Taste it Next Time

How to begin to take hold of yourself

Many of us seek to gain the upper hand on ourselves. We find ourselves acting in ways, and doing things we wish we wouldn’t. And yet we don’t seem able to stop it. We come to our senses after the fact and see that we have done it again. And we may not even have known we were doing it at the moment. Or we watch ourselves, helpless to stop it as we do the very thing we swore we wouldn’t.

I am going to give you here a plan to work past this block. This is something I thought up only last night (though I imagine others have dreamed of plans much the same) and I am going to try it myself and will write later on how it goes with me.

TiNT

Here’s the plan. We are going to start by gaining control over our urges, or yens, or impulses. These things act on us like an itch. The right brain/body wants to scratch the itch. It starts to do so. The left brain, where we seem to think our ‘selves’ live, gives its assent after the fact. (See my earlier post on Unfree Will.) Sometimes our left brain doesn’t even know we are scratching. So let’s say we don’t want to scratch. For whatever reason we think it’s bad to scratch. The heart of the plan, then, is the following sequence:

1. We tell ourselves firmly we won’t scratch any more. We repeat this often to ourselves.
2. We rehearse in our minds feeling an itch come on, and not scratching.
3. We remind ourselves often to look out for the first sign of an itch so we know when we are likely to want to scratch. If we can, we note what places and times the itch comes on us.
4. When the itch comes, we don’t deny it but we do delay it. We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I won’t scratch,’ but instead, ‘I won’t scratch just yet. Not right now but later.’
5. If we succeed to put off the scratch, we praise ourselves and hold it in mind.
6. If we can’t help but scratch, we put this out of our mind straight away.
7. When the itch comes back we repeat the sequence.

The word to remember here is ‘TiNT’ or Taste it Next Time. Whatever the urge may be that we wish to stop, we try only to put off the taste of it.

The Blind Eye

When we succeed in putting off the scratch (or whatever we want to stop doing) we reinforce our success. Praise and congratulate yourself. Feel good in this one small victory. Take note of it, remember it, keep track of every time you win in this way.

But if we fail, and scratch though we try to put it off, we don’t dwell on this but turn a blind eye to it. Victories count for a lot but failures don’t count at all.

What this will do, I hope, is set in our left brain (and through it our right brain/body) that what we do when we itch is — not scratch. If we dwell on our failures without reaching any greater insight into why we fail, all we do is tell ourselves that it’s hopeless and that we can’t do it. When we bear in mind all our successes, and only those successes, we tell ourselves that we surely can do it when we like.

Delay Only

When we choose merely to put off the scratch instead of banning it outright, we reassure our right brain/body, that wants to scratch, that we will let it do so in a little time, or when the next itch comes. This way our right brain/body will not put its back up push back.

This gives us more chance to succeed this one time. And every success feeds our confidence, our assurance, our hope and our belief that we can do it, that we are the masters of ourselves.

Even if you only put off scratching that itch for five minutes — one minute — a few moments — count it as a win, and feel good about it. So far so good, and next time do the same again, and maybe even longer.

Petty Victories

The other part of this plan is to begin with small habits only. We don’t try to change a deep-set habit of a lifetime in this way, not at first. But we play with this trick on little things. They may not be obnoxious, they may not be habits we feel we care much about one way or the other. They only need to be habits, things we find ourselves doing all the time.

So we try the method on these small matters, on one habit or two at a time. We focus on these and stick to it. We make it easy on ourselves. We want to get into the game and prove first of all that we can do this. So we give it a few weeks, at least two, but a full month is best. We keep at it until we have re-trained our right brain/bodies, so that our response at the moment when we feel the itch start is rather not to scratch, not yet, than to scratch.

Once we feel wholly at ease, either to scratch or not, we count the whole program for this habit as a win. But for a while I think it’s best if we keep an eye on this itch. The right brain/body can be sly at times. It can seem to yield, and sneak back later.

On and Up

Each win over one of these small habits should help grow your confidence both in the method and in yourself. When when you feel bolder, more sure of yourself, take on other habits more difficult to break. But climb the ladder slowly.

If you gain mastery over one habit a month, a year from now you will have shed a dozen habits. This is a great deal. Many of us live our whole lives and never do so much; others find help in breaking their habits but they don’t do it on their own. What is more, a year from now you will have a much higher feeling of self-esteem. And that is something no one can grant you but yourself.

Go on from there. Keep it up. So long as you find this method works, use it whenever you want to change the way you act.

(Composed with pen on paper Monday 4 February 2008)