Today, let’s discuss habits. Habits are interesting. Habits are the result of training. Training is the description for all actions that are not habits. Think about this for a moment: all actions fall into either one of two categories: Habits or Training.
Is it possible for an action to exist outside of one of these two? I don’t believe it is. Habits form naturally, without trying. To clarify this, habits form regardless of whether you try to form them or not.
When it comes to training, we often think only of the kind we do intentionally, to achieve something, to learn a new skill, to cease a certain behavior. But that is only the conscious application of a core force of nature: repeated chosen action (training) eventually becomes effortless (habit), and sometimes even becomes a need or compulsion (addiction).
Yes, I know I just threw in another word. But “addiction” is a type of habit, just wanted to drop it in there.
Anyway, let’s get out of the semantics and into the juice (I’m anti-semantic). All action we take is either paving the road towards a habit we like, or towards a habit we don’t like. That’s all. That’s the long and short of it. There is no ‘time out’ from this particular dance. Our brains are always on, they’re always taking in new information, taking direction from our actions and paving the neural roads in response to the direction we aim.
Our bodies, too, take in and form habits. When I first cracked my knuckles, I thought it was cool, or tough, or relieving. And then maybe one day I did it while stressed and it diverted my attention for a moment. Fast forward to today, I crack my knuckles without even being aware that I’m doing it, *without the conscious choice to do so*. That’s the point of all this, that a habit is something that’s learned, and then ignored.
There are of course stages in habit forming. These stages are the same whether the habit is one you choose or one you don’t, but the circumstances are different. The habits you DONT choose are the ones you don’t even realize you’re choosing.
Take hamburgers. If you eat hamburgers, then most likely you eat them inside of a sesame seed, white flour bun. You do this because it is how you’ve always eaten hamburgers, because that’s how everyone makes them. How about next time you’re given a hamburger you take the buns off and use a fork and knife to eat the burger directly. Before you think “no”, step outside yourself and imagine you’re convincing someone else to eat hamburgers in this manner. Consider all the objections, and the reasons that person might prefer the bun-covered burger, and realize that each reason is mere rationalization, each objection simply the emotional “bun” that is covering the habit-”burger”.
This is simply a habit. Everything else is just smoke & mirrors. IF you could then see all the emotional rationalizations tied to the eating of a burger with bun, and then decide to instead ‘force’ yourself to eat the burger sans bun, your first meal in this manner would be odd, and different. You might like it actually; you might be annoyed at having to cut the burger; maybe you were given a paper plate and plastic forks and so it’s a fairly cumbersome process. You COULD curse this situation or you could acknowledge that the bun itself falls apart and drips on your hands anyway, so is this really that much more messy? Or hey, how about just using your hands to eat the meat? Culturally frowned upon? But again, your hands are messy anyway, so why not?
Well, regardless of what happens in your first time eating a burger in this manner, it doesn’t have much consequence. All that matters is that the next time you eat a burger, you again take the action of removing the bun before eating. That is the core of forming this habit. It’s simple. The will power is only to remove the bun in the first place. Whatever happens after that is ok, and you will explore the best physical method for eating the burger.
Repeat this one action enough times, and it will become something unconscious, you will be handed a burger while in the midst of a deep conversation with a friend, and during one of your speeches your hands will remove the buns and proceed to ‘set up’ the burger, and if this is your friend’s first time eating a burger with you since your habit began, he might interrupt you to say “why do you take the bun off your burger?” and depending on where you are in your habit spectrum, you might say “Oh, I forget why I chose this, I just do it so naturally that I’m not even aware”
And if enough people ask about your habit, even if you didn’t have a reason to start the habit, you will develop reasons to explain your habit to people for when they ask you.
Because even though the reason for a habit is because it’s an action we’ve repeated enough times, a “habit for habit’s sake” is simply not a good enough explanation.
But, having a powerful reason is often what’s needed in order to push down the road of training. Having a really clear picture of why you want to form a habit is the way to ‘get over the hump’
Friends, I know this has been a long post today and it’s taken me a while to bring this back to the Dog Island mission, but the question of habits and training of dogs is a big, big one. There isn’t any room in today to discuss this issue, but there is a serious psychological affliction plaguing all dogs, due to this excessive and refined training we humans have crafted over the years.
What are the new habits for dogs to learn? What are the old habits for dogs to unlearn?
Captain’s Log: June 23, 2010 7:26 am
Year #32, Month #395, Week #1,718, Day #12,014
89th Corridor, West Dog Island
