Bottom up actions
In Plato’s The Republic, he talks about various systems for government, action justice and society. Too often these are organized inefficiently.
Focusing just on the action part illustrates this perfectly. Anyone who has ever been on a diet or tried to give up any addictive behaviors will recognize that we tend to act first and think after. Before we know where we are we are lighting up a cigarette or snarfing down a chocolate bar. Plato recommends the following organization
Rational Soul (Thinking)
II
V
Wisdom Spirited Soul (Willing)
II
V
Courage Appetitive Soul (Feeling)
Moderation
When we can strongly instill the mindsets that will help us succeed, it is much easier to have the feeling controlled by the Thinking. I have experienced this in my own life, I was a smoker on and off for about ten years – I gave up for long periods such as when I was pregnant but each time ended up smoking again. This was mainly because I had the mindset that smoking helped me when I was stressed, therefore whenever I was stressed (with 3 young children and a difficult marriage this was a frequent event) I craved a cigarette until my will power was broken down. But finally I was able to replace that mindset with an immediate connection in my head between cigarettes and nausea – I just need to think about smoking now and I immediately feel nauseous. I am therefore now an ex-smoker and have been for 4 years now. In order to instill the nausea connection I spent about 3 weeks after I gave up for the last time spending every day thinking about cigarettes and then inducing a feeling of nausea in my body. I was able to adopt a mindset that made staying away from smoking very easy.
A similar approach can be used for any bad habit – by associating it in our mind with something we find offensive. Try visualizing a chocolate bar crawling with maggots. Do this consistently enough and soon the mind will build a neuron pathway that will make it easier to eschew your favorite snack.
Set up your thinking correctly and your feeling self will quickly fall into line.
