Have You Ever Noticed...
...that the very act of deciding to eliminate a bad habit causes the habit to seem more stubbornly ingrained than you imagined? I am experiencing this phenomenon up close and personal the past several days. The more I focus on changing a certain negative behavior, the more unlikely it seems I'll avoid doing it.
I'm not alone here. Benjamin Franklin experienced this when he embarked on a project to establish virtuous habits in his life. The following observation is from his autobiography:
As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I bad imagined... ...I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.
To further his progress, Franklin invented (that's not a stretch, huh) a reusable calendrical record book in which he worked on one virtue each week (from a list of thirteen), recording each lapse with a black spot. In a brief overview of Franklin's life, Kathryn VanSpanckeren suggests that "his theory prefigures psychological behaviorism, while his systematic method of notation anticipates modern behavior modification. The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny."
If this system proved effective for a Founding Father, then why reinvent the wheel? I'm going to get a calendar and hang it in my bedroom, then place a sticker on each day's square when I succeed in avoiding the negative behavior (and actually replacing it with the positive behavior) that day. I'm choosing to focus on what I'm doing right instead of my lapses. It'll be a way of tracking my progress and rewarding myself at the same time -- seeing the stickers smiling back at me ought to put a little wind in my sails. And perhaps I'll be encouraged by all the days with stickers rather than the days without.
And I will also happily employ this prayer that Franklin borrowed from "Thomson's Poems" for this very purpose:
Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and fill my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
[Read about Benjamin Franklin's self-improvement system in this brief selection from his autobiography.]
I'm not alone here. Benjamin Franklin experienced this when he embarked on a project to establish virtuous habits in his life. The following observation is from his autobiography:
As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I bad imagined... ...I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.
To further his progress, Franklin invented (that's not a stretch, huh) a reusable calendrical record book in which he worked on one virtue each week (from a list of thirteen), recording each lapse with a black spot. In a brief overview of Franklin's life, Kathryn VanSpanckeren suggests that "his theory prefigures psychological behaviorism, while his systematic method of notation anticipates modern behavior modification. The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny."
If this system proved effective for a Founding Father, then why reinvent the wheel? I'm going to get a calendar and hang it in my bedroom, then place a sticker on each day's square when I succeed in avoiding the negative behavior (and actually replacing it with the positive behavior) that day. I'm choosing to focus on what I'm doing right instead of my lapses. It'll be a way of tracking my progress and rewarding myself at the same time -- seeing the stickers smiling back at me ought to put a little wind in my sails. And perhaps I'll be encouraged by all the days with stickers rather than the days without.
And I will also happily employ this prayer that Franklin borrowed from "Thomson's Poems" for this very purpose:
Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and fill my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
[Read about Benjamin Franklin's self-improvement system in this brief selection from his autobiography.]
posted by Linda at
11:36 PM
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