If bad habits are what trouble you, you need to work against them. How do you fight a habit? With the opposite habit. You hear ignorant people say: "That poor person is dead. His parents are crushed with grief. He died too young and far from home." Listen to the opposite way of talking. Pull yourself away from these words. Fight one habit with its opposite habit. Fight twisted reasoning with clear thinking and training your mind. Against misleading appearances, you need clear principles ready at hand — pure and simple truths you can use right away.
If it is habit which annoys us, we must try to seek aid against habit. What aid, then, can we find against habit? The contrary habit. You hear the ignorant say: "That unfortunate person is dead; his father and mother are overpowered with sorrow; he was cut off by an untimely death and in a foreign land." Hear the contrary way of speaking. Tear yourself from these expressions; oppose to one habit the contrary habit; to sophistry oppose reason, and the exercise and discipline of reason; against persuasive (deceitful) appearances we ought to have manifest præcognitions ([Greek: prolaepseis]), cleared of all impurities and ready to hand.