Evening Text for Reflection:
Every habit and faculty is formed or
strengthened by the corresponding act - walking makes you walk better, running
makes you a better runner. If you want to be literate, read, if you want to be
a painter, paint. Go a month without reading, occupied with something else, and
you'll see what the result is. And if you're laid up a mere ten days, when you
get up and try to talk any distance, you'll find your legs barely able to
support you. So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you don't like
doing something, make a habit of doing something different. The same goes for
the affairs of the mind...So if you don't want to be hot-tempered, don't feed
your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be
angry, then begin to count the days on which you don't get angry. 'I used to be
angry every day, then only every other day, then every third....' If you resist
it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from
day one, until it is wiped out altogether. 'I didn't lose my temper this day,
or the next, and not for two, then three months in succession.' If you can say
that, you are now in excellent health, believe me.
Epictetus, Discourses 2.18
ALSO - Do Daily Evening Exercise!
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