Arnas was a very shy guy. He liked playing with his spinning top in one of the little streets of his small village of Garibausku. He would spend all the afternoons after school going up and down the street practising his favourite tricks. A simple but comforting life for him.

However, not all was rainbows and lollipops in Arnas world. Every year, when the end of year celebrations arrived and the fireworks started, he would get really scared. All those projectiles running around were really dangerous. Like a dragon, wild, untamable… and really dangerous.

Yet his grandma, with whom he lived, didn’t like closing the windows. ‘it could lock the bad spirits in’ – she used to say. One day, when it was very noisy, roaring outside, for the New Years eve celebrations, Arnas was in his room, hoping for it to be over. When suddenly, a rocket came all the way through his window. It exploded and set one curtain on fire. The fire spread through the carpet and it was getting closer and closer to him.

What can I do? He tried running to the door, but that old knob had been playing around lately so with the nerves he couldn’t open it. ‘Amona! Amona! Come here! Help!’ but her grandma wouldn’t listen. The fire kept spreading, eventually got on the blankets and kept growing. Like a big red dragon that was getting really infuriated. To make it even worse, the smoke in the room started to get really bad. Arnas was coughing. ‘Amona! Amo… *cough *cough’ It was hard to breathe. He passed out.

There are no memories after that. Only that he woke up the day after, in a neighbour’s house and his chest really hurt.

The years passed by, and Arnas grew older. As adulthood came, he started setting himself goals. His most dreaded time, New Year’s, he was setting for himself those resolutions – ‘I will go to the gym. I will reduce my time on social media. I will quit drinking’. And while these seemed to work for a bit. Like fireworks, those bright moments would fizzle out to nothingness, and always ended up reverting to old habits after a few weeks. He felt miserable, consumed by his failures. ‘I am useless. I can’t achieve anything!’ He felt powerless – like that night with the rocket.

One day, he met this old man in this philosophy club he used to attend in the city. They discussed about setting habits and after some back and forth in the end, this man, out of nowhere, took this dusty book from his pocket and handed it to him. ‘Atomicus Habitus’ – it must’ve been a very ancient book. Perhaps written by the Romans (some parts, like the author, had faded because of age).

In any case, Arnas started reading through it and ideas sparked on how to make habits stick. Like using the environment to facilitate the action (i.e. putting sneakers next to bed, so it is really easy to go to the gym first thing in the morning), or having a reward after ‘doing the right thing’. One time, he managed to make a habit stick, waking up right after the alarm rings. Like a spark lighting the path forward! So he treated himself with a delicious bottle of really cold, 20 year old Txakoli wine – what a treat on a hot summer day!

But anything after that. Well, it wasn’t working. He tried changing some more habits, like not snacking on the middle of the night but No. It worked for a day or two and then he reverted back to his usual self. Fireworks dissipating into nothingness. Arnas was sad, hated himself. ‘I can’t never do anything right! This is who I am, this useless, stupid lazy slob that all does is whinge and never get anything done!’ And threw that book into the bin!

On his darkest day, when he was in tears and it felt like the world was about to swallow him completely. Something happened. A shooting start appeared in the sky and for some reason, in its descent, it illuminated that rubbish bin – ‘Atomicus Habitus’. Was it a sign? Arnas, wiped his tears and fumbling his way through, got the book out of it and wiped it a bit. Somehow, the voice of that old man resonated in his mind ‘You can do it’.

So he started reading the book again. This time, taking notes and trying to rekindle some of its ideas. He was a very visual person, so he put posts its all over the house. It was like a big massive collage of thoughts and prompts ‘put these to go to gym V’ with a massive arrow pointing to his sneakers. ‘Clean every dish after use →’ next to the cabinet with the dishes, …

And little by little, rep after rep, Arnas started taking action to one by one, pierce those habits through into subconscious. And the New Years Eve night of 1997 came. And this time, he did what he had never been able to do in his life – he stood at the window, looking at those dreaded, nightmare-inducing fireworks, straight into the eye. Something shook inside of him. And also that year, he set himself some resolutions. And for the first time in his life… he turned them into habits. And the rest is history.

Life takes many spins. Arnas is now at the top of it. He works a professor at the university of Mondragon. Where he teaches philosophy and specialises in habit building. He teaches the newer generations, how they themselves can also to master their habits and conquer their fears.