But if the habit simply must be broken? Breaking a habit is forming a counter-habit, and the more positive the counter-habit the better for us. This counter-habit must not be left to form itself, but must be practised diligently. Strong motivation is necessary, no half-hearted acquiescence in somebody else's injunction to get rid of the habit. We must adopt the counter-habit as ours, and work for a high standard of skill in it. For example, if we come to realize that we have a bad habit of grouchiness with our best friends, it is of little use merely to attempt to deaden this habit; we need to aim at being a positive addition to the company whenever we are present, and to practise the art of being good company, checking up our efforts to be sure we are hitting {329} the right vein, and persisting in our self-training till we become real artists. It takes some determination for a grouchy individual to make such a revolution in his conduct; his self-assertion resists violently, for the grouchiness is part and parcel of himself and he hates to be anything but himself. He must conceive a new and inspiring ideal of himself, and start climbing up the practice curve towards the new ideal. {330} EXERCISES 1. Outline the chapter. 2. Which of the acts performed in eating breakfast are instinctive, which are matters of habit, and which are partly the one and partly the other? 3. Compare your mental attitude in approaching an unfamiliar and a familiar task. 4. How does the performance of the expert in swimming or dancing, etc., differ from the performance of the beginner? Analyze out the points of superiority. 5. Show that the element of trial and error is present in (a) the child's learning to pronounce a word, and (b) learning "how to take" a person so as to get on well with him. 6. Why is it that our handwriting, though exercised so much, is apt to grow worse rather than better, while on the contrary our spelling is apt to improve? 7. How would you rate your efficiency in study? Is it near your physiological limit, on a plateau, or in a stage of rapid improvement? 8. A practice experiment. Take several pages of uniform printed matter, and mark it off into sections of 15 lines. Take your time for marking every word in one section that contains both e and r. The two letters need not be adjacent, but must both be present somewhere In the word. Having recorded your time for this first section, do the same thing with the next section, and so on for 12 sections. What were you able to observe, introspectively, of your method of work and changes with practice. From the objective observations, construct a practice curve.