An aphorism

"Change never happens one says, 'This will be,' but when they say, 'That was.'"

Take a person who is trying to stop eating so many cookies or whatever. If they keep saying, "This will be my last cookie," they have failed to create the change. It still exists in the future but not now. The person who says, "That was my last cookie," however, now looks upon their actions from a different vantage point. Their choices and actions are now cast in a different light because the change has been made.

You could make a compelling argument that this is simply a matter of semantics, but I disagree. It's a fundamental change in your structural understanding of a system because, as mentioned only two sentences ago, your choices and actions can be seen in a different way once a change has been asserted by saying, "That was." If one continues to say, "This will be," the structure they are operating within remains.

Of course, this still depends on the individual capacity to make choices. Either way of discussing one's choices is only as good as their ability to make the choices they want to make. I just feel that the second method provides a better structure to act from.