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

(ledgeroflife.blog)

50 points | by blitzpoet 3 hours ago

7 comments

  • jbotz 1 hour ago
    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.
    • mpnsk1 12 minutes ago
      That seems to fly over a lot of heads. Anyone who actually meditated will tell you the process of fixing yourself through meditation is painstakingly slow, you mostly become aware of how your mind does not do what it is supposed to, and if you stop meditating you quickly lose all progress.

      What the post describes is essentially some form of micro journaling to build a cached hashmap of the thought patterns you want your mind to have.

  • nico 1 hour ago
    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

  • blitzpoet 1 hour ago
    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.
    • citizenpaul 1 hour ago
      Sometimes its cartilage leaving the body.
      • zhivota 1 hour ago
        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.

    • leptons 21 minutes ago
      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.
  • sandspar 1 hour ago
    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 imagines how the rest of the dwarven counsel would respond. "Ah, but this could be chance for us to practice compassion," says the compassionate dwarf. And so on. According to him he finds this very helpful.

    • mettamage 1 hour ago
      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.

      • sandspar 1 hour ago
        That's really neat! I like how it's layered like that. It sounds helpful.
    • jen729w 1 hour ago
      > Perhaps like different AI agents that check each other's work.

      Or like I agents?

  • throwaway81523 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • ModernMech 1 hour ago
    This seems like a chat GPT authored blog post that's trying to sell what I can only assume is a chat GPT authored self-help ebook.
    • dr_kiszonka 21 minutes ago
      It annoys me when people are not upfront about wanting to sell me stuff and just waste my time.

      The article itself is not that bad, but it is surprising that it received nearly 50 upvotes in two hours.

      Anyway, instead of buying yet another journal, `w:` could be made into a handy keyboard shortcut to open a certain file in your favorite editor so that you can write your "whisper" with current datetime. One could also LLM it to automatically provide the "garnish". And BOOM a new AI start-up! The first 10 garnishes a month are free. Above that you have choice of slow garnishes and premium garnishes (36c per garnish). Email me directly for BYOK and enterprise deployments. YC, yes, I am looking for investors. This could be big. Let's do this!

  • redcobra762 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
    • lifthrasiir 1 hour ago
      Gemini suggested some: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood", "Let go of judgment", "My goal is progress, not perfection or judgment" and so on. Sounds fine as virtue garnishes for your whisper.
      • redcobra762 1 hour ago
        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?

        • lifthrasiir 1 hour ago
          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.
          • redcobra762 1 hour ago
            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

    • jayd16 1 hour ago
      g: That's just, like, your opinion, man.
    • blitzpoet 1 hour ago
      g: Criticism is the price for success?
      • redcobra762 1 hour ago
        Sorry to be clear: I want to reinforce my belief that this ad you've posted is profoundly stupid.

        What would my virtue garnish be for that?

        • mpnsk1 39 minutes ago
          If you want to reinforce your current beliefs do the opposite. Write nothing down. Do what comes to your mind first. You do you.

          If I had a garnish that turned anything objectively stupid into something that has objective value it would probably revolutionize chain-of-thought reasoning.