Comments on: Little Sticks Pile Up!

By: joi

joi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:23:38 +0000

Sahail,
“One interesting new habit I tried for a while (and may well try again soon) is to silently say ‘I love you’ to everyone you meet during the day.” – Beautiful advice!

By: sahail

sahail — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:06:41 +0000

One interesting new habit I tried for a while (and may well try again soon) is to silently say 'I love you' to everyone you meet during the day. Really great for family life, and quite an amazing effect on how you deal with your day (I'm a teacher)! Hard to maintain (like many worthwhile habits) but incredibly positive. sahail’s last blog post..Goal Setting - is your goal setting aspirational?

By: joi

joi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:56:21 +0000

Maybe you’re one of those people who don’t have any stick habits. Some people are so exceptionally in touch with themselves that they keep a pretty close eye on their habits and “nip them in the bud.” I spend just about all my waking hours thinking about self help and self improvement matters, so I can recognize a bad habit in its earliest stages.

I caught onto a tendency to procrastinate and knocked it out in an early round. Granted, there are a few I’m still in the center of the ring with, but eventually (I hope!) I’ll figure out how to stay within my budget, drive the speed limit, and eat less burgers. And onion rings. And Diet Dr. Pepper. And Cheesecake.

Oh, Lord, I’m craving them all right now. As luck would have it, there’s a Diet Dr. Pepper sitting on the counter winking at me right now. Coming, baby!

By: joi

joi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:50:39 +0000

Jan,
Fascinating stuff! I love the idea of putting a positive spin on the situation. Slapping a positive expression on a negative situation’s face can make all the difference in the world. I’d never heard about this Buddhist teaching, but I’m utterly fascinated by it! I’m going to hereby call my love of (and cravings for) hamburgers as something like “the artery clogging fetish” or “the rush to the heart doctor.”

Surely something like that would slow me down – at least a little! Maybe????

By: joi

joi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:42:10 +0000

Sahail, I always love to see a bad habit kind of slide away. I wish my hamburger loving habit would do just that, but I’d give just about anything right now for a Burger King cheeseburger!

By: joi

joi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:39:54 +0000

Thanks, Jaky!

By: sahail

sahail — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 06:18:31 +0000

Interesting point about working on the smaller habits. What people find if they work on these smaller habits over time is that they gradually start to disappear. The stick habits generally tend to have great effect upon changing because they help structure our lives, hence aspects of laziness, like staying in bed for ten minutes before getting up. Change enough of these sticks and you build what others see as self discipline... sahail’s last blog post..Happiness and Circumstances

By: jaky

jaky — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:48:03 +0000

wow. That's so nice to think and practice. jaky’s last blog post..Anti Ageing Creams don’t work here!

By: jan

jan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:35:21 +0000

This is a marvelous post, Joi, and as fate would have it, something I have been working on for the last week or so. Traveling makes one aware of all those sticky habits and how stuck we are in having things the way we like them. IAnd just how inflexible we can be. I’ve discovered that actually naming the habit helps, like: airports make me anxious habit. Now what would I like to do with that? Would I like to transform it into: “I find airports quite interesting habit. Or how fun it can be to people watch habit!” Buddhist teachings say that when we name the emotion associated with the habit, it begins to disempower it–liking letting the air out of a too tight balloon. It does work! It’s all about working with this wild mind of ours–and that wily ego too!

By: Paul D

Paul D — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:52:30 +0000

I’m not sure what my stick habits are…I think I need to think about this a little more and I’ll probably start to notice some things. I agree with your analysis that it is easy to get rid of your big habits because they are so obvious and they consciously affect your life.