The Imperative Habit

Looking back at the life I lived years ago, I see a man who seemingly had it all. I ran my own companies since I was 28 years old. I married a beautiful woman. Together we brought three children into the world and, for 16 years, I ran a business with annual sales of $30 to $35 million. I collected all the hallmarks of the desired life—a big house in the hills bordering Silicon Valley, vacation homes, fully-loaded cars, boats, private schools for the kids, and exotic vacations for all of us. Only one thing was missing: I wasn't happy. I was much the opposite. And one day, everything fell apart, and I knew I had to make a change. By shedding my old belief systems and developing new ones, by releasing ego and judgment of myself and others, by cultivating self-awareness and consciousness, by recalibrating my goals and promoting those goals through my actions, I have transformed my life. I wrote this book to share the Imperative Habit with you, so you too can move from dissatisfaction and suffering to joy, contentedness, and peace. The Imperative Habit details how to shed the old beliefs and make new ones, and how to practice, form habits, and create growth, and eventually real transformation, in your life. I did it, and so can you! By practicing the Imperative Habit, you can: – Leave behind old beliefs that no longer serve you – Deconstruct self-sabotaging behaviors – Develop self-awareness and consciousness – Create new goals in alignment with your true self – Make conscious choices to drive yourself toward your goals – Live a happy, joyful, fulfilling, and meaningful life, as you are meant to live And you can do all this without pouring tomato juice in your hair. Ready to start?

This book constitutes the first treatment of C. S. Peirce’s unique concept of habit. Habit animated the pragmatists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who picked up the baton from classical scholars, principally Aristotle. Most prominent among the pragmatists thereafter is Charles Sanders Peirce. In our vernacular, habit connotes a pattern of conduct. Nonetheless, Peirce’s concept transcends application to mere regularity or to human conduct; it extends into natural and social phenomena, making cohesive inner and outer worlds. Chapters in this anthology define and amplify Peircean habit; as such, they highlight the dialectic between doubt and belief. Doubt destabilizes habit, leaving open the possibility for new beliefs in the form of habit-change; and without habit-change, the regularity would fall short of habit – conforming to automatic/mechanistic systems. This treatment of habit showcases how, through human agency, innovative regularities of behavior and thought advance the process of making the unconscious conscious. The latter materializes when affordances (invariant habits of physical phenomena) form the basis for modifications in action schemas and modes of reasoning. Further, the book charts how indexical signs in language and action are pivotal in establishing attentional patterns; and how these habits accommodate novel orientations within event templates. It is intended for those interested in Peirce’s metaphysic or semiotic, including both senior scholars and students of philosophy and religion, psychology, sociology and anthropology, as well as mathematics, and the natural sciences.

Product Dimensions: 22 cm.

The Habits of Racism argues that the conceptual reworking of habit as bodily orientation helps to identify the more subtle but fundamental workings of racism, exploring what the lived experience of racism and racialization teaches about the nature of the embodied and socially-situated being.

In this overview of twentieth-century American poetry, Jennifer Ashton examines the relationship between modernist and postmodernist American poetics. Ashton moves between the iconic figures of American modernism - Stein, Williams, Pound - and developments in contemporary American poetry to show how contemporary poetics, specially the school known as language poetry, have attempted to redefine the modernist legacy. She explores the complex currents of poetic and intellectual interest that connect contemporary poets with their modernist forebears. The works of poets such as Gertrude Stein and John Ashbery are explained and analysed in detail. This major account of the key themes in twentieth-century poetry and poetics develops important ways to read both modernist and postmodernist poetry through their similarities as well as their differences. It will be of interest to all working in American literature, to modernists, and to scholars of twentieth-century poetry.

The official British Army book on what makes its leadership so successful, and how to become a better leader yourself - whatever your field. ___________________ 'If you want to become a better leader, read this book' Eddie Jones 'An extraordinary read for any leader. Truly brilliant' General Stanley McChrystal, author of Team of Teams 'Excellent. Offers proven tools and strategies' Matthew Syed ___________________ The Habit of Excellence is a unique insight into British Army leadership, explaining what makes it unique, what makes it so effective and what civilians can take from it to become better leaders themselves. Drawing on the latest research in military history, business, sociology, psychology and behavioural science, and with compelling illustration from British Army operations across the centuries, Lt Col Langley Sharp MBE goes beyond the latest leadership fads to distil into one peerlessly authoritative work the essence of leading and leadership from one of the world's most revered institutions. ___________________ 'Excellent. It's hard to see how any leader, whatever their field, wouldn't benefit from reading and rereading it' New Statesman 'Offers lessons for all managers' Financial Times 'Valuable in any walk of life' General Sir Mike Jackson, former Chief of the General Staff 'Very readable. I could not recommend this exceptional book more' General The Lord David Richards, former Chief of the Defence Staff 'Comprehensive and clearly written' Karin von Hippel, Director-General of RUSI 'Terrific. Full of insights and lessons' General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA