Sunday, June 04, 2006

resetting the thermostat

thermostatThe book "Saying Goodbye to Stubborn Sin" has a good analogy of habits and addictions. Our thermostat gets set too high, and we can't live with the same "temperature" (of boredom, anger, horniness, whatever) as we used to.

Resetting the thermostat isn't as easy and finding it and turning the dial a little tho. We can only reprogram it over time by changing our actions. Little by little it gets easier and the pressure is eased. It's like if you've been failing a course all year, trying to bring up your average isn't easy. If it took you a while to entrench that habit/addiction, it'll take time to dig it out and get rid of it.

There's a lot of metaphors here, but if you dug yourself a hole, you gotta stop digging, decide to do an about-face, and start filling the hole in! That sounds like work (frustrating work)... and it is.

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