One thing that amazes me is the change over time of this desire/goal divide. Personally, with things like regular exercise, I find that in times of planning my brain will seem in complete coherence—admitting my faults for not exercising and putting forth a plan which seems agreeable to both the consious and unconcious.
Once the timefor exercise comes, the tricks start playing.
Maybe the moment of coherence could be somehow captured to be used in the moment of tricks? Also, would those moments be useful to avoid unconscious signalling?
If, when planning exercise, you come up with a plan for exercising that seems like it will work, despite other plans failing in the past (even when those plans seemed likely to succeed despite even earlier plans failing), and your plan fails, that should be a sign that you’re not accurately assessing the appeal of your plan to your various selves.
I’d suggest eliciting the “moment of tricks” while you’re planning. Maybe if you try imagining that you’re going to go exercising right now, you’ll perceive all the tricks your subconscious can come up with for not exercising. And then you can think of ways to counter those tricks.
I think that is not so easy as it sounds—to rephrase the tactic, you are trying to use your conscious, rational mind (planning) to lie to your subconscious mind in order to elicit its reaction. Your subconscious mind will not treat your plan as reality until it acted out in reality, so here is my suggestion to Khaled:
Record your behavior, feelings and thoughts at the time of the failure. My subconscious “reasoning” seems to use the same tricks consistently, but they work every time until you specifically examine them. Then you will at least be on guard next time. If you are expecting and focused on it, it will be easier to override your unwanted behavior. It helps to think of your instincts as a separate entity, and as Yvain said in an earlier post, NO NEGOTIATIONS.
One thing that amazes me is the change over time of this desire/goal divide. Personally, with things like regular exercise, I find that in times of planning my brain will seem in complete coherence—admitting my faults for not exercising and putting forth a plan which seems agreeable to both the consious and unconcious. Once the timefor exercise comes, the tricks start playing.
Maybe the moment of coherence could be somehow captured to be used in the moment of tricks? Also, would those moments be useful to avoid unconscious signalling?
If, when planning exercise, you come up with a plan for exercising that seems like it will work, despite other plans failing in the past (even when those plans seemed likely to succeed despite even earlier plans failing), and your plan fails, that should be a sign that you’re not accurately assessing the appeal of your plan to your various selves.
I’d suggest eliciting the “moment of tricks” while you’re planning. Maybe if you try imagining that you’re going to go exercising right now, you’ll perceive all the tricks your subconscious can come up with for not exercising. And then you can think of ways to counter those tricks.
I think that is not so easy as it sounds—to rephrase the tactic, you are trying to use your conscious, rational mind (planning) to lie to your subconscious mind in order to elicit its reaction. Your subconscious mind will not treat your plan as reality until it acted out in reality, so here is my suggestion to Khaled: Record your behavior, feelings and thoughts at the time of the failure. My subconscious “reasoning” seems to use the same tricks consistently, but they work every time until you specifically examine them. Then you will at least be on guard next time. If you are expecting and focused on it, it will be easier to override your unwanted behavior. It helps to think of your instincts as a separate entity, and as Yvain said in an earlier post, NO NEGOTIATIONS.