Why's it so hard to change?

Max nicks the wise advice of others to give a (nearly) foolproof recipe for ethical superstardom.

''Recognise that less doesn’t have to be worse. Have you seen how stunning the Western Isles of Scotland are? Who needs Thailand?!'' ''Whenever I find myself questioning an ethical stance I’ve taken on something, I’ll change my daily commute to cycle past Parliament Square. One look at the banners around Brian Haw’s camp properly gets me going again.'' ''Don’t worry too much! Sit back, relax, enjoy your ethical successes against the odds and don’t get too hung up about your failures.''

As one of a community of activists for change - be it calling for the eradication of poverty, an ethical foreign policy or social justice in the UK - I think it’s really important that we live by our values. I don’t want to do or be anything that helps maintain a system that I believe is morally wrong and inexcusable.

Yet sometimes I fail miserably. And the worst of it is, in many cases, I don’t even realise I’m failing. Because of the way we’ve been brought up, and the society we live in, living your normal life is often inherently unethical, and it’s getting more so.

This totally frustrates me, so over the past couple of years I’ve tried to follow the advice and suggestions of my friends in order to break bad habits:

· Join others. We can’t do this on our own, and it’s not much fun trying to. Surround yourself with like-minded friends – they’ll also challenge you to be ethical in ways that you wouldn’t normally challenge yourself.

· Recognise that less doesn’t have to be worse. Have you seen how stunning the Western Isles of Scotland are? Who needs Thailand?!

· Learn to ignore advertising. It mostly exists to make us buy stuff we don’t need or want. That’s just silly.

· Get into good habits. Do the ethical thing enough times and it’ll become second nature and you won’t have to worry about it.

· Be inspired. Go to an event, a protest, or a public meeting and remember why you’re angry. Whenever I find myself questioning an ethical stance I’ve taken on something, I’ll change my daily commute to cycle past Parliament Square. One look at the banners around Brian Haw’s camp properly gets me going again.

· Don’t give yourself the unethical option. When you are applying for a job, if there’s a highly paid position that you know contributes nothing to society, or a less well paid one where you’ll do genuine good, don’t apply for the high paid one. It will be much easier to rule out that option at the stage of applying than when you are offered the job.

· Don’t worry too much! Sit back, relax, enjoy your ethical successes against the odds and don’t get too hung up about your failures. An ethical life has got to be fun if you’re going to keep at it.

This last point leads me to say one more thing. We’re never going to live 100% as we’d like to do while we try as individuals to fight against an inherently unethical system. Our ultimate aim must be to make the ethical choice the easy choice, not the (impossibly) hard one. To do that, my advice is: don’t just challenge yourself to do better – challenge ourselves as a society to do better. We can’t do this on our own – we have to change the society we live in. And to do that we’ve got to work together.