To form a good habit is like climbing up a staircase. You
place your right foot on to the first step; you press your (right) foot firm on
it, while moving on to the next step with your left foot; you place your (left)
foot firm on it, while moving on to the third step with your right foot; you
place your (right) foot firm on it, while moving on to the forth with your left
foot, and this recursive process goes on until you, finally, reach your desired
destination, which in this particular instance is a specific and specified
floor of a building you would like to reach.
Forming any good habit on a firm footing, making it an
integral part of one's life, is just like that. If someone wants to form a good
habit, whatsoever, he should and must not try to jump at it all at once. For,
by doing so he may never be able to acquire it. Developing the habit slowly and
in steps, setting small goals, will slowly, but surely, lead one to that
desired habit. Because, forming a good habit becomes much easier when done in
several steps over a considerably long period of time. Now, a hypothetical
instance of how this method could possibly be applied in practice is in order.
Mr. Smith usually gets up from his bed around seven in the
morning. He usually wakes up at around 6:30, and tosses and turns for about
half an hour before, finally, getting up from bed. He has always been late for
office, and lately his boss Mr. Do Little has been pretty hard on him on this
issue. Now, Mr. Smith has finally decided that he must get up from bed at least
an hour earlier. In other words, he would like to get up at 6:00 rather than
his usual 7:00 in the morning.
Mr. Smith plans to attain this goal in two steps. At the
first step, he plans to wake up at 6:00 in the morning and get up at 6:30. He
sets his 'alarm clock' according to his wakeup time; each morning, for three
months, Mr. Smith wakes up at 6:00 o'clock by its ringing, and gets up at 6:30.
Consequentially, he is able to reach office each morning a little earlier than
before, making his boss Mr. Do Little a little less upset for his late arrival.
After three months of doing this with success, Mr. Smith
plans to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and get up at 6:00. He sets his 'alarm
clock' according to his wakeup time. Each morning, for the next three months,
Mr. Smith wakes up at 5:30 by the ringing of his alarm clock, and gets up at
6:00. Consequentially, he is able to reach office each morning much earlier
than before, in fact at a time he is supposed to reach, leaving Mr. Do Little
with absolutely no scope for complaining.
When I was in the USA, working towards my bachelor degree in
Economics at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, I had no
television at my place. I barely watched TV in those days. After getting back
to my country of origin, I picked up the habit of too much TV watching. I used
to watch TV, day and night. I wanted to give up this bad habit. And how did I
do it? I did it in several steps.
First, I restricted TV watching to four hours in the
evening; then, to three hours; and finally to only two hours. I persisted along
each phase for months until I was comfortable enough with the change, and ready
to go on to the next phase.
Eventually I reached the third phase (two hours of TV
watching in the evening), along which I was persisting for an indefinite period
of time when, all of a sudden my TV was broken-down. Since, by that time I got
used to watching TV for only two hours a day, and was actually ready to go on
to the fourth and final phase of 'not watching TV at all'; having to go without
watching TV at all was not much of a bother.
