetition, preferably by myself. After all, it took me something like 45 minutes to learn to do a simple slipknot.

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When I was a junior in college, I took a statistics course. I was in the midst of getting a degree in music, so it wasn’t exactly a critical class for me. However, I really tried my best.

I eventually grasped each concept. The trouble was, that didn’t happen until several days after each exam. I would study hard leading up to the test, struggle through it, and then things would click just as we were moving on to the next topic.

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“I’m sooooo full!” said the ten-year-old at the dinner table, groaning theatrically. A moment later, she perked up. “What’s for dessert?”

Obviously, the special dessert compartment in her stomach still had room. Been there!

I can relate to the child’s situation metaphorically as well as literally. Martha Beck, in her book Finding Your Own North Star, points out that we sometimes find ourselves feeling ill or sleepy when we’re doing something we don’t want to do, yet our symptoms of malaise and fatigue magically clear when we’re doing something that we find fun and engaging.

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Years ago, I accompanied my grandmother’s choir on a trip to Italy. It was one of those regional tours that involve early wake-up times, many hours trapped on a charter bus, and surprise trips to Tuscan wineries for which your tour leader gets a kickback.

I have a number of grim stories to tell from the experience, but one mundane one always stands out: As I was tearing my way through Audrey Niffenegger’s inspired novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, my grandmother was poking her way through a thriller by a second-rate author. She would read half a page, grumble about how boring the book was, and read a little more.

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