Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ledgeroflife.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

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

#31

Post by praptak »

This says you can't fix what you don't notice. This is obviously true. But then it jumps to the moment where you jot the impulse down. There's a gap here - to write something down you gotta notice it first too.

Anyone working with awareness and attention will probably tell you the missing components: intention and positive reinforcement. You can't directly make your awareness notice things. You can do two things which work indirectly. The first is cultivating intention. Remind yourself to notice your mental states whenever your conscious mind happens to remember to. Consciously check in on your mental state - again, whenever your conscious mind remembers to. This primes awareness - it tends to notice things that you previously consciously focused on.

The second component is positive reinforcement. Whenever your awareness works by drawing your attention to the trigger ("whisper"), pat yourself mentally on the back. This trains your awareness to notice this more often.

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

#32

Post by scootz1 »

evertedsphere wrote: post #29

Another day, another LLM-generated blog post on the front page about a deeply human topic. Do others not detect the tells, or do you not care? (And, no, there is no "respond to content rather than style" issue here. There is no meaningful content here. That would be the prompt, but of course the author doesn't want to just post that .)

Immediately noticed from the style of writing and the clearly AI illustrations. The blog is brand new and no links go to anywhere, the Github, LinkedIn and Twitter links are circular. Plus the content is just rehashed behavioural therapy concepts with different wording.

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

#34

Post by blitzpoet »

praptak wrote: post #31

This says you can't fix what you don't notice. This is obviously true. But then it jumps to the moment where you jot the impulse down. There's a gap here - to write something down you gotta notice it first too. Anyone working with awareness and attention will probably tell you the missing components: intention and positive reinforcement. You can't directly make your awareness notice things. You can do two things whic…

Creator here. You made some good points. Ledger of Life actually does try to address intention and positive reinforcement, though it's not explicit. The journal encourages keeping it on you and logging whispers in real time, which requires consciously priming yourself to notice (that's the intention part). The weekly review also helps set clear intentions for what to watch for the next week.

As for positive reinforcement, I agree, it’s not just about knowing when to decompress or apply a virtue garnish, but also about rewarding yourself for noticing at all. That’s something that could be highlighted more: just catching a whisper is a success worth a mental pat on the back!

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

#35

Post by blitzpoet »

leptons wrote: post #22
blitzpoet wrote: post #4

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.

That's the kind of toxic masculinity platitude that causes men to not seek medical help when they are in pain, which causes worse outcomes for things that are preventable.

I don't work out as much as I should. I'm generally a creaky guy, so any exercise for me is borderline painful.

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

#36

Post by [deleted] »

scootz1 wrote: post #32
evertedsphere wrote: post #29

Another day, another LLM-generated blog post on the front page about a deeply human topic. Do others not detect the tells, or do you not care? (And, no, there is no "respond to content rather than style" issue here. There is no meaningful content here. That would be the prompt, but of course the author doesn't want to just post that .)

Immediately noticed from the style of writing and the clearly AI illustrations. The blog is brand new and no links go to anywhere, the Github, LinkedIn and Twitter links are circular. Plus the content is just rehashed behavioural therapy concepts with different wording.

[deleted]

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

#37

Post by xtiansimon »

jbotz wrote: post #19

That "gap between stimulus and response" is in some circles known as "mindfulness". And meditation is an effective exercise for building and strengthening that gap.

Interesting to hear meditation described this way—gap. I’ve followed (as a neophyte) the works of Thich Nhat Hanh, and if asked I would say he describes meditation as a practice of focus. Not that I see any incompatibility with the idea of gap in meditation. I quite like it.

Also interesting is the notion of gap as I hear it used in psychology to describe post-traumatic stress.

In the first case the gap is too quick. In the last, it’s too long.

Also, in literature, another definition describes irony as having a “gap”.

“Gap” is obviously polysemous in these applications, but contain the same notion of spacing (which is also critical in music and art!).

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

#38

Post by mettamage »

sandspar wrote: post #18
mettamage wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is! It helps to explain my inner world. Internally I experience it all in one fluid thing as me. Personifying it like this makes certain things really apparent. It may also create some systemic biases when it comes to my self-narrative but so far I haven't seen that and/or that it'd work against me.

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

#39

Post by lukas099 »

leptons wrote: post #22
blitzpoet wrote: post #4

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.

That's the kind of toxic masculinity platitude that causes men to not seek medical help when they are in pain, which causes worse outcomes for things that are preventable.

Is there a word for the good kind of pain that comes from healthy exertion?

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

#40

Post by cedws »

The technique seems valid, but I'm not really a fan of the rehashed "wait to cool down and reconsider" advice, to me it just seems like a form of emotional suppression. Of course you're going to feel differently in six hours or the next day as you return to homeostatis - that doesn't mean the flash of emotions you felt before was invalid.

I'm not suggesting you treat your colleagues like shit or get snappy over some feedback. But you also shouldn't be a suppressed, inoffensive doormat all the time. Emotions happen for a reason, the tricky part is knowing when they should be expressed and how.

Post reply on HN