Forming Habits

Every habit and every faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding acts, the faculty of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you wish to have a faculty for reading, read; if for writing, write.

So generally, if you wish to acquire a habit for anything, do the thing; if you do not wish to acquire the habit, abstain from doing it, and acquire the habit of doing something else instead.

Discourses of Epictetus

Book 2, Chapter 18

Good habits are strengthened by repetition exactly as a runner improves by running. And so the same with the mind and its habits such as anger, envy, lust, or deceit. With every repetition, the wagon rut becomes deeper and the behavior, physical or mental, whether good or bad, becomes one of habit. If you want to alter a behavior or create a new one, it will require an active effort. All too often our bad habits, and good ones, were formed without any thought. For who started out wanting to strengthen behaviors such as anger, lying, watching reality television, or eating a dozen doughnuts in a day? These things slipped into our lives and for whatever reason became our lives. Most of us have a list of things we would like to start or stop doing but, for whatever reason, we have not dedicated our will to the altering of our behavior.

This is the challenge: Pick one thing to stop or start doing and focus your will on that one thing for 30 days to force it to become a habit or no longer a habit. Our will is all we have and if we can’t apply it to our own minds or bodies what are we? If we do not have the control of our will, and its dedication towards something positive, what are we? If there is one thing that stands out about our human nature it is that we have a will that we can apply, that we can direct, that we can use for good. Apply it!