“If you don’t wish to be a hot-head, don’t feed your habit. Try as a first step to remain calm and count the days you haven’t been angry. I used to be angry every day, now every other day, then every third or fourth . . . if you make it as far as 30 days, thank God! For habit is first weakened and then obliterated. When you can say ‘I didn’t lose my temper today, or the next day, or for three or four months, but kept my cool under provocation,’ you will know you are in better health.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.11b–14
The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once gave a young comic named Brad Isaac some advice about how to write and create material. Keep a calendar, he told him, and each day that you write jokes, put an X. Soon enough, you get a chain going—and then your job is to simply not break the chain. Success becomes a matter of momentum.
Once you get a little, it’s easier to keep it going. Whereas Seinfeld used the chain method to build a positive habit, Epictetus was saying that it can also be used to eliminate a negative one. It’s not all that different than taking sobriety “one day at a time.”
Start with one day doing whatever it is, be it managing your temper or wandering eyes or procrastination. Then do the same the following day and the day after that. Build a chain and then work not to break it. Don’t ruin your streak.
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