Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.

Build good habits, not willpower

We spend an enormous amount of mental energy fighting what we don't want. Don't eat junk food. Don't procrastinate. Don't lose your temper. Don't scroll endlessly. The problem is that willpower works like a muscle with a limited battery—it gets exhausted, and then we collapse right back into the habit. It's like trying to hold your breath indefinitely. Eventually, you gasp.

The shift Coolidge is pointing at is subtly different: instead of gripping tighter against your flaws, build something better in their place. Want to stop doomscrolling? Develop a genuine reading habit. Want to quit junk food? Get curious about cooking something you actually enjoy. This isn't ignoring the problem—it's crowding it out with something more compelling. Good habits don't just block bad ones; they make them feel unnecessary.

This matters now because we're drowning in self-help advice about restraint and denial. But the people who actually change aren't usually the ones white-knuckling through discipline. They're the ones who found something worth doing instead. The evil doesn't disappear because you stopped thinking about it. It fades because you've become genuinely interested in something else.