CMP Review 2024-12-12

December 12, 2024

Charlotte Mason asserts that “power of will implies power of attention.” For many people, this sounds odd. What does the habit of attention have to do with willpower? I think we find a clue in James Clear’s Atomic Habits. He tells this story:

I used to buy apples from the store, put them in the crisper in the bottom of the refrigerator, and forget all about them. By the time I remembered, the apples would have gone bad. I never saw them, so I never ate them. Eventually, I … redesigned my environment. I bought a large display bowl and placed it in the middle of the kitchen counter. The next time I bought apples, that was where they went—out in the open where I could see them. Almost like magic, I began eating a few apples each day simply because they were obvious rather than out of sight.

Clear’s point is that willpower is overrated. “When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control,” he explains, “it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, ‘disciplined’ people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control.”

It’s great advice to redesign our environments so that good habits are encouraged and bad habits are discouraged. But what about when we can’t control our environment? When our environment is handed to us by someone else? What then? Miss Mason has the answer:

Are you cross? Change your thoughts. Are you tired of trying? Change your thoughts. Are you craving for things you are not to have? Change your thoughts; there is a power within you, your own will, which will enable you to turn your attention from thoughts that make you unhappy and wrong, to thoughts that make you happy and right. And … this is the sole secret of the power over himself which the strong man wields—he can compel himself to think of what he chooses, and will not allow himself in thoughts that breed mischief.

We can’t always change our environment, but we can always change our thoughts. And by the habit of attention we can hold these thoughts steady. And then we find a power of will we never knew we had.

@artmiddlekauff