Category: mental health

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What if Happiness Isn't an Emotion?

I’ve often talked about love not being an emotion, but a set of behaviors, a commitment, and a way of interacting. That’s true. Sure, sure, emotions are included in that, but it is not the sum total of what love is.

One thing I’ve often pondered, chewed on and driven myself crazy with is the idea that happiness is an emotion and there’s something wrong because I don’t often feel it.

What if happiness (as in a state of being with one’s life) is like love, and actually an emotion, but a state of being over time that has to do less with actual emotion and more to do with life and choices in relationship to it?

(I know this is weird, but stay with me here. I just asked this question about thirty seconds ago when my To-do Beepy Reminder went off to tell me it was time to get some writing done. This is not a planned-out essay.)

There is some background to this. I am always looking at systems for things. It’s just kind of the way I am built. If there’s an underlying logic or method to doing or being, I’m going to run in that direction. It’s just the way I am, and in general, I like it that way.

So, I was feeling kind of upset and depressed and frustrated about things a few months ago when I downloaded a mood monitoring app for my smartphone. (How Are You mood tracker. You can get it on Google Play, I know).

You’re asked to rate your mood on several criteria — how determined and ready to act you feel, how frustrated you feel, etc. You get a beepy reminder to do this three or so times a day, and the results were kind of interesting to me.

No, more than interesting. They were an uncomfortable revelation.

My mood was pretty consistently above 70% on the scale as an average. Oh, sure, it dipped from time to time, but overall, my mood as I was self-rating in the moment was generally pretty damn high. You’re asked if you’re feeling: Alert, Hostile, Friendly, Determined, Active, and a couple of other things I forget. It’s nine different questions, anyway. You have this circle slider where you drag to estimate how much of each of the different states of being you’re feeling at that moment.

I just took the test and it had my mood at 86%. Now, I’ve been pondering Life, the Universe and Everything most of the morning, and it’s a gray day, so I wouldn’t have said I’m all that happy at the moment.

But, maybe I’m tagging the wrong state of being as happy. I mean, the test could be a load of crap, but I’m wondering if my point of view is really what’s been messed up. I’m wondering if I’m mapping joyful to happy, and happy is a quieter thing. Seriously. To me, happy is being on a boat on the ocean or being at the beach or swimming or finishing writing a novel or teaching a class or knitting something or being with my family.

Maybe those things are better than happy. Maybe those things are joyful. Which is cool, ’cause I get a lot of joyful stuff in my life, and that’s pretty awesome.

But if happy is really more about some ratio of Attentiveness, Determination, Active, and Inspired over Upset, Hostile, Nervous, Afraid, Ashamed (yes, I looked it up rather than guessed), Determination, Attentiveness and Inspiration are almost always pretty strongly present in my mental landscape. They’re gonna be there whether or not I am feeling what *I* would call a positive mood in the moment. That means, I’m going to be rated as “happy” by this scale more often than not.

While I’d never really considered myself a particularly positive person, I’m beginning to wonder. Maybe I kinda am, and while I’m moody as hell, that may have less to do with my overall state of being than once I thought. Maybe it’s like waves, you know? They knock you down, or you dive under them, but if you know how to swim, and pay attention to the push and pull of the water, you generally can cope and even have fun with them.

Maybe it’s like my view of love, and happiness isn’t entirely an emotion, but a amalgam of many sometimes conflicting things, just like swimming in the ocean can be.

Whether or not it’s true, it kind of makes me feel better about Life, the Universe and Everything.

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Is Housekeeping an Avoidance Technique?

Last night I found myself getting annoyed with someone being Wrong on the Internet. Instead of focusing on it, I cleaned a couple of brass candlesticks I have.

I’m looking at these candlesticks now, shining brightly in the morning light, and I got to thinking about how often I use productivity as a distraction from negative emotion.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t consider this essentially a flaw. In fact, I consider it mostly a good thing, as it means when I am feeling something I don’t like, I can go do something else.

If, of course, there is nothing serious that needs to be done about the negative thing.

That’s the rub. There are a couple of extremes in dealing with stuff in life that I really try to avoid. The first is ruminating. I’m good at ruminating. In fact, I am so good at it that I don’t think a got a proper night’s sleep in my life until I developed the habit of listening to audiobooks to go do sleep to, and to lull me back to sleep when I wake at night.

Lest you think this is a crutch and smarm at me about what I’d do if I cannot have the audiobooks, I will point out that I did develop a non-technological solution that works just as well when needed.

I re-write the endings to books that ended in a way I didn’t like. Gone with the Wind, believe it or not, has given me endless fodder for plot points in which Scarlett gets a damn clue and grows up. This puts me back to sleep without ruminating.

Do I think that I have a tendency to pick books that have some sort of bearing on my Current Issue in some way and am actually solving a problem? Almost certainly. But the fiction gives me an emotional remove that allows me to go to sleep and let my subconscious deal with it and me to get some damn sleep.

So, I go through a lot to prevent ruminating. I’m okay with that. The alternative is pretty unpleasant.

Isn’t that sticking your head in the sand? What about Scarlett O’Hara thrusting away anything unpleasant with the whole, “I’ll think about that tomorrow” thing she did?

You do bring up a good point. This tool isn’t about ignoring problems. Notice that when I got annoyed last night and went to polish some candlesticks, that it was something I genuinely couldn’t do anything about. I’m not recommending this for things you can do something about. That would be irresponsible and it would be sticking your head in the sand about the issue.

I think the problem is at least in part our emotional makeup is very instantly reactive. In a living situation of low technology and high danger, it pretty much needs to be. That’s how we evolved, isn’t it? Being jumpy is a survival trait when you’re dealing with snakes crawling over you in your sleep and lions chasing you when you were just trying to catch dinner. Reacting with heavy emotion in a big and obvious way to the negative keeps you alive! Seeing as much of the negative as possible is likewise.

It’s not quite as useful in my air-conditioned office or upholstered living room and my full fridge.

We live in a more complex world now, and our survival trait of seeing and noticing the negative and having a serious need to do something about it RIGHT NOW just doesn’t serve as useful a purpose when problems need careful though an analysis. Nor is the emotional activation doing as much good when you’re not prepping your muscles to run away from a hippo.

That doesn’t mean that you should let things slide, though. If you have a problem, it’s fine to ask yourself, “Is this something I can do something about in this second?” Sometimes it is. And yes, the responsible thing is definitely to do something then. Do as much of the paperwork as you have the information for, make the appointment to get the car fixed, etc.

But after that? The responsible thing to do is to find something else you can do something about.

So, do I question whether or not I use chores as pseudo-productivity and an escape from something more difficult to deal with? You bet I question it!

Even so, I do think it is useful, because at least one of the problems I am dealing with isn’t unpleasant surroundings.

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Is it Rude to Say No?

I’m running across something that is making me squirm a little bit. It seems that we have messed up badly in teaching the younger generation (and goodness knows my generation has its own issues) about an aspect of manners that is going to make it really hard on them.

There is this huge frustration I am seeing in the 18-24 crowd because they seem to have been taught that the act of saying no is aggressive and shows bad manners.

I am not a paragon of good manners. I was taught them and I do not always practice them. Not the fault of my teachers *grin* but a personal failing that I recognize.

However…

Good manners is a great tool for setting boundaries. It’s bad manners to answer the phone during a meal because you’re supposed to put your attention on the people present. It’s bad manners to use mealtime to hold someone captive for a harangue because it is supposed to be time to interact pleasantly. Yes, parents using mealtime to yell at you for bad grades was bad manners. They’re supposed to call you on the carpet for that at another time. Indeed, the expression comes from the idea that you’d be standing on the carpet in your father’s study to be scolded. NOT in the dining room. (Dad didn’t have a study. I got scolded in my bedroom)

Let’s take the invitation. Good manners requires that you ANSWER the invite. It does not require you to say yes. If you want to/are able to go, you say, “Yes, thank you!” The no does require a few more words. You have to thank ’em for asking. Then you say you’re sorry you can’t come. You may volunteer a reason if you really want to, but you’re not required to, and the host is not supposed to ask for a reason.

All right, what about hugging. It’s bad manners not to want to hug someone, right?

As a matter of fact, indiscriminately wrapping your arms around people is not only horrible manners, Miss Manners herself would describe it as assault. Offering is okay, sure. But refusing the hug is perfectly fine manners. I don’t much like hugging strangers, myself. I stick my hand out to create some space and make it obvious that the touching I am okay with is a handshake. Good control of facial expression, especially around the eyes, can make this kindly and warm.

LOL. If I had my way, we’d move to the Asian greetings that don’t require touching strangers, but that’s not current North American etiquette.

Good manners was never meant to get people to knuckle under to poor behavior. The point of good manners is to help people get along. Part of getting along is having a way for people to say no to things gracefully. But good manners doesn’t even require that you sweeten a no. Good manners does not require that you answer the door every time someone knocks. It does not require that you answer the phone on every ring. It does not require that you respond to every request for money, nor does it require that you say yes to every invitation.

In fact, in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, she says, “In fact, etiquette has no such requirement. The mistake arises from the fact that it does recognize that one has duties toward others, which is why it will not put up with such duty-dodging attempts as “Why should I thank Grandma for the check just because she wants me to?” And it does require being polite to others, even when they are no role models themselves.

“But that is a far cry from declaring that courtesy means taking everybody else’s orders.”

I know people tend either to love or hate Miss Manners, but I adore her. She’s no doormat and has an utterly wicked sense of humor. One of the things she cautions about in the chapter on saying no politely is that people usually get themselves in trouble when they try to explain themselves saying no.

So, for what it is worth, yes, one should learn to say no, and do so politely. That usually consists of a “No, thank you.” or some such then shutting ones mouth. She encourages a warm and regretful smile and possibly that’s not a bad idea. And the non-verbal “no” that is common in many cultures? No US culture (nope not even the South) requires it, so we’re off the hook for this.

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More of a Dissection than a Decluttering

img_20150611_115546352_hdrI am decluttering my house via the Konmari method. If you are not familiar with it, the basic gist is that you declutter by category. You take every item in your home in that category, put it all in one place and then sort by one criteria. Hold it in your hand and ask, “Does this bring me joy?” If the answer is yes, you keep it. If the answer is no, you let it go.

I just emptied every book I own from my bookshelves and bedroom onto the floor upstairs. I did not touch my husband’s bookshelf downstairs, nor did I touch my children’s shelves.

There are still some books downstairs I need to get to bring upstairs before I begin my book decluttering.

When I did my clothes, it was easy. I like clothes and I like looking good, but I tend to be a bit of a wardrobe minimalist (well, by American standards, anyway) and my emotional attachment to clothes revolves around whether I am presenting myself well when I wear them out of the house, or if I feel attractive or comfortable in them inside the house. Not hugely emotional to me. Or maybe I dealt with anything emotional about them years ago and am cool with my clothes now. Even so, I rid of three lawn bags of clothes when I did my clothing purge.

I did papers before I did books, and that was not too terribly hard. I pruned a two-drawer file cabinet of stuff down to a single drawer. I may actually prune more after I finish this, and get rid of the file cabinet and keep the papers in folders on the bookshelf.

But books.

Books.

Books were how I survived school, and I do not mean as a scholar, but how I could ignore being picked on. Books were how I could learn there was more to the world than the rather Spartan culture I had to confront every time I left the house, and confront how that outside of my family, I was considered more of an inconvenience to be gotten rid of than anyone of any real worth. Books where how I escaped and books were how I grew. My identity as a bookworm was important to me because it could be how I was important or special.

It’s not that I still don’t love to read. I do. On average, I read a book a week, so that’s still part of my life and a part I treasure and enjoy.

In going through all these books – holding each one in my hand and asking, “Does this spark joy?” to decide which ones to keep, I am also confronting not only my past choices, but how I have changed and who I have become now. Even the act of taking all the books down from the shelves was much more emotional than I thought it was going to be.

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Playing Games

I didn’t go on a swim the other morning. I had a device problem and was up until around 11. Not going to get up at 5 in the morning and work out, then work all day on six hours of sleep if I can help it. I’m protective of my sleep.

I really did intend to give working out a miss that day. After all, one day more or less really isn’t a big deal.

But I got to thinking.

I’m party of a party fighting a boss monster on Habit RPG. Habit RPG turns the habits you want to build and tasks you want to perform into a role playing game. You have a character that earns points from completed tasks and habits that you program in. In certain categories, non-performance will cause you to take hit points, rather like rolling low in combat in a role-playing game.

Yes, the monster is goofy as all get out, but you know what? I knew if I did not perform the daily things I’d set myself to do, such as exercise, not only would I take a hit, the whole party facing the monster would.

Is it childish that I’m using this game as motivation to get things done?

I don’t really think so.

I used to. Even used to feel embarrassed with myself that I didn’t just want to do what I was supposed to and had to make a damn game out of everything. I got over it when I realized that a consistently clean house doesn’t trip my reward circuits like a dramatically messy house becoming clean. I will do what trips my reward circuits as easily as a rat in a maze, and the paradigm of feeling good at dramatic change sets up a cycle of requiring a stage where the house is messy. From a purely logical point of view, I certainly don’t want that. But a house that’s consistently clean because I’m earning points in a game does give the reward jolt. I don’t do stuff that doesn’t trip the reward circuits. (No-one does, by the way, but how they’re activated can vary from individual to individual.)

I like Habit RPG because it engages on several levels. It put you in a group of people who choose to be productive (peer pressure can be used for good!), it gives quick and immediate rewards for good behavior and it’s silly.

Don’t discount the quick and immediate rewards. It may take weeks or months to get in shape, but getting those points for avoiding junk food or working out are rewards that happen right away. This system makes it easy to get some artificial immediate jolt to the reward part of the brain while working on goals that might have long-term or abstract rewards.

If you were ever into RPGs, I gotta recommend Habit RPG as a system to check out.

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Clean All the Things

I am not particularly neat by nature or general habit.

I am neat by taste. I like order. You can see the conflict, yes?

I do have some habits to take care of this adapted from Flylady. We do have a slightly different approach, but the goals are similar. We’re messy packrats who really would prefer to live in a neat home, and frankly made a pig’s ear out of the attempt for most of our lives.

Part of what I do is daily routine. (Make my bed the minute I get up, make sure the kitchen is cleaned up once a day, etc.)

Part of what the household does is weekly routine. Clean All the Things. (Declutter, dust, vacuum, change bedsheets, give hard floors a quick damp mop). Depending on how bad things are, this can take from 20 minutes to an hour. It’s not enough for white glove inspections, but it keeps the house from degenerating into chaos, and getting used to piles of clutter in corners to the point where we don’t even “see” them as we climb over them. I’ve lived like that and I didn’t feel good with it. Hence the change.

This week was definitely a 20 minute week, especially as my son and I did a very thorough Clean All the Things last week.

In fact, so much so that when I commented it was time to Clean All the Things, my son objected, saying the house wasn’t very messy. (It wasn’t). I said that he was right. The house wasn’t all that messy, so if we did Clean All the Things, it wouldn’t take very long. Neither would it next week. Stuff wouldn’t pile up. He still disagreed.

We took a vote1, and his father and I carried by a 2/3 majority, so All the Things got Cleaned.

I talk a lot about the mundane keeping up of stuff, I know. It’s something I never learned as a child. Not that no-one tried to teach me, mind. It’s just that it was really difficult for me to learn, and I didn’t even really see the value of it. I was into epics, for pity’s sake! Heroic effort, I could value, and get into. Moderate, patient, long-term effort? Not so much. It’s why being able to keep my house clean on a regular basis was such a victory for me and one I still reflect on a great deal.

Now, my pleasure centers still light up at the intensity of effort stuff, and I think that’s okay. I can pour everything into the few hours I’m in front of a class. That’s not hurting anything. In fact, it’s good. But then I need to go home and be patiently moderate about studying for the next class, writing the handouts, and dealing with the other aspects of my life.

I think the theme of this year is going to be learning to be moderately immoderate.

Though I swear, I thought you were supposed to have everything sorted out by the time you were in your forties?2 Goodness knows, my grandparents seemed to in their own minds. I wish I could ask them what they were working on personally (if anything) when they were my age. My parents had my brother and I to deal with. NO-ONE could possibly feel like everything was sorted with us as children. We were kinda challenging to rear.

 

1 Unlike many homes, that vote was not fake. If 2 out of the three of us voted not to Clean All the Things, None of the Things would have been Cleaned.

2 At least, it’s what I used to think at sixteen. Yes, I know, in many ways I’m mentally still a teenager. Stop laughing at me. It’s not nice to laugh at people who can’t help it.

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Moderation: Harder than Dramatic Effort

I’ve mentioned before that my fitness goal is to show up every weekday for half an hour. Ideally this means a swim first thing in the morning. There is a class schedule coming up that means that either I swim after I teach, or I do something else before I open the gym. It may mean something else, because I tend not to want to work out after being around people a whole bunch. We’ll see.

So, the goal? Show up, get blood pumping for half an hour. That’s it. This is not to make myself work out, per se. It’s to contain my enthusiasm for days like today and prevent burnout.

After a couple of weeks, I’ve gotten to the point where I hit that endorphin high in a swim.1 I’m swimming about 1,000 yards in half an hour on more days than not, 2 and I got to thinking:

Me: Hey, if we could do 1,000 in half an hour, why not do another 20 minutes and swim a mile? We’ve got time this morning, because our meetings don’t start till later!

Myself: No. Half hour’s up. Out of the pool.

Me: Aw come on. Let’s prove to ourselves we can swim a mile.

Myself: You already know you can swim a mile. That’s not a great athletic feat for you; it just requires patience. Stop it. Out of the pool.

Me: But it’s cool and intense and stuff! And we feel good.

Myself: Yes it is, and yes, we feel good. You’re not here for cool and intense. You’re here to learn consistency. Get out of the damn pool, right now. You’ll feel good from a workout again, I promise.

Me: But lots of people here are working out for a whole hour and do every day.

Myself: OUT. OF. THE. POOL.

Me: Fine! (Gets out of the pool).

Myself: (Softening a bit) Your problem isn’t whether or not you can swim a mile or work out for an hour, or reach an athletic goal or any of that. You’re pretty good at dramatic, short-term effort. Your problem is consistency of moderate effort. You have not yet proven you will be consistent over the long term with exercise. That’s your goal. Giving in to swimming that mile would interfere with that. After you’ve solved the consistency problem, and that’s going to take at least a year, we can revisit athletic goals. (Muttering) As if you won’t be swimming a mile in half an hour after a year of this, anyway…

 

I’m not by nature a moderate person, nor do I really have any middle gears. I’m intense. I have a bad temper, and I throw myself into joy with absolute abandon. While there are advantages to this in many ways, in terms of the dailyness of life, it can interfere.

I also got to thinking about this for people with a lot of the “invisible” illnesses people can have (CFS and its derivatives, and so on). I have one – arthritis, and swimming is a fine work-around for me on that one. But I got to thinking about small consistencies. And I mean really small, like 5-15 minutes of a workout routine each weekday. (Strength, stretching, whatever).

I know for a fact that there are healthy people who do this and have seen fairly dramatically positive results over a period of several years. Of course, I don’t live in other people’s bodies, but I wonder if it’s anything anyone who has one of these invisible illnesses has tried it over a period of a year or more and liked the results.

 

1 Swimming is the most reliable way for this to happen, because it doesn’t hurt like many land-based exercises do.

2 I’m not permitting myself specific distance goals. The goal is to swim half an hour.

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For the last time, introversion is not shyness!

I read a piece on introversion lately that was mostly kind of cool, but one line made me want to explode.  It dealt with karaoke and why an introvert doesn’t want to get up and perform karaoke.  Something to do with being terrified of getting up in front of the public and performing, if I recall correctly.

Friends, this is no more a hallmark of introversion than is blue eyes.

Being an introvert is not about being scared of being in the public eye.  In fact, being afraid of public speaking is an incredibly common fear that runs across the introvert/extrovert lines and has more to do with being a human being than it does with one’s mental orientation.

What’s actually a pretty common pattern is for an introvert to be a pretty accomplished public speaker, but find that she detests noisy parties.  Being an introvert isn’t about being scared.  It’s about being drained by too much interpersonal contact.

The introversion=shyness thing tends to get to rub me the wrong way.  I think partially because there is an underlying implication that the introversion needs to be cured, but also because if someone doesn’t know me well, they’ll deny I’m an introvert and interpret my behavior from an extroverted frame of reference.

Ferinstance, if someone sees that because I am not shy that I am an extrovert, but only want to socialize with them on a limited or irregular basis, they’ll interpret that as me not liking them very much, but don’t want to say so.  If they were to see me as the introvert that I am, they recognize that I just need to be alone a whole bunch and it has nothing at all to do with my fondness or not for them as people.

I remember once teaching a class and mentioning being an introvert.  I forget why it was brought up, but since I was teaching, I was probably looking for an illustrative example of something.  One of the class members immediately said, “But you’re not shy![1]”[2]

No, I’m not.  I even enjoy public speaking.

For the last time, fear of being in the spotlight is not an introversion/extroversion thing.  It’s a not-too-unusual people thing.  ‘Kay?

[1] Nancybuttons sells a button I really should buy.  “I’m not shy.  I’m studying my prey.”

[2] I am a very animated public speaker.

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Swimmin' and Body Image

I’ve been slow getting off the mark with my 50 mile challenge.  But I swam a mile today, gosh darn it!  It took 50 minutes, which surprised me, as I was sure it’d be a least an hour[1].

Last year when I was talking to a friend about the 50 mile challenge and asking her if she was going to do it, she commented, “I couldn’t do that.  I’d lose count.”

I didn’t try to convince her, as I think the real reason she wasn’t doing it was a much more valid one.  She didn’t want to.  But I got to thinking about keeping count.

My pool counts a mile as 1800 yards[2].  That’s 72 lengths of a 25 yard pool, my friends, and is going to take between 40 minutes and an hour for the average lap swimmer to complete.  If you’re counting down by lap, not only are you going to lose count, you’ll probably get bored.

I don’t just hop in the pool and start counting down from 72 doing freestyle.  Forget losing count.  That would be daunting[3].

What I do is sets of laps[4].

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breastroke                        150 yards

1 X 100 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                  300 yards

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                    150 yards

1 X 200 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                  600 yards

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                    150 yards

1 X 100 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                  300 yards

1 X 50 Freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke                    150 yards

Total Swim:                                                                                         1800 yards

What this really means is that I never count higher than eight, what with 200 yards being 8 lengths.  But it is also a lot easier to face.  By the time I’ve warmed up with the shorter sets, 200 yards of a stroke isn’t particularly intimidating.

I also had a funny thing happen in the locker room today.  Like many women in the gym, especially ones with really long hair who need to dry it, I walk from the showers to the lockers with my hair twisted in a towel, but otherwise am not wearing anything.

It really quiet, only another woman and I.  She was swathed in a towel and dressing under it.  She commented that she admired my confidence about walking naked to the lockers.  She sounded really kind of sad and wistful.

I turn around as I’m putting on my underwear.  She’s about 5’7”, and maybe a size 8.  Had I seen her first, I would have suspected condescension.  But the vocal tone combined with the careful draping of the towel made it clear enough.

I made a joke of it and asked if she had kids.  When she said no, I commented, “Eh, well, giving birth will blow away any body modesty.”

The thing is, that she felt badly about her body was hurting her.  I think it was a bit of a shock to her that the body modification you can achieve in a gym wasn’t necessarily going to cure it.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for working out and all that smack.   Obviously, what wit me being there and all.  But I’m not there to make myself acceptable to what I think outside perception is.  I wish I could have thought of something to say that would have helped her.  I wish I’d commented that her body is fine the way it is.  I wish I’d commented that you don’t have to fit a physical mold to earn the right to live.

I just hope my example said something to her, as the pain she clearly felt really bothered me.

[1] Note to competitive swimmers:  I know, I’m slow.  Go laugh at me somewhere else.
[2] Yes, a real mile is 1780 yards, but that’s not divisible by 25 yards – the length of the pool.
[3] And courting a rotator cuff injury
[4] This will look familiar to competitive swimmers, though a bit of a light workout.

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The Big, Dumb Beast

I came pretty close to blowing off my lifting this morning.  Rather, I started telling myself that I would justs go home and lift with dumbbells “later”.  I had opened the gym, was feeling sick of being there, but I had my workout clothes with me.

Now, in Noël’s World, “later” generally doesn’t happen.  When I give myself an excuse like this, chances are very good I’m trying to wiggle out of whatever is going on.   When I realized what I was doing, I just told myself, “For pity’s sake!  Just go lift and shower.  You’ll still get home quite early in the morning in time to get your other work done.  If you blow it off,  you’ll be blowing things off all day in procrastination.”

I try very hard to optimize my life so that it’ll be easier and make more sense to do the productive thing.  You know, like packing one’s gym bag the night before, setting up the crock pot to cook dinner and having housework routines.  I don’t how much time it saves in the real world, but it does save mental effort and Stuff Gets Done.

The author of The No-S Diet, Reinhard Engels, likens habit to a large and powerful beast that you can domesticate and use the energy to suit your purposes.  I think this is true.  ‘Course bad habits are as powerful and dumb as the good ones!

How do you replace a bad habit with a good one, or get rid of a bad habit?