The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism - Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860 - it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won't have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don't know how to eliminate them effectively.

We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.

Bring your kids along next time you go to the grocery store and ask them to help find the price per unit for the general grocery items. By comparing brands and looking for the best prices, kids will get in the habit of looking for deals and understand the value of the dollar.

I struggled to kick the habit - I would make a decision to give up smoking, but it was hard. I couldn't resist the urge to steal a smoke. It was at that time that I was gifted Allen Carr's book 'The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.' After I read that book, I didn't touch a fag again.

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I'm lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.

I make a habit of asking myself, 'Is there purpose to this meeting or conversation? Do I want to build a relationship with this person or company? Is there purpose behind this meeting that aligns with my life and business strategy?' If the answer is 'No,' then I pass every time.

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, we're free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

When you get into the habit of leaving a space, you become a much better player for it. If you've got an expressive style, and can express your emotions through your guitar, and you've got a great tone, it creates a lot of tension for the audience. It's all down to the feel thing.

My most annoying habit is complaining about my aches and pains. It's the new ones that I haven't identified yet that make me nervous. According to my wife, I complain way too much. I may be a borderline hypochondriac, or you could say I am fascinated by the body - at least by mine.

Research has shown that it takes 31 days of conscious effort to make or break a habit. That means, if one practices something consistently for 31 days, on the 32nd day it does become a habit. Information has been internalised into behavioural change, which is called transformation.

Imagine life without any algorithms at all, you wouldn't be able to do anything. This is already completely encompassing. We have a habit of over-trusting what mathematics or computer scientists tell us to do, without questioning it, too much faith in the magical power of analysis.

Avoid the 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' habit of overreacting to the loudest feedback. The first time you hear a particular piece of feedback, treat it like a clue and do some investigating. Find out how deep it goes - maybe it stops at the surface and won't be an issue, maybe not.

There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.

When you play, you do not ask yourself how it feels to be on the bench. You have to live it to understand how difficult it is to be there without being there. To enter a match knowing you do not have the confidence of the coach. To play when you simply don't have the habit of playing.

You need to put what you learn into practice and do it over and over again until it's a habit. I always say, 'Seeing is not believing. Doing is believing.' There is a lot to learn about fitness, nutrition and emotions, but once you do, you can master them instead of them mastering you.

As soon as I go into a dark subject, like discussing the people I've loved and lost, I off-road into absurdist comedy perversion. It's both a means of protection and a kind of denial, a blessing and a curse. Wait, it's not a blessing at all. I guess it would be a bad habit and a curse.

I have had teachers who were brutal. If you look up 'brutal' in a dictionary, you will see their names. And I think that it's under the guise of wanting to change the actor's habit - wanting to break bad habits and replace them with brand-new ones you can use for the rest of your career.

I like writing, and I enjoy it. It's painful. You can't get around the pain of writing. I'm still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.

Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.

People who know me know that I'm a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks. My quirky habit is that every Kansas game is on my calendar, and, more often than not, I will plan and schedule flights around them so that I can engage and watch. I have already brainwashed my family to be Jayhawks fans.

Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.

A residence of many years in Yorkshire, and an inveterate habit of collecting all kinds of odd and out-of-the-way information concerning men and matters, furnished me, when I left Yorkshire in 1872, with a large amount of material, collected in that county, relating to its eccentric children.

I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader.

In high school, I had to hide my comic book side, my nerd side from the civilian world so they wouldn't categorize me. They would try to marginalize me for what I like. I tried to give it up, believe me. I tried to kick the habit. But there's too much I liked about it to give it up completely.

I got on the scale and I weighed around 203. I'm only 5'7. I was about to turn 30, and I wasn't active anymore. So I started working with a nutritionist and a trainer. I played basketball twice a week. And soon it all just became a habit for me. I became addicted to something good for a change.

As the Persians wrote very little about how they ran their affairs, the Greek propaganda of the 5th century B.C. has for centuries gone virtually unchallenged - indeed, for Edward Said, it was the beginning of Europe's long habit of misunderstanding and ill-informed contempt of the Middle East.

Women tend to break the network of friends they make, but it is a habit that men have learned. It is an approach to life that involves planning almost without thinking about it. And men sustain this. I came from a northern grammar school. I had a good education, but I didn't have a good network.

I can't explain something I saw on holiday on Holy Island when I was about nine years old, but do you know what, it could have been my PE teacher dressed in a monk's habit. I have no idea. I'm not a ghost person... it doesn't mean there aren't unexplained things; I just don't think they're ghosts.

I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic.

Let me tell you something. When I was young, I was an armed robber. I did robberies. And there's no adrenaline rush like that. When you're using drugs and doing robberies, it's hard to distinguish whether you're doing robberies to support your drug habit, or doing drugs to support your robbery habit.

Individual writers have different postures, different stances, even different physical attitudes as they stand or sit over their blank paper, and in a sense, without doing it, they are crossing themselves; I mean, it's like the habit of Catholics going into water: you cross yourself before you go in.

Compassion does not just happen. Pity does, but compassion is not pity. It's not a feeling. Compassion is a viewpoint, a way of life, a perspective, a habit that becomes a discipline - and more than anything else, compassion is a choice we make that love is more important than comfort or convenience.

During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.

When you're walking at the airport, you're expected to smile at people because they know you... I find that tough. I'm only trying to protect myself. So I don't take my eyes off the floor. People can take that as attitude. But it's actually shyness. Yes, it is a bad habit. But it's a defense mechanism.

My habit would have been to veer towards the dark - to prove I was something; edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that's true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect.

The causes for my eating disorder ran along the usual lines: depression, an inability to express my rage, a desire to exert control, a desire to feel less, a desire to have my body express the things my voice could not. That, and I had gotten in the habit of believing it was better to take up less space.

When you're trying to lose weight, one of the most important things you can do is eat three decent meals a day so that you're not so hungry that you can't get food off your mind. Habit and hunger have long been the basic, insidious enemies of the overweight. We can't fight hunger, but we can fight habit.

There is a woman named Wendy Wood, who did a study when she was at Duke, and she followed around college students to try to figure out how much of their day was decision-making versus how much was habit. And what she found was that about 45 percent of all the behaviors that someone did in a day was habit.

I feel like I'm a New Yorker because I really know the city. I actually tell the drivers where to go - I have this bad habit, I always question the drivers. I do that all the time because I feel like I know the best way, when really it's like, 'Yo, man, shut up. This dude does this every day of his life.'

We're drawn to making our mark, leaving a record to show we were here, and a journal is a great place to do it. Once you start drawing, writing, and gluing stuff in every day, it can quickly become a habit - addictive, even. Your attitude should be: 'I can do this, but I mustn't make it too intimidating.'

There is a saying, 'Eyes are the windows to the soul.' It means, mostly, people can see through someone else by eye contact in seven seconds. I have a habit that if I meet someone I don't know, I'd like to look at her or his eyes on purpose. When my eyes lay on them, I can immediately see their true color.

We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.

Habit allows us to go from 'before' to 'after,' to make life easier and better. Habit is notorious - and rightly so - for its ability to direct our actions, even against our will; but by mindfully shaping our habits, we can harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth.

I am not going to eat something that I have been told is not good for my system, and I do what I can to eat energy food, such as lean meats, whole grains, and lots of fruit and vegetables. Without this daily habit, my body would have given up a long time ago. There is no magic pill, no magic drink, no magic food.

You know you're living with the habit of zest if you purposefully choose the scenic route to wherever you are going. Or you choose clothing because you love the texture of the fabric. Or you pick a shampoo or cleaning product because you love the smell - smell being just as important to you as how the product works.

I've found that I snack less and concentrate better when I chew on a plastic stirrer - the kind that you get to stir your to-go coffee. I picked up this habit from my husband, who loves to chew on things. His favorite chew-toy is a plastic pen top, and gnawed pen tops and little bits of plastic litter our apartment.

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