Better Than Before / Gretchen Rubin
Page: p211~312
[ Summary ]
When a habit is formed, it would still crack if we don’t pay effort to manage it. In fact, we face many siren calls that would prompt us to break our habits everyday. The chapter of “DESERE, EASE, AND EXCUSES” is about helping us to guard our habits from temptations and excuses. The Strategies of Abstaining, Convenience, and Inconvenience examine how we can shape our habits by adjusting the amount of effort involved. Safe-guards, Loophole-Spotting, and Distraction address the challenges of failure and temptation. Reward, Treats, focus on exploiting pleasure to strengthen the habit we want to cultivate.
[ Thought-provoking insight ]
Strategy: Loophole-Spotting
What is Loophole? —“When we try to form and keep habits, we often search for loopholes, for justifications that will excuse us from keeping this particular habit in this particular situation.” Loopholes make us to deceive ourselves.
After browsing the ten loopholes introduced by Gretchen, I found that there are two loopholes which have always played tricks on me during my lifetime, depriving me of many chances and happiness.
(1) False Choice Loop hole: “I pose two activities in opposition, as though I have to make an either/or decision, when in fact, the two aren't necessarily in conflict.” (Ex: If I go to sleep earlier, I won't have any time to myself)
I think the root cause of this loophole is a kind of blind-shot thinking, but, honestly, it’s really hard to think thoroughly and carefully all the time. However, I found a tip to avoid this loophole on Rubin’s Website : Changing the question of “Can I have this or that?” to “Can I have this and that?” That’s really a simple but brilliant solution to me! Besides, this tip makes me reflect that I should be more careful to the thought that might ‘limit’ me and should always be open-minded to find and accept any possibilities.
(2) “One-Coin” Loophole: The writer got the name from a story—“If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so.” (EX:”What difference will one meal make, over the course of a lifetime?”)
This loophole reveals the fact which really enlightened me: ” When we consider our actions, it’s clear that any one instance of an action is almost meaningless; yet at the same time, the sum of those actions is very meaningful.” Frankly, if I didn't read this paragraph, I think I’ll definitely keep throwing away one and another coins which could be valuable to my life. This story made me to reexamine the meaning of those mildly things in my life. It seems to me that every small incident or requirement of an action becomes an individual gift in everyday life. How grateful and interesting it would be — to cherish every small chance of action, in other words, to add every precious coin to the heap.
Strategy: Loophole-Spotting
What is Loophole? —“When we try to form and keep habits, we often search for loopholes, for justifications that will excuse us from keeping this particular habit in this particular situation.” Loopholes make us to deceive ourselves.
After browsing the ten loopholes introduced by Gretchen, I found that there are two loopholes which have always played tricks on me during my lifetime, depriving me of many chances and happiness.
(1) False Choice Loop hole: “I pose two activities in opposition, as though I have to make an either/or decision, when in fact, the two aren't necessarily in conflict.” (Ex: If I go to sleep earlier, I won't have any time to myself)
I think the root cause of this loophole is a kind of blind-shot thinking, but, honestly, it’s really hard to think thoroughly and carefully all the time. However, I found a tip to avoid this loophole on Rubin’s Website : Changing the question of “Can I have this or that?” to “Can I have this and that?” That’s really a simple but brilliant solution to me! Besides, this tip makes me reflect that I should be more careful to the thought that might ‘limit’ me and should always be open-minded to find and accept any possibilities.
(2) “One-Coin” Loophole: The writer got the name from a story—“If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so.” (EX:”What difference will one meal make, over the course of a lifetime?”)
This loophole reveals the fact which really enlightened me: ” When we consider our actions, it’s clear that any one instance of an action is almost meaningless; yet at the same time, the sum of those actions is very meaningful.” Frankly, if I didn't read this paragraph, I think I’ll definitely keep throwing away one and another coins which could be valuable to my life. This story made me to reexamine the meaning of those mildly things in my life. It seems to me that every small incident or requirement of an action becomes an individual gift in everyday life. How grateful and interesting it would be — to cherish every small chance of action, in other words, to add every precious coin to the heap.
[ My Habit Journey ]
Besides cultivating a habit to track my time log everyday, I also tried hard to cultivate a habit of examining my daily rituals. It is because that I really want to find my patterns of life. (intrigued by the quote in Log#6)
(these are the pictures of patterns that appeared in my mind when I thought of 'patterns of life')
Every time as I looked at all the things I did on that day, I kept asking myself:” What should a patterns of life be?” “How can I find my patterns of life through these simple, monotonous, and not so special actions?” Thinking about the definition of 'pattern', I considered that ‘a pattern’ should be something that can predict the future because in various fields, we recognize or label something though ‘patterns’, we tell the difference of charts through ‘patterns’, and we grasp a clearer image of developing in future through ‘patterns’. So, what is the core thing that is related to our future? The answer is clear— the ‘purpose’! It is the purposes behind every action in our life that shape our patterns of life! After I realized what I have kept searching for, I tried to define, label, and record the purposes behind every actions or incidents; then, keep tracking and observing the proportions of these purposes that form my every single day. What’s more, I also realize that what I am doing is to manage my patterns of life. Just as the quote said:” We manage what we monitor.”
(compared with the pictures above, this is the real pattern I produced..)
(these are the pictures of patterns that appeared in my mind when I thought of 'patterns of life')
(compared with the pictures above, this is the real pattern I produced..)
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