PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22630, 23 July 1935, Page 7

PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

“New Habits and Their Formation” was the subject taken for study at last Thursday’s meeting of the Dunedin Practical Psychology Club, at which Mrs H. S Tily presided. It was stated that one of the higher lessons in mind control consisted of keeping it poised and quiet. The mind was a channel for the everflowing river of thought which went oa ceaselessly, sleeping or waking, but which could be regulated and controlled, homo of these thought tracks were good and useful, but others less so. For the latter, new channels had to be formed, and though this presented no particular dilhcultv, the work must be definite and consistent. Thought could not be safely and permanently damned; it might he repressed for a time, but would then burst forth with accumulated force. Instead, one should make a consistent habit of training the thought into useful and de* sirable channels. When it was desired to break off a bad habit it was wasteful and ineffectual merely to oppose it with the will-power, the fact of keeping it in the mind tending to impress the habit still further on the consciousness. The correct way was to concentrate upon the opposite of the undesirable habit, which would die away through lack of attention. It was a thousand times easier to form a new habit than to break an old one by fighting it. The training of young children in good habits was, of course, very important, as those acquired in the first two years and a-half wer* the most lasting.