"Thank you, Computer!"

"A gentleman says "please" and "thank you" readily and often."

At the beginning of John's book, he lists ten things that make a gentleman. First on the list is that a gentleman says "Thank you" and "Please" whenever possible. I am usually good at saying thank you and please (thanks mom), so I didn't expect this to be that difficult to adopt.

The first thing that I discovered as I began this adventure is how aware of everything I became. I took an active notice of every interaction that I had with people. If I would forget to say "Thank you," it would stay with me. It got to the point where I began to feel like there were a scoreboard and I was in a competition between the person that I have been and the person I hope to be and the former was winning. I knew that to fully incorporate a change I would have to take a proactive stance.

In an effort to practice this first trait, last week I installed an assistant application (similar to Siri) on my phone and have been using it to set reminders and send texts. I made sure to say "Thank you" and "Please" to Computer (my name for the assistant) any time I had a request. At first it felt odd to use such pleasantries with an inanimate program, but I found that it has become more natural to say "Thank you" and "Please" in human interactions.

In the movie "Kingsman," Colin Firth's character recites a quote that (loosely) states that being a gentleman is not about viewing yourself as superior to your fellowman, but, instead, is about viewing yourself as superior to who you were. Thank you Colin Firth, I will continue to try.