“Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking, and running… therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it; if you don’t want to do that, don’t, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you’ve not only experienced that evil, but you’ve also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire.” Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.15
Will I seize the day
Bad habits. Boy I have plenty of them. Some I may not even know about. In fact, the prompt for this stoic exercise suggests that one ask someone close to help identify one’s bad habits. Fat chance. I’ve been married thirty years to the same woman. I might as well take a bat and give myself a whack. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst, most of us know which are our worst habits, because they become self-evident or someone, someplace, has exposed us and revealed the thing to us.
Steven Covey wrote in his wildly successful book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” citing someone else’s earlier work in the 1960’s, that it takes twenty-one days to make a behavior a habit. Apparently, subsequent studies push the number to sixty-six days. Whatever. Covey identified the following good habits, and in retrospect, I think he got it right:
1. Be proactive. If one does not get up off of one’s ass and get to work, nothing happens.
2. Begin with the end in mind. Why do I want to do this thing. Where is it taking me.
3. Put first things first. Eat that elephant one bite at a time.
4. Think win-win. If it is good for me, it is good for everyone else in my orbit.
5. Seek first to understand then be understood. Walk a mile in their shoes. Nobody cares about you until they know you care about them.
6. Synergize. Collaborate. No man is an island. The combined efforts of two people are greater than the sum of the efforts of two people operating alone and acting independently.
7. Sharpen the saw. Sharpen the saw. Sharpen the saw. Never stop trying to improve your game. Never stop learning.
