Alain De Botton On Habit Essay

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The topic of finding a workable balance between imaginative observations and practical, goal oriented behavior is very controversial. Alain de Botton, author of “On Habit”, believes that finding a workable balance de pends on the mental habits that one lives by. De Botton de scribes “imaginative observation” as something that one does only when they are in unfamiliar setting like vacation spot. On the other hand, “goal oriented” behavior is what everyone’s daily environment revolved around which leads to practical terms like boredom, fate, de spair, etc. De Botton is interested in seeing people not be very goal oriented with their everyday life. But, then, usually people have hard time finding the familiar setting alluring to them. Therefore, De Botton introduces concepts like “travelling mindset”, “grid of interest”, and “process of habituation” in his essay. Specifically, these concepts will help one’s imaginative observation meet his or her goal oriented behavior to enjoy every day.
In order to find a …show more content…
Thus going back to de Botton’s examples of these concepts show how it helps finding that perfect balance between the two. Specifically, having a “travelling mindset” every day would help one have more curiosity to life, getting rid of “grid of interest” out of everyday life would help one gain more knowledge, and not falling in the “process of habituation” would help one experience the exciting part of life. The topic of finding the perfect balance is important because as stated before not applying these concepts to everyday life can lead to having goal oriented behavior and lacks the key parts that make life more interesting. If these concepts were not applied to the everyday life, a person might in danger losing the mental acquisitiveness of why they are pursuing the

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