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Quote by Jem Calder

“My problem was, I couldn’t force myself to do the things I wanted to do; couldn’t make myself start writing any more than I could make myself stop drinking. Some self-sabotaging mechanism in my personality derailed my every attempt to make positive changes in my life. In order to start making those changes, I reasoned, I would have to undergo some kind of pre-change change; become the kind of person who could readily make such changes. But how was I even supposed to make that initial, pre-change change? Let alone the many incremental micro-changes I would first have to make on the way to making a pre-pre-change change?”

Quote by Jem Calder

Book:Reward System: Stories
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Reward System: Stories

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Jem Calder

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“Once they left school, Mark and Lucy stopped being religious. Instead of embodying the discourse and practices of the Catholic Church, they embodied the discourse and practice of love, sex and romance. Instead of going to church, they went to pubs and discos. Instead of embracing piety, humility and chastity, they embraced each other. Instead of kneeling down and praying, they shook their bodies to the rhythms of popular music. Instead of putting up pictures of holy men and women, they put up pictures of music and film stars. Instead of reading about the lives of saints, they read about the lives of celebrities. Instead of listening to hymns, they listened to songs about love and romance. Mark and Lucy were part of a new breed of people that began to emerge, particularly during the twentieth century, who believed more in themselves than God. They believed in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure more than in self-sacrifice. They saw passion and sex not as dangerous, but as central to living a fulsome life.”

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“Major life events—starting a new job, moving, getting married, having children—have the same effect, many times over. They take away our habit cues and remove the predictability of life. They shake everything up, and for a moment, all of your behaviors—habitual and otherwise—are in the air, waiting for you to direct their placement. Yes, major life changes are stressful times full of uncertainty. But they are also opportunities to reimagine ourselves and restructure our lives. We are freed up to practice new behaviors without interference from established cues and our habitual responses to them.”

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Book:Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick
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