HABITS
The columnist George Will recently noted that old habits, especially intellectual ones, die hard. This is an important thing to remember. Our ways of thinking, as our ways of brushing our teeth, bathing, eating and everything else we do, tend to become habitual. They fall into patterns and are hard to change. How often do we re-examine our habits, decide which habits help us and which hurt us? If others are like me, pretty rarely. And even when we re-examine our habits, how often do we successfully change the ones which hurt us? Also pretty rarely. I don't feel any shame in my original habits because so many habits were formed before I was capable of thinking this way but I sometimes am ashamed at how difficult it is for me to change patterns, to eliminate habits.
It's too easy to stick with our habits and difficult to eliminate them, to replace them with new habits. Over the years, I've had to deal with a number of dysfunctional habits: Bad eating habits, bad dental hygiene habits, habits of indolence when it comes to exercise, habits of dealing with others. At this moment, I can say that I successfully eliminated some of these bad habits. But I take no great pride in the changes because so many of the changes were, in a sense, forced upon me. If I hadn't injured my shoulder, I wouldn't have dieted to prepare for surgery, if I hadn't required surgery I wouldn't have exercised as part of therapy, if my dentist didn't scare me, I wouldn't have begun to take better care of my teeth, and so forth. I do take pride in changes in my ways of dealing with people: I discovered the need for these changes myself and acted upon them. But it was pretty late in life before I even began these changes, so it's hard to feel overly proud in this instance either.
Some habits are good. For example, the habits I have of turning off the coffee pot before I go to bed, of turning off the lights when I am finished working in a room, of where I put a soldering iron when I am using it, of thanking people for any service, no matter how small- all these I count as good habits. I also take no pride in the good habits because they were mostly formed before I was capable of thinking about them.
That's the problem: We don't even notice our habits, either in formation or use. The very nature of habits is unconscious, we act habitually without thinking. It takes something external or some introspection to recognize our habits and decide which are functional. We move through life with our habits and rarely have occasion to change.
There are several lessons I've learned from thinking about habits. First, try to identify and categorize your habits. Then, there's a chance of eliminating the bad habits. But even more important, try to form good habits. You only have to do something correctly a few times to make it habitual. The earlier you can form good habits the better off you'll be. And if you have anything to do with the raising of a child, you can do a real service by trying to teach the child good habits.
5-13-02
[My shoulder continues to improve. Only my innate impatience makes me want to move faster. My therapist taught me to exercise by throwing a ball in a certain way so I've been doing that in the office in idle moments, bringing some fun to my colleagues and me. Several friends have noticed the increased flexibility but they don't see the weakness. My target for full recovery is approaching so I continue to work optimistically toward the goal. I'll keep you posted.]
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