h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't think that vowing to give something up, then boasting about it, is good for the personality. It's just a form of self-aggrandisement. (Look how self-denying I am!) Especially when you know it cannot be verified. If you really want to do something valuable, give up something that matters to you but stay silent about it.

Better still - forgive someone who has hurt you in some way. Really, honestly and deeply forgive them. If it helps, you can tell them, privately - but don't tell anyone else, and don't boast about it, just humbly do it. One way to do it is to write lines. Write out 'I totally forgive for . You could do that 70 times, or 7 times 70 times (biblical reference if you like). Try it, it will make you a better person - and a happier person. And you will enjoy chocolate all the more.

Hi didi. I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was boasting. I certainly didn't intend that.

Perhaps you are in total control of yourself and can just say to yourself you will do something, then do it. I find that I can tell myself as often as I like that I will stop eating chocolate, but I keep changing my mind and giving in and having some. By telling everybody else that I'm not going to eat any, there is much more pressure on me. Of course there is no way any of you can verify that I am really keeping off the chocolate, but I'd feel really bad about lying to my friends. So this is really to help me, not to make anybody else think I'm great. I set up the Self Denial page because I thought if lots of other people were busy giving things up, it would be easier for me. And it might help some of them in the same way.

After all, if all this encourages one person to give up cigarettes, I'll have saved a life.

So let's see if I've got this right. It's really about feeling good, or at least not feeling bad, right? You'd feel really bad about lying to your friends. If you didn't tell them, you might still feel bad but they wouldn't know you'd been lying. Would it be better to admit it openly to them and ask for their forgiveness? If they are indeed your friends they should be able to forgive you. Wouldn't that result in more 'strength of character' all round, on both your part and theirs?

Now you've decided somehow that giving up chocolate will be good for your 'personality' or 'character' and will make you 'strong' and 'self-confident'. I doubt you have any evidence for this - it's purely a hypothesis. Or have you done it before and can vouch for the resulting increase in strength and self-confidence? - in which case where are those qualities now? So really, you don't know whether this self-denial will work or not, and anyway the reported aims are sufficiently vague as to be rather subjective. How are you going to quantify the result, so that you can judge the success or otherwise of this project?

It may be that the reason you keep changing your mind and having some chocolate is the basic weakness of the hypothesis. Giving up on chocolate is a very minor form of self-denial (compared, for example, to giving up smoking) - unless you are severely obese, or diabetic, or are suffering from an eating disorder involving chocolate binges, which I assume is not the case here. So if you are unable to do this without additional forms of self-manipulation or 'willpower' manipulation in terms of moral objections to 'lying' to your online acquaintances, you need to ask why that is so. Finding the answer to that question might be of far greater use to your personality or character.

"I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was boasting. I certainly didn't intend that."
If you don't mean to boast, you shouldn't put "Off chocolate until Easter" in your nickname. You can promote the entry in a less boastful manner. Actually, from what you now admit, it turns out that "Off chocolate until Easter" is just a hope at this stage, although you state it as a fait accompli.

Honestly, if you want to boast about yourself and your aspirations and your achievements, that's fine with me. It isn't something I like to do, and as far as I am concerned you are welcome to it. But it might be useful information for you that this is how you come across.

I really don't mean to be in any way unkind. If there's anything useful here, take it. If not, just ignore it.

I have no direct evidence that giving up things is good for the character. I'm just going on the fact that many different civilisations have come to this conclusion over the last few millennia. Of course the same civilisations have also believed some fairly things that seem incredible to me, such as the existence of a divine creator.

Any normal person should have the control to deny themself anything whatsoever. Giving up something I really want (at the start I thought about having a chocolate bar about 40 - 50 times a day) is good practice.

The "off chocolate until Easter" in my name is to attract people to the Self Denial entry. It's the normal of advertising things on h2g2. It certainly wasn't intended to be boasting - when I want to boast, you'll be in no doubt that that is what I intended.

By the way, didi, welcome to h2g2! If you write anything at all on your personal space, people will be able to talk to you directly by leaving messages for you. You'll be officially welcomed to h2g2 then.