The Book of Good Habits: Simple and Creative Ways to Enrich Your Life - Softcover

Mathison, Dirk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0963994662 ISBN 13: 9780963994660

Publisher: Santa Monica Press, 1997

Synopsis

The Book of Good Habits contains nearly 2,000 simple and creative ways to enrich your life. Dirk Mathison uses wit, humor, satire and a dash of cynicism to blend his own good habit recommendations with those of a diverse array of philosophers and fools, from Confucius and Abraham Lincoln to James Brown and Groucho Marx.

The habits range from the practical (keep a pair of tennis shoes at the office so you can take a quick run or power walk during breaks) to the sublime (drink green tea from a blue cup) to the ridiculous (slap up—if you must slap, make it a habit to slap someone who makes more money and is more prominent than yourself).

The Book of Good Habits includes habits for the mind, health, safety, sex, love, friendship and parenting. At the heart of Mathison's book is the belief that if we change our daily behavior, our lives will change as well. And that it is through our habits that we give life to our ideas and our ideals.

So chew on a bit of parsley for clean breath, use candles even when there's no special occasion, and enrich your life with The Book of Good Habits.

About this title

About the Author

Dirk Mathison is a veteran journalist and the former West Coast Editor of People magazine. He makes his home in the Los Angeles area.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Slap up. Learn from the famous Washington socialite who, several years ago, lost her standing in the community after slapping a servant for sloppy work. If you must slap, make it a habit to slap someone who makes more money and is more prominent than yourself. In this way you won't be vilified, and may even earn a small measure of praise.

Be like director Ingmar Bergman, who has the habit of using this specific bit of visualization to help with the creative process: "If you can imagine," he says, "I throw a spear into the dark. That is my intuition, and then I have to send an expedition into the jungle to find the spear and to find a way to the spear. And that is absolutely another process. That is my intellect." This is Bergman's method. Try to find your own habits for giving your creative self a bit of a push.

. . . Eat shrimp when feeling blue for a dose of mood-elevating selenium . . . Take every vacation day . . . Wake up slowly . . . Travel by train . . . Plant trees to commemorate events . . . Use candles even when there's no special occasion . . . Keep your shoes shined because it's hard to feel bad with shiny shoes . . . And favor any drink that contains an umbrella . . . "Condoms aren't completely safe. A friend of mind was wearing one and got hit by a bus." -Bob Rubin

Have reel good gramer. Use "both" commas, and, quotations, sparingly. Don't be a guy who, like, uses no double negatives and random colloquialisms. Remember that clichs are a dime a dozen, and that big words are often unnecessary and superfluous. Don't mix your metaphors like some turgid green thumb. Don't be repetitive, or repeat yourself. And it goes without saying that it goes without saying. And remember to avoid exclamation points at all costs! They are appropriate for junior high love notes and novels with bare-chested men on the cover, but little else. So shun them! And have a nice day!

Make sure you're not being poisoned. The age-old habit of clinking glasses together in celebration may have started a method of insuring that one wasn't getting a bit of hemlock with his rum. Participants would spill a bit of their drink into the other's glass, and vice versa, to insure that they would either be safe or all die together. So keep up the tradition of paranoia by clinking glasses.

"Hair and teeth-a man got those two things, he's got it all." -James Brown

Go out in the noonday sun. If you are troubled by your youthful appearance and wish, for the sake of your standing in the community, to look old as soon as possible, get out there and bake. Forget sunscreen. Try, instead, to use baby oil for that deep-down burn. You should, by your mid-thirties, have the distinguished look of a person in their mid-fifties.

Edition details

• Publisher: Santa Monica Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0963994662
• ISBN 13: 9780963994660
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 214