Enabling Bad Behavior Quotes

I mean—are some men just flawed by nature? Or do we enable their bad behavior, make it worse in a way because we hide it, and don’t demand better from them?

You’re a good friend. Thank you for enabling my bad behavior.” “It’s what friends are for.

But we can’t enable bad behavior in ourselves and others and call it love. We can’t tolerate destructive patterns and call it love. And we can’t pride ourselves on being loyal and longsuffering in our relationships when it’s really perpetuating violations of what God says love is.

Avoid enablers. These are people who make it easy for you to perform your self-destructive behavior. People you go on a smoking break with. People who encourage you to take risks. Your partner, if he or she encourages you to be lazy or feeds you too much food. Try to enlist these people in your reform efforts, and if you can’t, put some distance between you.

I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of ten youngsters commit, but unfortunately I achieved, through certain circumstances, a notoriety which most young men escape. I was born with a natural aptitude for the sporting pursuits you regard with so much distrust, and I inherited, at far too early an age, a fortune which not only enabled me to indulge my tastes in the most expensive manner imaginable, but which made me an object of such interest that everything I did was noted, and talked of. That's heady stuff for greenhorns, you know! There was a time when I gave the gossips plenty to talk about. But do give me credit for having seen the error of my ways!

When we understand how these underlying pathways trigger, reinforce, or redirect anxiety’s arousal, then we can combat bad anxiety and make conscious decisions that enable us to steer our own path. When we learn to cue in to our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, not only can we shift from bad to good anxiety but we can shift our energy, attitude, mindset, and intentions.

The disease I have is loving him. They don’t write articles about it or send camera crews to follow us. The disease I have is called codependency, or sometimes enabling, and it isn’t really a disease, though it can feel like one. It’s more like an ill-defined set of tendencies and behaviors, and depending on how badly it’s flaring, it can manifest as a lot of different things—a disorder, a nuisance, an encumbrance, a curse, or sometimes merely a sensibility, a preference, a cast of mind.

A primary goal of food science is to create products that are more attractive to consumers. Nearly every food in a bag, box, or jar has been enhanced in some way, if only with additional flavoring. Companies spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip or the perfect amount of fizz in a soda. Entire departments are dedicated to optimizing how a product feels in your mouth—a quality known as orosensation. French fries, for example, are a potent combination—golden brown and crunchy on the outside, light and smooth on the inside. Other processed foods enhance dynamic contrast, which refers to items with a combination of sensations, like crunchy and creamy. Imagine the gooeyness of melted cheese on top of a crispy pizza crust, or the crunch of an Oreo cookie combined with its smooth center. With natural, unprocessed foods, you tend to experience the same sensations over and over—how’s that seventeenth bite of kale taste? After a few minutes, your brain loses interest and you begin to feel full. But foods that are high in dynamic contrast keep the experience novel and interesting, encouraging you to eat more. Ultimately, such strategies enable food scientists to find the “bliss point” for each product—the precise combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and keeps you coming back for more. The result, of course, is that you overeat because hyperpalatable foods are more attractive to the human brain. As Stephan Guyenet, a neuroscientist who specializes in eating behavior and obesity, says, “We’ve gotten too good at pushing our own buttons.” The modern food industry, and the overeating habits it has spawned, is just one example of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change: Make it attractive. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.

After 30 years as a court-ordered and prison psychologist, Newburn has seen up close what happens when schools excuse bad behavior for any reason, including race. Especially race. The liberal is the prototypical appeaser of bad behavior, and for decades, liberals have run public schools in America,” Newburn said. “I've seen firsthand where the most brutal school space-taker (not, "student") will be given scores of chances instead of permanently sending it home for parental repair. After all, the public school potentates believe school thugs are just misunderstood and should be given unending chances to destroy the learning environment. That the teachers are paying the personal price for this thug-enabling system comes not as a shock. It is predictable. I lied: There’s too much of it. I cannot fit it all in just one chapter. Or even two. Or even one book.

This is the thinking behind Amazon’s anticipatory shopping patent.43 Instead of customers making their own decisions, Amazon decides for them, sending what they want before they know they want it. It is, as one commentator noticed, one more step towards cutting out human agency altogether.44 Pervasive monitoring devices – smartphones, wearables, voice-enabled speakers and smart meters – allow companies to track and manage consumer behaviour. The Harvard business scholar Shoshana Zuboff quotes an unnamed chief data scientist who explains: ‘The goal of everything we do is to change people’s actual behavior at scale . . . we can capture their behaviours and identify good and bad [ones]. Then we develop “treatments” or “data pellets” that select good behaviours.’45 MIT’s Alex Pentland seems more interested in enhancing machines than human understanding. He celebrates the opportunity to deploy sensors and data in order to increase efficiency

Making matters worse, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs so much of our higher executive function—the ability to plan and to reason, the ability to control impulses and to self-reflect—is still undergoing crucial structural changes during adolescence and continues to do so until human beings are in their mid- or even late twenties. This is not to say that teenagers lack the tools to reason. Just before puberty, the prefrontal cortex undergoes a huge flurry of activity, enabling kids to better grasp abstractions and understand other points of view. (In Darling’s estimation, these new capabilities are why adolescents seem so fond of arguing—they can actually do it, and not half-badly, for the first time.) But their prefrontal cortexes are still adding myelin, the fatty white substance that speeds up neural transmissions and improves neural connections, which means that adolescents still can’t grasp long-term consequences or think through complicated choices like adults can. Their prefrontal cortexes are also still forming and consolidating connections with the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain—known collectively as the limbic system—which means that adolescents don’t yet have the level of self-control that adults do. And they lack wisdom and experience, which means they often spend a lot of time passionately arguing on behalf of ideas that more seasoned adults find inane. “They’re kind of flying by the seat of their pants,” says Casey. “If they’ve had only one experience that’s pretty intense, but they haven’t had any other experiences in this domain, it’s going to drive their behavior.

When we are sold perfume, we are accustomed to also being sold the idea of a life we will never have. Coty's Chypre enabled Guerlain to create Mitsouko; Coty's Emeraude of 1921 was the bedrock on which Shalimar was built and Coty's L'Origan become the godmother of L'heure bleue, also by Guerlain. Some people dedicate themselves to making life beautiful. With instinctual good taste, magpie tendencies and a flair for color, they weave painfully exquisite tableaux, defining the look of an era. Paul Poiret was one such person. After his success, he went bust in 1929 and had to sell his leftover clothing stock as rags. Swept out of the picture by a new generation of designers, his style too ornate and Aladdinesque, Poiret ended his days as a street painter and died in poverty. It was Poiret who saw that symbolic nomenclature could turn us into frenzied followers, transforming our desire to own a perfume into desperation. The beauty industry has always been brilliant at turning insecurities into commercial opportunities. Readers could buy the cologne to relax during times of anxiety or revive themselves from strain. Particularly in the 1930s, releases came thick and fast, intended to give the impression of bounty, the provision of beauty to all women in the nation. Giving perfumes as a gift even came under the Soviet definition of kulturnost or "cultured behavior", including to aunts and teachers on International Women's Day. Mitsouko is a heartening scent to war when alone or rather, when not wanting to feel lonely. Using fragrance as part of a considered daily ritual, the territorial marking of our possessions and because it offers us a retrospective sense of naughtiness. You can never tell who is going to be a Nr. 5 wearer. No. 5 has the precision of well-cut clothes and that special appeal which comes from a clean, bare room free of the knick-knacks that would otherwise give away its age. Its versatility may well be connected to its abstraction. Gardenia perfumes are not usually the more esoteric or intellectual on the shelves but exist for those times when we demand simply to smell gorgeous. You can depend on the perfume industry to make light of the world's woes. No matter how bad things get, few obstacles can block the shimmer and glitz of a new fragrance. Perfume became so fashionable as a means of reinvention and recovery that the neurology department at Columbia University experimented with the administration of jasmine and tuberose perfumes, in conjunction with symphony music, to treat anxiety, hysteria and nightmares. Scent enthusiasts cared less for the nuances of a composition and more for the impact a scent would have in society. In Ancient Rome, the Stoics were concerned about the use of fragrance by women as a mask for seducing men or as a vehicle of deception. The Roman satirist Juvenal talked of women buying scent with adultery in mind and such fears were still around in the 1940s and they are here with us today. Similarly, in crime fiction, fragrance is often the thing that gives the perpetrator away. Specifically in film noir, scent gets associated with misdemeanors. With Opium, the drugs tag was simply the bait. What YSL was really marketing, with some genius, was perfume as me time: a daily opportunity to get languid and to care sod-all about anything or anyone else.

Frozen fright develops as the hostage comes out of shock and begins to perceive the reality of the situation. In frozen fright, hostages are effectively paralyzed, enabling them to focus their cognitive and motor functions solely on survival, with concentration centered on the terrorist. In this state the hostage responds to the captor with cooperative, friendly behavior. As this state continues and the hostages are still not rescued, they will feel overwhelmed and develop traumatic psychological infantilism wherein they respond to the captor with appeasement, submission, ingratiation, cooperation, and empathy. As captivity continues and the hostages are still alive, they will begin to perceive the captor as giving their lives back to them. At this point a hostage develops a pathological transference to the terrorist, wherein the terrorist is seen as the "good guy" and authorities, police, and family, because they have not gotten the hostage out of the situation, are seen as the "bad guys". This transference will persist long after hostages are released because they fear that any expression of negativity toward the captors may invite retaliation.

Let me share an assumption I have about you and your kids: you are all good inside. When you call your child “a spoiled brat,” you are still good inside. When your child denies knocking down his sister’s block tower (even though you watched it happen), he is still good inside. And when I say “good inside,” I mean that we all, at our core, are compassionate, loving, and generous. The principle of internal goodness drives all of my work—I hold the belief that kids and parents are good inside, which allows me to be curious about the “why” of their bad behaviors. This curiosity enables me to develop frameworks and strategies that are effective in creating change. There is nothing in this book as important as this principle—it is the foundation for all that’s to come, because as soon as we tell ourselves, “Okay, slow down . . . I’m good inside . . . my kid is good inside too . . . ,” we intervene differently than we would if we allowed our frustration and anger to dictate our decisions.

I liked labels; I liked putting people and things into categories. It helped me calibrate my expectations of people and relationships. If I didn’t label my sisters as bad, I would be an enabler of their behavior, just like my father was. I didn’t plan on spending my life as a doormat, or living in the waiting room of perpetual disappointment, hoping they would change. “So,

When I Need to Be Delivered from Bad Habits For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do…But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. ROMANS 7:15,17 AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER in our lives, we women struggle with some kind of habit or behavior we don’t like, don’t want, and don’t know how to overcome. We usually know when we are doing something that is not good for our body, health, finances, or marriage, because after we do it we feel guilty to the point of self-flagellating regret. We beat ourselves up all day long about it. In the verses above, Paul describes our situation when we don’t do the things we know we should, and we do the things we know we shouldn’t. It happens when sin gets control over us, or our flesh cries loudly for what it wants, or the enemy takes advantage of our weakness and we don’t resist him. If we attempt to handle this on our own without God’s help, even if we do well for a time, we may eventually fall back into the same bad habit. Paul, however, gives us reason to hope, because a few verses later he asks, “Who will deliver me from this?” And he answers his own question saying, “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-25). Jesus can set us free from all that is destructive in our lives, including our tendency toward any bad habits. The best news is that even though our own strength fails, the power of the Holy Spirit in us never fails. Ask God to set you free from any bad habit or craving that you know is not God’s will for your life. Thank Him that because of Jesus, you don’t have to give in to the dictates of your own flesh. Jesus has not only set you free, He can also help you walk in the freedom He has given you. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would expose any bad habits I have to Your light. Burn them out of my life. For the habit I struggle with most that I would like to see broken, help me to gain control over it so it cannot control me anymore. Show me how to rise up in the power of Your Spirit and resist this weakness head on. Take away whatever is in me that draws me to do anything that is not Your best for my life. Fill what is missing in me with more of You so that I stop trying to fill any empty place in my life with something that turns into an undesirable habit. Destroy the conflict in me that causes me to do what I don’t want to do and not do what I do want to do. Enable me to be strong and not give in to weakness. I release to You all my desires and needs, and recognize that my true need will always be for more of You. Thank You, Jesus, for setting me free from captivity to sin and delivering me from all that is not good for me, and therefore not good for my husband and children. Protect me from anything that would drive me back into old habits that only destroy my peace, health, security, and future. Lift me above my weaknesses so that Your strength will be clearly manifested in me. In Jesus’ name I pray.

We shouldn't enable ourselves or others to bad behavior, but should always encourage for good. Our attitude toward sin is a reflection of our knowledge of our relationship to God; we are His children, and though we are to work through weakness, what plagues and plays on those weaknesses is not part of who we are. We will have to choose between sacrificing our sins, or sacrificing who we are, which would be sacrificing our divine heritage.

For some of the crooks, liars, and abusers, there has been a reckoning. For others, there remain excuses, justifications, and a stubborn willingness by those around them to look the other way or even enable the bad behavior.

Getting to fifty-fifty is incredibly complex and nuanced, requiring many detailed solutions that will take decades to fully play out. To accelerate the process, change needs to start at the top. Like Stewart Butterfield, CEOs need to make hiring and retaining women an explicit priority. In addition, here is the bare minimum of what we can do at an individual and a systemic level: First of all, people, be nice to each other. Treat one another with respect and dignity, including those of the opposite sex.That should be pretty simple. Don’t enable assholes. Stop making excuses for bad behavior, or ignoring it. CEOs must embrace and champion the need to reach a fair representation of gender within their companies, and develop a comprehensive plan to get there. Be long-term focused, not short-term. It may take three weeks to find a white man for the job, but three months to find a woman. Those three months could save three years of playing catch-up in the future. Invest in not just diversity but inclusion. Even if your company is small, everything counts. And take the time to educate your employees about why this is important. Companies need to appoint more women to their boards. And boards need to hold company leadership to account to get to fifty-fifty in their employee ranks, starting with company executives. Venture capital firms need to hire more women partners, and limited partners should pressure them to do so and, at the very least, ask them what their plans around diversity are. Investors, both men and women, need to start funding more women and diverse teams, period. LPs need to fund more women VCs, who can establish new firms with new cultural norms. Stop funding partnerships that look and act the same. Most important, stop blaming everybody else for the problem or pretending that it is too hard for us to solve. It’s time to look in the mirror. This is an industry, after all, that prides itself on disruption and revolutionary new ways of thinking. Let’s put that spirit of innovation and embrace of radical change to good use. Seeing a more inclusive workforce in Silicon Valley will encourage more girls and women studying computer science now.

When a child can’t seem to control his behavior, there is a very real possibility that some of his attention controls may not be functioning as they should. That is to say, he is not evil, not a bad boy; he just needs to gain control. If you call someone bad long enough, he is apt to turn bad. Accounting for the behavior as a control issue and pinpointing the control(s) in need of repair can enable a child to determine what he has to do to stay out of trouble. I have seen children’s behavior improve markedly when the adult world has stopped making their actions seem criminal.