Can 30 days trial applied to developing virtues?

[Neobian]

Habits are visible and we can teach ourself by repetition (or lack of it). eg: to quit smoking.

But it seems hard to apply the same principles to improve/add new virtues to one's character (like courage, patience, love, humility so on) as they are invisible qualities. How will you teach yourself such qualities and be practical about it in everyday life?

Let's say i want to be more courageous. It is very generic. So i target it for a field -> I want to be courageous at helping people. Now that the scene is set, i tell myself everytime the oppurtunity presents itself, I somehow must conceal my anxiety and approach them with kindness and ask if they need my help. I have to exactly write down the details in my journal about that experience and look for ideas to improve it next time. The point is, every scenario is different. I cannot use the same courage to approach someone for dating, it requires different mindset or different set of plans but at end of day we still call it requires "courage". So can we really track our progress on virtues, like all habits? What other ways can we track, other than journaling?

What are your top priority virtues longing for improvement

[taylor]

Good post. Something I probably haven't considered consciously but is very important.

We can track it indirectly. You can't measure courage directly, but you can measure if you went to Toastmaster's this week, or approached five people of the opposite sex you were interested in, or how many people you started a conversation with. You can notice in your body if you were physically scared or not during these experiences. You can notice if you were thinking scared thoughts leading up to the event. These are all measurable things related to courage, but not courage itself.

I'm working on being love, but part of me thinks a better word for that is surrender. So some of the metrics I'm tracking are, did I do my spiritual practice session, how long did I pray, how many unforgiving thoughts did I catch during the day, and did I journal. Someone else might track how many conversations were they "loving" during, or how many kind things they performed that day.

[HiImJeremy]

I think it'd be great to consciously apply yourself to trialing yourself with a virtue.

They would be similar in a way i think - for me targeting a virtue in particular would allow me to really examine myself deeper which is always positive in the way of personal growth.

I dont know whether you could count confidence as a virtue, but i did a 30 day trial building my confidence because it was quite crippling! What i did was everyday i went through a mental process in meditation where i would observe myself calm, and then when i was in a situation where my confidence was tested, i would observe myself then. Obviously the situations played a huge part, so i observed them too and it all came down to just being afraid of communicating with people, and also judgement from others. So i worked with those things quite extensively in a way where i could change those beliefs i held and i would challenge myself into situations where the expreience from that would help me grow.

Starting small, like meeting the eyes of people i was walking past and smiling at them. Might not be a huge thing for some people, but for me, i always found it quite a hard thing to do. Then i would progress to other things, like making small talk with shop owners etc

So i think this type of trial is very possible. It's a hugley mental and emotional process so i would expect a lot of growth.

It also relies a lot on circumstance and manifestation in my belief, because whatever im putting my attention on will grow. So for example, me taking a better and more thoughtful look at my confidence, i was presented with oppurtunities to challenge myself everytime i went out. It was eerie for a while, but once i got used to it, i just took it as a change to grow more.

I would like to be more patient and have less triggers that would lead me to anger. Love, Respect, Tact, Wisdom.

I think though the way this differs from taking a 30 day trial with habits rather then virtues, is that Virtues will be a life long trial, continued growth over a long period. We can always improve i feel.

[Neobian]

I read an interesting post about Benjamin Franklin. He had a list of 13 virtues he wanted to develop over the period of life time. So this is what he did. He took one virtue every week and practised it wholeheartedly. Next week, he switched to the next virtue, at 14th week the cycle would restart. After a while, all of them got to him automatic.

[SlicK]

But it seems hard to apply the same principles to improve/add new virtues to one's character (like courage, patience, love, humility so on)

It's very easy, direct and simple. You just feel it. You just practice the feeling. And it "grows".

Practice feeling, thinking and acting like you have that quality, in your imagination. You'll see how in 2 or 3 days it starts to "leak" into reality. Keep on and in less than 30 days you'll OWN that virtue.