{"id":11190,"date":"2022-06-05T12:54:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-05T16:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=11190"},"modified":"2022-05-01T09:23:37","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T13:23:37","slug":"elder-st-paisios-on-battling-bad-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=11190","title":{"rendered":"Elder St Paisios on Battling Bad Habits\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First of all, man must realise that such a habit is harmful to him, and then he must be willing to struggle to break the habit. One must have a lot of willpower in order to be able to break a bad habit all at once. Just as the rope rubs against the edge of the well and over the years forms a small groove that holds the rope in place, every habit forms a groove in the heart, making it then difficult to get rid of. This is why we must be very careful not to develop bad habits, because it takes a lot of humility and great willpower to overcome them. Father Tychon on the Holy Mountain used to say, \u201cMy child, a good habit equals virtue; a bad habit equals passions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In any case, I have found that when a man, while struggling, continues to make the same mistakes and does not change, the reason is usually egoism, self-love and self-interest. Humility and love are missing, thus blocking divine intervention. The person himself does not allow God to help him. If, for example, God helps him overcome a particular passion, such a person will selfishly take credit for it and assume that it was his own achievement, without any help from God.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; \u2018Spiritual Struggle\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11191\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/i8i-1-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/i8i-1-300x201.jpg 300w, http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/i8i-1-768x515.jpg 768w, http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/i8i-1-480x320.jpg 480w, http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/i8i-1.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First of all, man must realise that such a habit is harmful to him, and then he must be willing to struggle to break the habit. One must have a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11192,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions\/11192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}