I read somewhere recently, possibly on the excellent Raptitude blog, that swearing is just a habit. This may not seem like a profound thought in itself, but it made me think. I thought about how I swore too much, and I knew that I sometimes swore simply because I was incapable of selecting a more appropriate word from my ample vocabulary in time for it to make the sentence before it left my mouth. Swearing was an easy, unthinking crutch that I used, filling sentences and expressing minor annoyances. By swearing too much I also risked upsetting or alienating other people, professionally or personally. I realised, therefore, that there were at least two reasons for me to neutralise my swearing habit: to exercise the part of my brain that scoured itself for interesting vocabulary; to become less caustic and unpleasant in my speech.
In clichéd response, I installed a swear-jar system. With the help of my colleagues I wrote up a list of fun, but foul, words, which I was not allowed to use. Each word I used would cost me 20p. The monies would be totalled electronically by me keeping a record of each infraction on my phone. The experiment would run from the first of the month to the thirtieth of the month and the total of fines at the end would be donated to charity.
The first day cost me £1. But 5 swear words over the course of 24 hours was already an improvement on my normal habits. I was already starting to think just a little more before I spoke. When casually describing something or someone, or explaining something to someone, my brain realised I didn't need to use swear words as filler. On the 14th of the month, I had my first fine-less day. By this point, it had become natural for me to use an alternative word or phrase in conversations that might previously have abounded in cursing, such as when wishing to express minor annoyance in conversation. This was positive, since the casual overuse of this language as filler was my main gripe. But, beyond that, I started to realise I was even starting to do this for those occasions when the annoyance crept up on me suddenly, for those knee-jerk reactions like stubbing my toe or witnessing someone else's dangerous driving.
Once I had detoxified my language in reaction to those things which annoyed me instantaneously, it became a lot easier for me to avoid anger in those situations in the first place. When I allowed myself to use lazy, unthinking language, I was often allowing myself to feel lazy, unthinking anger. When I actually thought about my reactions of annoyance, ostensibly just to remove the swearing, I was also thinking about whether it was necessary to me to even feel that anger in the first place.
I already understood the value of not allowing myself to have an emotional reaction that does not serve me, especially to minor external events such as other drivers. I'd read more than enough on Stoicism and Mindfulness to accept this idea intellectually, but I was by this point starting to see this in practical application. To take the driving example, my reaction to someone committing a perceived wrong in front of me as I drove gradually changed from "you fucker!" to the more comical "you flipper!" This use of ridiculous language highlighted to me the ridiculous nature of my anger in the first place. Gradually these reactions morphed into a half-hearted, "ah, come on..." and finally nothing beyond noticing the infraction and moving instantly on. My driving then became altogether more serene and less stressful as a result.
I also began to instinctively accept a connected idea that I had read recently, which is that, "between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose" (from Stephen R Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Just as it's not inevitable that I swear in conversation or in response to people, it's also not inevitable that I feel anger in response to minor annoyances. It's not inevitable that I have to react negatively to anything which is thrown at me.
Yes, the practical application of this idea is not easy. But I saw how much progress I was able to make in just 2 weeks of concerted effort. By the end of the month, I was barely swearing at all. At the end of the month, I donated £15.40 to the NSPCC charity, meaning I had sworn an average of 2.6 times a day, and nearly all of these had been in the first half of the month. This was a huge reduction. If I was able to begin to undo years of habitual verbal filth over a few weeks, what other negative habits could I reduce or eradicated with the same focus? What other positive habits could I instil?
The problem is that most of our life is run along habits, because actively monitoring what we are doing all the time would be exhausting. For lasting self-improvement, then, the best method is to be constantly making minor shifts towards your progress and locking in each shift as unthinking habit before attempting the next. Make your default habits serve you. For me personally, I have allowed myself to swear again, but not as filler. and not in the car. The car will remain a swear-free zone of serenity. Those are my long-term habits.
As a bonus, I've learned that I can choose how to react to stimuli. I wanted to swear less, firstly, to exercise the use of my vocabulary and, secondly, to become less unpleasant in my speech. The third (successful) goal I hadn't anticipated was that I was able to partially sever the predefined paths in my brain that led me to negative responses (swearing, anger, etc.) in the first place. If I could share one point from this experiment, it would be to tell people that you can choose your reactions. It may take time to break out of bad habits, but it's not impossible, and it's worth it.
