Don’t Be A Dirtbag: How Habits Shape Behavior - a podcast by Ty Brown

This post’s topic is a bit unusual. I want to talk about how I used to be a big dirtbag. Okay, maybe I wasn’t that huge of a dirtbag, but it definitely used to be a part of my personality. (Some people that know me today might say that it still is, but we’ll forget about that for now!) I want to talk about one dirtbag quality that I overcame.

As a junior high and high school kid, when something good happened to somebody else I immediately felt jealousy and dislike toward that person. If someone got a good grade on a test or sunk the winning basket, I disliked them. Maybe you can relate. Hopefully, you’ve overcome this as well. It’s a natural part of the human condition, and it happens to a lot of us.

When you look at it, that’s so stupid. It’s ridiculous to think that it hurts you when something good happens to someone else. In reality, it does absolutely nothing to you! Luckily, as a sixteen year old kid, I remember having this vivid, emotional “punch-in-the-face” moment when I realized I needed to stop thinking like that. I found myself, over and over, realizing I had no reason to be upset over something so trivial. So I made an active change to stop behaving that way, and I’ve kept it up for twenty years.

Here’s how. At first, I started congratulating people, smiling at them, and telling them that they'd done a good job. I don’t think I meant it at first, but I was determined to change this part of my personality. After a while—as always happens when you set out to do something and then follow through—the behavior became habitual. When something good happened, I congratulated

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