Gamble

I've put up two gambles yesterday night. One with HUGE life altering stakes, the other, the stakes are merely severe dissapointment and incredible inconvenience.

Why? I figured if one wanted to change something about oneself, it can't be done unless there are consequences large enough to cause the change.

You see, smoking = bad habit. ie. smoking is a subset of bad habit. Now, quitting smoking = subset of kicking [a] bad habit. And we all are familiar with the difficulty of quitting smoking. And to be honest, I don't think its fair to say that its only because of its addictive qualities. I think its just an excuse. Sure, nicotine is addictive, but so is caffeine, and caffeine is even more addictive than nicotine, and the only reason there's not a big uproar about it is because the negative side effects of consuming caffeine are not so adverse.

So, back to the issue at hand. I've gambled a few things to kick certain bad habits I have. The system goes something like this:

I have, in my room, a sheet of paper on the wall. Every time I do said item, I mark a tick on the sheet. (these are for kicking bad habits prevent me from doing something every day..... or rather, instead of bad habits, they're like goals... for exampl, if you say you will go jogging every day, then every day you job, you will mark a tick on the sheet. However, jogging wasn't the thing on my list :P).

So, you make a tick. Every time you miss one day, you cross out the sheet with a red marker and put it away. Here's a consequence part:

The first time you collect 5 crossed out sheets, you've reached the first level of consequence. At this time, a consequence of significance will be carried out. The second time you collect 5 sheets, that's the next level of consequence. Of course, the consequences have to be quite extreme ('I'll not watch TV for two days' is not a very good consequence when one wants to kick bad habits, or develop new good habits....).

Going back to my jogging example, a consequence level list could be like this:
1. Not hold a birthday party for two years.
2. Not allowed to eat [insert favorite food] for 4 years.
3. Sell my first-born.

Of course, none of the above are consequences I used (I don't hold birthday parties, I can live without any one type of food, and my first born I've already sold [lol jokes] :P)

So yeah... that's my system. I made two last night, simultaneously trying to kick one bad habit, and develop a new good one (two are completely unrelated, but both are things I've been promising to do all my life.....).

Like I said, the one for kicking the bad habit has life altering stakes, the second one of developing a good habit has ..... well, lets just say if I fail, then you'll notice, you'll scream at me going "why???", or maybe you won't, but at least 200 people out there will (can ya guess what it is? I'd say, but I'm afraid that if I do, it won't be as effective).....

No clue if this system will actually work, or how long I can keep it, after all, today's just the first day.... I'm provisional for another two weeks or so......

Yuy Ren