19 August 2023
This series of blogs has been about craftsmanship applied to shaping individual lives—mostly lives of recovery from addictive behaviours. The organizing principle has been SMART Recovery’s 4-Point Program which looks like this:
Last week we finished with urges. This week we look at managing thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Yet—thoughts, feelings, and behaviours can be seen as the entire set of processes that constitute a human life. In other words, if we are not thinking, feeling, or behaving, what are we doing? Even sleep is a human behaviour in which we cede control to our unconscious self-care mode. As most SMARTies come to realize, that program isn’t just about addiction, it’s about life. And point 3 is the key to seeing that relationship.
Thus characterized, the Durant-based conclusion of last week’s blog is pertinent: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Interestingly, this covers both excellence of behaviour (the ultimate product of thought and feeling, from point #3, above) and the attention to detail required to foster craftsmanship. If excellence is not an act, it is a thematically sustained series of acts i.e., a habit. And a series of habituated actions is not a bad description of character. Which takes us back to my favourite pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, who anachronistically extended this line of thought stating that character is destiny (Fragment CXXI in Patrick, 2013, p. 55).
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote that the attainment of virtue was not possible in one not raised with proper habituation. It is only in researching the material for this blog that I realized the depth of that point. In Greek, ethos, the root of ethics, is defined as habit (Bartlett & Collins, 2011, p. 318). A close cousin, ēthos is defined as character. The study of ethics is the study of right action (Audi, 1998, p. 244). I am far from alone in this view:
For Aristotle, as for us, the term has to do with a person's enduring traits; that is, with the attitudes, sensibilities, and beliefs that affect how a person sees, acts, and indeed lives. As permanent states, these will explain not merely why someone acted this way now, but why someone can be counted on to act in certain ways. In this sense, character gives a special sort of accountability and pattern to action (Sherman, 1991, p. 1 of “Character”).
Per this strand of thought, and my own experience, those who are most susceptible to addictive behaviours are those least likely to have been lovingly and skillfully habituated. And to make a longer story short, that’s what recovery is really all about: the (much) better-late-than-never inculcation of the habits of well-being. And per SMART Recovery’s point #3, what is to be habituated is our thinking, feeling, and behaving. To habituate those three primary actions of life is to develop much greater self-control.
Self-control is the ability to direct one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviour, usually as a way to better adapt to the world. A sort of catchall word for how well we resist temptation, delay gratification, regulate our emotions, and work toward what we want [values], self-control is how we obey rules, follow directions, check emotions, cooperate with others, exercise consistently, eat healthily, keep promises, save money, get to work on time, and work hard. As noted by Sigmund Freud almost a hundred years ago, the ability of the individual to be in charge of herself—for reason to be stronger than passion, for the individual to bend to society, for the ego to be stronger than the id—has long been one of the hallmarks of civilization (Jay, 2017, p. 117).
I would add that such ability is also the hallmark of adulthood, the assumption of responsibility for one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Next week we’ll look at the final point: a balanced life.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
Audi, R. (Ed.) (1998). The Cambridge dictionary of philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Bartlett, R. C. & Collins, S. D. (2011). Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The University of Chicago Press.
Jay, M. (2017). Supernormal: The secret world of the family hero. Twelve, Hachette Book Group.
Patrick, G. T. W. (Tr.) (2013). The Fragments of Heraclitus. Digireads.com.
Sherman, N. (1991). The Fabric of Character. Oxford University Press.
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