What is the underlying idea of the fourth paragraph?
Directions: The reading passage is divided into four paragraphs. Select, from the options given, part idea of each paragraph and see whether these part ideas, taken together, lead to the main idea of the whole passage.
Those of us who watched the lunar voyage of Apollo 11 were transfixed as we saw the first men walk on the moon and return to the earth. Superlatives such as ‘fantastic’ and ‘incredible’ were inadequate to describe those eventful days. But to go there, those astronauts literally had to break out of the tremendous gravity pull of the earth. More energy was spent in the first few minutes of lift-off, in the first few miles of travel, than was used over the next several days to travel half a million miles.
Habits too have tremendous gravity pull — more than most people realize or would admit. Breaking out of deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. ‘Lift-off’ takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension.
Like any natural force, gravity pull can work with us or against us. The gravity pull of some of our habits may currently be keeping us from going where we want to go. But it is also gravity pull that keeps our world together, that keeps the planets in their orbits and our universe in order. It is a powerful force, and if we use it effectively, we can use the gravity pull of habit to create the cohesiveness and order necessary to establish effectiveness in our lives.
Habit can be defined as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three. In order to interact effectively with others it is necessary to listen to them for which we must have the skill. But this alone would not hold unless we also have the desire to interact. Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions. By working on knowledge, skill, and desire, we can break through to new level of personal and interpersonal effectiveness as we break with old paradigms that may have been a source of pseudo-security for years. It’s sometimes a painful process. It’s a change that has to be motivated by a higher purpose, by the willingness to subordinate what we think we want now from what we would want later. But this process produces happiness which can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.