How to Learn the Happiness Habit

Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other. The word "habit" originally meant a garment, or cloth­ing. We still speak of riding habits, and habiliments. This gives us an insight into the true nature of habit. Our habits are literally garments worn by our personalities. They are not accidental, or happenstance. We have them because they fit us. They are consistent with our self-image and our entire personality pattern. When we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits, our self-image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern.
I can see many patients cringe when I mention chang­ing habitual action patterns, or acting out new behavior patterns until they become automatic. They confuse "habit" with "addiction." An addiction is something you feel compelled to, and which causes severe withdrawal symptoms. Treatment of addiction is beyond the scope of this book.
Habits, on the other hand, are merely reactions and responses which we have learned to perform automatically without having to "think" or "decide." They are per­formed by our Creative Mechanism.
Fully 95 per cent of our behavior, feeling, and response is habitual.
The pianist does not "decide" which keys to strike. The dancer does not "decide" which foot to move where. The reaction is automatic and unthinking.
In much the same way our attitudes, emotions and be­liefs tend to become habitual. In the past we "learned" that certain attitudes, ways of feeling and thinking were "appropriate" to certain situations. Now, we tend to think, feel and act the same way whenever we encounter what we interpret as "the same sort of situation."
What we need to understand is that these habits, unlike addictions, can be modified, changed, or reversed, simply by taking the trouble to make a conscious decision—and then by practicing or "acting out" the new response or be­havior. The pianist can consciously decide to strike a different key, if he chooses. The dancer can consciously "decide" to learn a new step—and there is no agony about it. It does require constant watchfulness and prac­tice until the new behavior pattern is thoroughly learned.