Tag: Self Improvement

Lesson From Atomic Habit: Identify With Your Habit

Arshan Dhillon

John is curled up under the blanket. The hum of the nearby fan cools the room and sings him into a deeper slumber. The soft cotton sheets snuggle him in place, keeping him dreaming. Outside, the sun rises ever so slowly. Inching closer and closer, the same as the alarm clock. The clock, with each passing second, nears 6 am and when the time finally comes, the clock strikes 6, the alarm goes off. Without a moment of hesitation, John’s hand slams the snooze button and he drifts back to his dream world. After a few more punches to the clock, John finally stirs awake. He stretches his arms overhead and yawns deeply. Blinking away the sleep, he looks at the clock.

7 am!

He rushes out of bed to get ready for work. Telling himself that he’ll get up at 6 tomorrow instead. And as he frantically brushes his teeth, he tries to reschedule his evening so he can work out, which was planned for the morning the night before. 

Len Wallace invented the snooze button in 1847. I don’t know if I should thank him or curse his name. Too many times has that button eaten away at my promises to wake up earlier. Promises to start the day off exercising or meditating or reading. No matter how often I told myself that I wanted to start the habit of waking up early, my hand automatically went to hitting the snooze button. Over and over. 

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habit, would instantly point out the mistake in my approach. I was too focused on achieving a habit rather than identifying with it. 

Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe. When it comes to building habits that last—when it comes to building a system of 1 percent improvements—the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change. Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.

What Clear is speaking about is a shift in your worldview. Instead of trying to achieve a habit and telling yourself you’ll wake up early tomorrow and start the day off right, you should rather identify as an individual who wakes up early. It’s this mindset shift that alters the way you perceive yourself that brings about the change you’re attempting to enact.  

When the alarm clock goes off and your first thought is “Good” then you know you’re on the right path.

Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last. You may want more money, but if your identity consumes rather than creates, you’ll continue to be pulled toward spending rather than earning. You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you’ll be drawn to relaxing rather than training. It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.

How you perceive yourself is key and it works both ways. We’ve all either heard someone say or said it ourselves that “I’m not a morning person,” “I suck at math” or “I just don’t like to work out.” These are identity-creating statements, so when those moments occur in life, you resort to the identity you have chosen. When the alarm clock goes off, you hit snooze because that’s what someone who isn’t a morning person would do. When you have a math problem you panic rather than focusing on figuring out the solution because that’s what someone who sucks at math would do. When it’s time to work out, you’ll either skip it or do it without much effort or intensity because that’s what someone who hates to exercise will do. 

When you have repeated a story to yourself for years, it is easy to slide into these mental grooves and accept them as a fact. In time, you begin to resist certain actions because “that’s not who I am.”

True behaviour change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but you’ll only stick with one because it becomes part of your identity.

This is who I am and this is what I do now. That’s why small steps are extremely important. We often look at the big picture. The big goal we are trying to achieve but in order to actually achieve that goal, we have to take several thousand small steps.

It’s important to break down the habit you’re trying to implement into small steps as well. Something as simple as doing one push-up adds to your identity as someone who exercises. Or heading to bed at 10 pm instead of 10:30 pm can be a checkmark for someone who wakes up early. And over time, when you have deposited enough tokens toward the person you are aiming to be, you will find that your identity has completely evolved as well.  

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity.

So, pick the habits you believe your future self needs in order to be successful and begin identifying with them right now. That way, with time, dedication, and consistency, that future self will become the present you. 

Reflections On Building Confidence 

Arshan Dhillon

Confidence can be defined in several ways. One of them is the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something. Another is a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.

What I find curious about both definitions is the verbiage. Confidence is associated with “Feeling” and “Belief”. Whether it’s feeling like you can accomplish a given task or believing you have the ability to do something. But, we know both feelings and beliefs can change. They aren’t fixed in nature. Both things are constantly changing and evolving. So, in terms of confidence, I infer that it too can change.

We can go from being confident to unconfident and from unconfident to confident. This isn’t revolutionary thinking. Most people understand this at the basic level because part of maturing through your teenage years or early adulthood requires some degree of confidence. 

My aim is rather to understand what builds confidence within me and what kind of behaviours and habits zaps my confidence. First and foremost, my confidence is built through action. Inversely, I lose confidence through inaction. For example, the more consistent I am with my writing, the more action I take to put pen on paper and churn out words, the more confident I feel about my abilities. So, when self-doubt strikes, when my confidence falters, I can look at the past month of work, the words written, the pages compiled and strengthen my resolve. 

However, when I was on a more in-consistent schedule where I go several days without taking any action, days which quickly become weeks and several weeks at that, then when self-doubt strikes and my confidence falters, the consequences are a lot more dire because I don’t have actual proof to fall back on. It’s an empty void instead.

Proof is another key ingredient to confidence. You don’t want to hang your hat on the things you have done and become one of those people who always bring up past accomplishments and let everyone know how great he used to be. But, having past accomplishments is important. They are receipts of your actions. They show what you are capable of. And one good thing about this kind of proof is that they depend on the individual.

For example, if you’re comparing yourself to a marathon runner, then running one mile doesn’t seem like a big deal. But if you look back and see the past version of yourself who might not have even been able to walk one mile, then you can see how much of a confidence builder this accomplishment really is. Proof that they can accomplish something their former self thought was impossible.

To someone who reads all the time, finishing a book barely registers. But for someone who is on the path of building a reading habit, they can look back at a finished book and gain confidence that they are moving in the right direction. And when their confidence falters, they have a solid foundation to fall back on. 

Habits are another key ingredient to maintaining confidence. It can often take a long time to see tangible results. So, if you rely too much on results, you can find yourself in the uncomfortable position of wondering whether you’re good enough because the result you’re looking for hasn’t come to fruition. This can cause a major dent in your confidence.

One way to strengthen yourself is by focusing on good habits. Good habits are a whole other topic, but most people instinctively know what are good habits and what are bad habits. Perhaps it’s a bit naive to assume that following good habits will lead you toward your goals in life and following bad ones will lead you away from what you want. Life is rarely that black or white. But at the same time, order is necessary. You have to find these mini-steps that you believe are leading you toward your goals. Good habits happen to just that. 

Perhaps a good analogy is a video game health bar. The health bar is confidence and as you go through your life, that health bar begins to deplete, but each time you perform a good habit, you get a little boost, strengthening your health. Perform enough good habits and you accomplish a result that boosts your bar even more. Accumulate enough results and you add a whole new layer to your bar. One that depletes slower than the previous one.   

One commonality throughout this process is action. Keep moving and keep acting, so your confidence can be refilled over and over again. 

Rainer Maria Rilke On How To Turn Our Thoughts Into Our Best Worker

Arshan Dhillon

Tall grass encroached on the patio steps. Weeds burrowed through the cracks in the driveway. The wooden steps creaked an elongated moan as if it were sighing its last breath. The only thing that matched that horrid sound was the front door. Opened, it revealed the dust-covered insides of the once beautiful manor. Cracks slithered along the walls. Bulbs hung limply from above, no longer able to cast their brilliant glow. The furniture inside was looted or broken, torn apart for firewood whose ashes and smoke embedded themselves in the deepest corners of the house.

The memory of his childhood house was all but forgotten, contrasted with the ruined rubble he saw in front of him.

I often imagine our mind as a house, not unlike the one described above. Well, hopefully, the edges are cut, the weed is plucked, the cracks are taken care of and the floors are mopped. But it isn’t so always. Our minds aren’t always orderly. In fact, I’d reckon the opposite is true for most people. I know it has been for me where my thoughts have run wild and broken a few windows here and there, spilled something sticky on the carpet, and maybe even caused a couple of house fires.

This seems to be a law of nature. If you don’t consciously and actively attempt to keep something in order, chaos will eventually take over. Thoughts have a chaotic nature to them. Sometimes they spark up out of nowhere and present you with a life-altering idea and other times they make dents in the preverbal drywall of your mind by telling you that you’re not good enough or distracting you from the uncomfortable and difficult task at hand with comfortable dreams and procrastinating urges.

Both of which are so easy to give in to.

And it seems as if the internal housekeeping issue has been relevant as long as people have been around. Rainer Maria Rilke was born in 1875 and before he passed away in 1926, he wrote some of the most brilliant pieces of advice that strike right at the core of what it is like being a human being. One such piece of advice comes from his Letters to a Young Poet where he brings up the importance of taming your thoughts to be your ally instead of an obstacle.

And your doubts can become a good quality if you school them. They must grow to be knowledgeable, they must learn to be critical. As soon as they begin to spoil something for you ask them why a thing is ugly, demand hard evidence, test them, and you will perhaps find them at a loss and short of an answer, or perhaps mutinous.

What Rilke is talking about is that our thoughts can be amateurish. Infantile. They can lack a depth of meaning and yet when we have such thoughts, we believe them.

When our thoughts tell us we’re not good enough as we’re about to attempt something difficult, we allow them to change our actions. When we dream of something grand, our thoughts stick their leg out and try to make us fall over. And we fall for that centuries-old trick. When we plan to change a bad habit, our thoughts immediately dwell on the very thing we are trying to change and we give into it almost immediately.

Or maybe I’m projecting my own missteps and failure to keep a trimmed lawn.

What Rilke says is true, though. When you have thoughts that lean towards breaking something inside of your house, if you just take a moment to observe them and question them, you can make them understand what to do and what not to do.

Like children, our thoughts can be receptive. If approached correctly. You get angry at them and maybe out of fear they might obey for a moment but eventually, they will go back to their disrupting ways. But if you try to make them think, make them answer a few questions, and break down their motives and logic, then perhaps they can also mature, as do most things in nature.

I have a recent anecdote related to this method that might make it easier to understand.

I was set to do a fartlek workout, which is a 20-minute speed play workout where you run at a faster than your normal speed for 3 minutes and to a more comfortable pace for 2 minutes and you do this 4 times. I had just started my workout when a thought popped up in my head.

“Let’s just do two rounds today.”

The offer was pretty enticing, I can’t lie. But when I questioned this thought, the best answer it could come up with was that I still had a few other things on the to-do list for the day and it was already 6 pm.

Not the worst reasoning.

But when I questioned that reasoning further, I found my thoughts had no answer for why I couldn’t complete my workout and do the things left on my to-do list. Their logic was flawed. I would just have to be more time efficient once I was done with the workout. After that was settled between the two of us, my thoughts became more focused on the task at hand and I had one of my best workouts in several weeks.

And afterward, I had plenty of time to tick off the last couple of things I had left to do. With no interference from the noisy roommate.

This maturation through observation, dissection, and questioning can transform our thoughts from causing havoc inside our heads to strengthening the foundation of our home.

But do not give in, request arguments, and act with this kind of attentiveness and consistency every single time, and the day will come when instead of being demolishers they will be among your best workers — perhaps the canniest of all those at work on the building of your life.

I used to have an antagonistic view of my thoughts. I saw them as an enemy to overcome and once I did that, my life would fall into order and all my dreams will come true and I would live happily ever after.

But life isn’t a fairy tale. Or at least not your typical Disney movie.

Instead, a change of perspective helped me view my thoughts in a different light. Each time my mind acts up and tries to persuade me to break a plate or a cup or maybe even throw a football through the window, in other words, wishes for me to skip my routine, or repeat a behaviour I’m trying to break or wants to cut a productive activity short, I see it as a challenge. As if my mind is challenging me to see if I have the discipline and courage to continue down the path that I have set for myself. In that sense, my mind is my ally. It is constantly putting these mini-challenges in my way to make sure I stay firm and ready in case a big, unexpected challenge comes my way.

Before I would have cursed my thoughts. I would have blamed them for making me mess up. I would have given them the responsibility of my life.

But with the change of perspective, and through questioning, I’m grateful for my thoughts and through this gratitude, I find my thoughts working alongside me, strengthening my resolve and aiding me in the household chores.

Source: Letters To A Young Poet By Rainer Maria Rilke

The Value Of Overcoming Our Own Perceived Image

Arshan Dhillon

The dinner table is a marvellous mess of empty cups of wine, mostly empty plates save for the bits of salad dressing that linger, and the cheesecake crumbs from the dessert the two of you shared. The candlelight flickers, as you step out onto the balcony to take in the starry night. Somewhere a slow melody plays. The type that urges a couple in love to hold each other and dance.

And that’s what she wants. She wants to dance with you.

But your think: I don’t dance.

And in that instance, you allow your perceived image of yourself to ruin the beautiful moment.

I don’t dance.

I know I have said that to myself plenty of times and it has resulted in me passively watching life while individuals who are willing to feel the moment and allow that feeling to take over their senses enjoy being alive.

And of course, dancing isn’t the only example of the way we think of ourselves and perceive ourselves that can force us into the passenger seat of life and make us passive. For some, it’s the notion that they are the type of person who doesn’t speak in public. For others, it can be the opposite. They might believe that they have to be the centre of attention in order to get the party started. They aren’t the type of person who can sit back and observe.

There are thousands of examples of how our perceived image keeps us in comfortable patterns, which can be important but can rob us of the spontaneity of life.

Once you have set an identity, it can be extremely difficult to break that mould but it is precisely in this breaking and reforming that we can achieve what Nietzsche called the Ubermensch or the Overman.

I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

Nietzsche believed that our purpose on Earth was to create something that is beyond ourself. Now, this can be a little vague. What exactly classifies as going beyond ourself? For Nietzsche, this Ubermensch was someone who wasn’t concerned with happiness, reason, virtue, or pity. Rather, it was in the replication of lighting where the Ubermensch resided.

I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the advent of lightning, and, as heralds, they perish. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud; but this lighting is called overman.

One of the wonderful things about Nietzsche’s writing is that we can interpret it in several ways. My interpretation of the text could very well differ from your interpretation, which is why it’s always good to delve into such writing yourself and see what you can pull from it.

What I pulled from this is that lightning is bright, it strikes powerfully, it’s random and chaotic, and the spark dies as quickly as it arrives.

Lightning is spontaneity.

And in order to overcome oneself, you have to be open to life’s spontaneity and those feelings that spark within you precisely before you hear that voice that tells you what you are or who you are.

The feeling that tells you to dance or to run or to embrace a loved one or to listen or to speak or to create.

In short, to be part of life and take action. That is what lightning is. That is my Ubermensch.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.

Change is the essence of life. Everything changes. You can look out of your window and see the spring flowers blossoming or the auburn hew of fall approaching or even the withering beauty of stark naked trees, knowing that in time those branches will bud with fresh green leaves.

Likewise, you change. Or at least your appearance does along with the people around you. Those who are there and those who used to be there. And while everything is transitioning and changing, one thing that doesn’t change without conscious effort and action on your part is your identity and belief set.

It’s in that sense you are a bridge between who you used to be and who you can be. In order to cross this bridge, you require a flash of lightning, and the spontaneity to take the first step. You require a little bit of chaos.

I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.

Don’t think of your image. Don’t think about your preconceived notions. Don’t live in the judgement of your past.

You can become anew through action, through spontaneity, and by embracing the chaotic lightning within you.

So, that perhaps next time there is that urge to dance and be free, you can give into it, fully, completely, without the shackles of your past identity imprisoning you from feeling alive.

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (Walter Kaufmann translation)

Lessons From Books: The Wisdom Of Insecurity

Arshan Dhillon

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety is a book by Alan Watts, which tackles psychological security. This topic is even more important than ever before with how quickly our world is changing and evolving. This can cause an increase in anxiety as we find ourselves to be insecure. Watts argues that this is just the reality of life. It is not in finding security, but in acceptance, where we might find salvation from anxiety and insecurity.

Lessons:

Two Kinds of Anxiety

On the one hand, there is the anxiety that one may be missing something, so that the mind flits nervously and greedily from one pleasure to another, without finding rest and satisfaction in any. On the other, the frustration of having always to pursue a future good in a tomorrow which never comes, and in a world where everything must disintegrate, gives men an attitude of “What’s the use anyhow?”

Both these anxieties cheapen the present experience. We are constantly jumping from one pleasure to the next, trying to fill our pleasure quota, hence not appreciating each individual pleasure or we are ignoring the goodness in the present because we think our future will bring us even greater pleasure. This comparison with the future boon then makes it impossible for the present worthwhile.

Both these anxieties leave us unsatisfied.

We crave distraction—a panorama of sights, sounds, thrills, and titillations into which as much as possible must be crowded in the shortest possible time. 

The Dichotomy of Pain & Pleasure

If we are to have intense pleasures, we must also be liable to intense pains. The pleasure we love, and the pain we hate, but it seems impossible to have the former without the latter. Indeed, it looks as if the two must in some way alternate, for continuous pleasure is a stimulus that must either pall or be increased. And the increase will either harden the sense buds with its friction, or turn into pain. A consistent diet of rich food either destroys the appetite or makes one sick. 

If then we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, we must suffer for our pleasures. Without such willingness, there can be no growth in the intensity of consciousness.

Pain and pleasure are related to one another. In order to have the highest sense of pleasure, we have to be open to the highest sense of pain. For example, often the highest form of pleasure comes after something we have poured our heart and soul into achieving. However, the pain related to the failure of such a venture is also extreme. But, if we have suffered enough disappointments and failures in life, then we lower our hopes and goals and with it, we lower our potential pleasure and pain feedback. However, this is then dimming the experience of life. In order to fully and vividly experience life, we have to accept the possibility of the highest form of pain, so its equal pleasure is also available to us. 

Why It’s Hard To Be Happy

The real problem does not come from any momentary sensitivity to pain, but from our marvellous powers of memory and foresight—in short from our consciousness of time. For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations—especially the latter. 

Again, it is our sense of past and future that can make it difficult to be happy. Our past disappointments and failures haunt us and follow our present actions. Once more, our present goals suffer because of the memory of pain attached to us. Likewise, our sense of the future makes us always look forward to the next thing. The next goal. The next moment of pleasure or happiness makes it difficult to be happy in the present. 

This, this is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for pleasure is offset by the “ability” to dread pain and to fear the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and the future gives us a correspondingly dim sense of the present. 

What to do then? Often, to make progress in life, we have to sacrifice pleasures in the present moment for some future gain. However, it is the quality of the pleasure we sacrifice and the type of pleasure we hope to gain which matters most. Cheap pleasures like immediate satisfaction can cause one to fall into the previously mentioned trap of seeking one pleasure after the next. So, sacrificing cheap pleasures in order to satisfy a larger pleasure makes sense. But again, to chase a larger pleasure also means to open yourself up to a larger pain. Future happiness can be trap. A constant run where the goal line keeps moving with each stride you take.

To pursue it (the future) is to pursue a constantly retreating phantom, and the faster you share it, the faster it runs ahead. This is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys what he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness, then, will consist, not of solid and substantial realities, but of such abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and assurances. 

Awareness is one way to appreciate the present moment and, with it, happiness. 

Working rightly, the brain is the highest form of “instinctual wisdom.” Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeons and the formation of the foetus in the womb—without verbalizing the process or knowing “how” it does it. The self-conscious brain, like the self-conscious heart, is a disorder, and manifests itself in the actor feeling of separation between “I” and my experience. The brain can only assume its proper behaviour when consciousness is doing what it is desired for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it. 

Listen To The Body

[…] we have been taught to neglect, despise, and violate our bodies, and to put all faith in our brains. Indeed, the special disease of civilized man might be described as a block or schism between his brain (specially, the cortex) and the rest of his body […] we have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate your lives out of all proportion to “instinctual wisdom,” which we are allowing to slump into atrophy. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves—the brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot understand. 

Our body often craves simple and necessary pleasures. The body wishes to move, to feel, to exercise its senses. It is made to explore and experience life. But our brain can fill our mind with more wants and needs than necessary. It can make us lazy when our body desires to exercise. It can make us gorge on food when our body has already had enough. It can make us overlook the simple, everyday pleasures of life when our body simply wishes to take in the sunlight, or feel the wind as we go for a pleasant walk. 

Human desire tends to be insatiable. We are so anxious for pleasure that we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our sense organs until they become insensitive, so that if pleasure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants. In self dense the body gets ill from the strain, but the brains wants to go on and on.

Because we are always looking for greater pleasure, the smaller, mere regular pleasure goes unnoticed. The instinct to live in the present is ignored. 

But to be used rightly it (brain) must be put in its place, for the brain is made for man, not man for his brain. In other words, the function of the brain is to serve the present and the real, not to send man chasing wildly after the phantom of the future. 

Awareness Without Judgement

To be aware of life, of experience as it is at this moment, without any judgement or ideas about it. In other words, You have to see and feel what you’re experiencing as it is, and not as it is named. This very simple “opening of the yes” brings about the most extraordinary transformation of understanding and living, and shows that many of our most baffling problems are pure illusions.

Instead of seeking something, what we might actually need is to let go and be aware of what is happening to us and around us. And do it in a way where we don’t bring our past judgements and baggage with us. 

The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away. 

This is what it means to be present in the moment. To allow the experience of the now to wash over you without trying to dissect it, analyze it, or make sense of it. 

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening. To understand joy or fear, you must be wholly and undivided aware of it. So long as you are calling it names and saying, “I am happy,” or “I am afraid,” you’re not being aware of it. Fear, pain, sorrow, and boredom must remain problems if we do not understand them, but understanding requires a single and undivided mind. This, surely, is the meaning of that strange saying, “If thine eye be single, they whole body shall be full of light.” 

Art of Living

The art of living in this “predicament” is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past and the known on the other. It consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive. 

The art of living also requires an acceptance of change. Everything, including us, is in a state of flux. By accepting this, you aren’t married to one single idea about life or about yourself. You allow yourself to be flexible and adapt as the world, and yourself, change. 

Struggle as we may, “fixing” will never make sense out of change. The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. 

Often, the beauty of life is in the fact that everything is dying. That the present moment will soon become the past. This phase in life will soon be over. This pleasure you are feeling will soon end. When you know everything is changing and hence, dying, you come to appreciate the momentarily understanding that you gain. 

The truth is rather that the images, though beautiful in themselves, come to life in the act of vanishing. 

Silence

We must repeat: memory, thought, language, and logic are essential to human life. They are one half of sanity. But a person, a society which is only half sane is insane. To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words—to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only thought silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.