Brent Redpath
A lot of people splash quotes around haphazardly, rarely taking into consideration whether what was said was even profound.
Maybe I am hard to please when it comes to quotes. Few impress me, and as weird as it sounds I have to know at least something about the person who said it before I can truly appreciate what was said. I guess you have to understand the man behind the words.
With that said some quotes really resonate with me. They flick a switch in my brain and serve as a perfect little slice of crystallised thought that makes me realise something I carry with me through life and constantly keep applying. Here’s one:
”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
This is something that as always stuck with me. I first noticed our habitual nature when I was young, under odd circumstances, from an unexpected source. I was 15 years old (probably high) and went to an old train bridge one night, in my town. There are a few people there drinking around a fire. Anyway, we were chatting away and this older guy said to me (unsure how it came up) ”we are creatures of habit, we shake our dicks three times after we piss and don’t even realise it”.
Now this wasn’t the most elegant delivery of this point, (I am not trying to convince anyone of that) but it really struck me that night how habitual we are in nature and made me aware of it on a higher level – something that has stuck with me ever since.
From that moment on wards I became innately aware of the fact excellence is nothing more than a habit, as Aristotle said (I came along the quote some years later and it made everything fit nicely in my brain, and served as much better quote to remember this point by).
Just as much as excellence is a habit, so is a lack of excellence. I realised from very early on in life that habits are re wire-able. We aren’t just tarnished with a brush upon birth and that’s it and then you fling up your hands in defeat and give yourself up to your faults and bad habits – doomed for eternity. Everybody is capable of re wiring their most ingrained habits in exchange for better habits; it just takes some grit, self awareness and honesty to see your bad habits for what they truly are.
To give in to bad habits ingrained in our nature as individuals serves no purpose, especially seeing as you only live once, and for a brief time. Giving up and saying ”well that is just the way I am” does fuck all for you on your pursuit of self betterment, and what do you have to lose, really?
Phasing out bad habits and replacing them with new ones involves a combination of persistence, patience and as I mentioned before, self awareness. You have to not fall into the habit of feeling guilty and hating yourself every-time you slip back into old habits. You have to calmly get back on the horse and try again, and again. It may take years to kick the habit – but that persistence is a good habit in and of itself. Failure happens, but don’t get disenchanted, because you may succeed on the thousandth time.
I can guarantee one thing, and that is that you will never kick bad habits if you don’t try and feel you are stuck the way you are, a stagnant piece of shit, never changing, never striving for your own definition of excellence.
The take home message here is we ARE creatures of habit. And just as we form habits that may hinder our road to excellence, we can form new ones in their place. The word ”repeatedly” is in that quote for a reason, because it takes time and persistence to be excellent in what every you define excellence as. It’s sometimes a life long en-devour, but you owe it to yourself and your fleeting snap shot of this life to try, everyday until your last.
