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Virtue garnish: A mental hack to short-circuit bad habits

ledgeroflife.blog

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Re: Virtue garnish: A mental hack to short-circuit bad habits

#11
post #2

It's a cute idea and well told! I think the general idea is that you have a "watching" self and a "deciding" self. Perhaps like different AI agents that check each other's work. My favorite version of this is the guy who imagines a village of dwarves in his head. When he feels annoyed or angry or whatever, he imagines the "angry dwarf" making his case in front of the dwarf counsel. "We should strike back!" Then he im…

I see my mind as a village. I owe a lot to my meditation self. He’s somewhat of a monk. Oh, and my inner dating coach. Then we have the strategist.

There are quite a few but a lot of power has gone to the strategist who developed the dating coach and meditation self back in the day.

Re: Virtue garnish: A mental hack to short-circuit bad habits

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presupposing that this blogvertisement ought not be considered profoundly stupid. What would my virtue garnish be if I wanted to think of this blatant attempt at shilling a book as a waste of digital space?

Oh, I didn't realize your OP was actually a satire. I intentionally ignored that part because well, you can always take whatever meaningful informations out of anything including stupidly apparent ads. As the other comment said, the whisper part is a well-known strategy as well.

You genuinely read this ad and think there's something to be learned?

If I take this concept seriously for a few seconds, it's one massive exercise in begging the question. The argument boils down to "notice when you do something wrong" while simultaneously admitting that people don't do that. And the ad's advice for doing it? Do it. What?!

That's profoundly stupid as a concept, where "profoundly stupid" here is defined specifically as an argument with a clear reasoning issue.

You know one great way to stop smoking? By stopping. OP is stealing Bob Newhart's bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcSAQyzPcl0

Re: Virtue garnish: A mental hack to short-circuit bad habits

#15
It’s pretty good advice

But the title is misleading. Sure, once you’ve built the habit of breaking bad habits, it will take 3 seconds each time. However, it will take quite a bit to build that habit

The article references Dale Carnegie. Related to that, and with much better exercises to build habits, I’d recommend the book The Charisma Myth. It addresses the type of situations mentioned in the article and a lot more, all with great step by step, habit-building exercises on each chapter

Re: Virtue garnish: A mental hack to short-circuit bad habits

#18
post #2

It's a cute idea and well told! I think the general idea is that you have a "watching" self and a "deciding" self. Perhaps like different AI agents that check each other's work. My favorite version of this is the guy who imagines a village of dwarves in his head. When he feels annoyed or angry or whatever, he imagines the "angry dwarf" making his case in front of the dwarf counsel. "We should strike back!" Then he im…

I see my mind as a village. I owe a lot to my meditation self. He’s somewhat of a monk. Oh, and my inner dating coach. Then we have the strategist. There are quite a few but a lot of power has gone to the strategist who developed the dating coach and meditation self back in the day.

That's really neat! I like how it's layered like that. It sounds helpful.

Re: Virtue garnish: A mental hack to short-circuit bad habits

#20

I find the military saying "pain is weakness leaving the body" effective for workouts. The slogan is short and sticky, and I tend to exercise harder when I think of it.

Sometimes its cartilage leaving the body.

Hah yes or broken down muscle tissue in the case of rhabdomyolysis.

As I've gotten older I've had to discard this kind of maximalist thinking with exercise and think of every workout as just a smidge more than the last, after an appropriate period of rest and recovery.

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