If you have bad feelings every time you think about habit X due to past failures you are only reinforcing the act of not thinking about habit X.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

It took me a long time to figure that out. If you feel bad when you're trying to solve your problems, you are going to avoid solving them.

And thank you, I was just thinking about habit formation with respect to personal character development as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have it. Why don't I do useful things as much as I could? Why are there so few people who do? Some of it is bad attitude, but much of it is just bad habits, or other habits.