Bad habits, values, indulgence

Find a personal rule-a bad habit-that you can break. This breaking of the habit should be known by you, as deeply as possible, to be a positive, life supporting, good, thing to do.

For instance, you might know that your group of friends would not approve of your associating with a particular person. Now, break this, or some other, bad rule.

Choose something that is relatively easy to do. It could be the smallest of your bad habits, and the breaking of it could be in the slightest of fashions, but at least DO SOMETHING!

Ask yourself,Are my habits “rules” that I have written for myself? How can this be true when I do not remember writing most of these rules?

How did I feel when I broke the rule?

What part of this did me the most good-the breaking of the rule or the good thing I did?

Who wrote most of the rules that I follow in my life?

If I agree with a rule is that the same as writing it?

If I break a bad habit, is that the same as breaking the underlying value it was expressing?

How do I directly affect an unwanted value I have-instead of merely “fighting it” every time it “figures” out yet another way to manifest in my thoughts, speech, and deeds?

How easy is it for me to recognize my faults and the values they express? Could I sit down, and in a very short amount of time, list all my major bad habits and the values that support them?

When I do wrong, who is it that determines this? Why would that “person” allow me to do the wrong in the first place?