If you have bad feelings every time you think about habit X due to past failures you are only reinforcing the act of not thinking about habit X.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
It took me a long time to figure that out. If you feel bad when you’re trying to solve your problems, you are going to avoid solving them.
And thank you, I was just thinking about habit formation with respect to personal character development as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have it. Why don’t I do useful things as much as I could? Why are there so few people who do? Some of it is bad attitude, but much of it is just bad habits, or other habits.
I used to have “friendly” people around me, who did the job of reminding me of my past failures whenever I thought about something new. For many years it reinforced me against having new plans. But luckily, it also gradually reinforced me against sharing my plans with this type of people. The important thing was to notice that not all people react like this—because I sometimes need to discuss my plans with someone.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
It took me a long time to figure that out. If you feel bad when you’re trying to solve your problems, you are going to avoid solving them.
And thank you, I was just thinking about habit formation with respect to personal character development as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have it. Why don’t I do useful things as much as I could? Why are there so few people who do? Some of it is bad attitude, but much of it is just bad habits, or other habits.
Agreed. Incidentally, “Don’t beat yourself up” is one of the top-rated pieces of advice in the Boring Advice Repository.
I used to have “friendly” people around me, who did the job of reminding me of my past failures whenever I thought about something new. For many years it reinforced me against having new plans. But luckily, it also gradually reinforced me against sharing my plans with this type of people. The important thing was to notice that not all people react like this—because I sometimes need to discuss my plans with someone.