- If we want to abolish Greek life, we need to get hot girls to not come to frat parties.
-This won’t work because there is no alternative good enough for hot girls to party otherwise. Overheard at Vanderbilt
You cannot simply eradicate something without providing a valid alternative. Although some behaviors need to be given up completely, it’s easier to take the path of replacing or overriding unwanted behaviors with the more wanted ones. Not only effective, but this approach is also kind and long-term sustainable. Radically giving something up uses up a lot of willpower and creates the risk of a future failure. Sustainable compounding giving up of something is way more likely to work in the long-term.
This principle arises in many areas of life: “If I don’t want to be eating X, what can I give myself to eat? If I don’t want myself to be distracted, how can I make what I am doing engaging? If I don’t want to think about X, what can I think about?”