Self Improvement Blogs

www.happiness-project.com Quiz — are you a moderator or abstainer? One of the great mysteries of happiness is: why don’t we do the things that we know will make us happy? Why do we skip exercising? Why do we eat two doughnuts for breakfast? Why do we buy that thing we don’t really need? Etc. Often, I know I’ll be happier if I don’t indulge in something. For example, I won’t be happy if I eat five cookies — and I’m the kind of person who can’t eat just one cookie. A piece of advice I often see is, “Be moderate. Don’t have ice cream every night, but if you try to deny yourself altogether, you’ll fall off the wagon. Allow yourself to have the occasional treat, it will help you stick to your plan.” I’ve come to believe that this is good advice for some people: the “moderators.” They do better when they try to make moderate changes, when they avoid absolutes and bright lines. For a long time, I kept trying this strategy of moderation — and failing. Then I read a line from Samuel Johnson: “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” Ah ha! Like Dr. Johnson, I’m an “abstainer.” I find it far easier to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately. When I admitted to myself that I was eating my favorite frozen “fake food” treat, Tasti D-Lite, two and even three times a day, I gave it up cold turkey. That was far easier for me to do than to eat Tasti D-Lite twice a week. If I try to be moderate, I exhaust myself debating, “Today, tomorrow?” “Does …