redshiftsinger:kittydorkling:jenroses: shinnegamitensei:this site has one settingI’m laughing, b
redshiftsinger:kittydorkling:jenroses: shinnegamitensei: this site has one setting I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record. And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.”So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.) It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful.It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons. There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks! But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense. Corollary to the Red Balloon corollary and the rest of the above:Redirection is the most effective way of changing habits. Breaking a habit by force of will alone is EXTREMELY difficult! You can set yourself punishments for doing the thing and rewards for going so long without doing the thing, but you’re still relying on direct willpower against the force of habit, and force of habit is powerful.But any good martial artist knows you don’t block an attack directly unless you have no other option. You redirect it, send the force somewhere else, and it takes much less effort and leaves you in a much better position to make a counterstrike.So how does one redirect a habit one wishes to change?First, you must understand what the habit does for you. Whatever has become habitual, at some point at least, served a functional purpose of some kind or you wouldn’t have started doing it in the first place. It may no longer benefit you, or you may have realized that it actually does you more harm than good, but without knowing where it came from it’s gonna be real damn hard to turn it in a more helpful direction (or at least less harmful – and harm reduction is ABSOLUTELY a valid strategy!) If you have a need that the habit you want to change is meeting, and no plan to get that need met another way, you’re not just going to be battling the habit one-on-one, your unmet need will team up with it to kick your ass.Second, you must understand what triggers the habit you want to change. What happens right before you do the thing you want to stop doing? If you’re, for instance, trying to cut back on drinking or quit entirely – do you habitually have a beer when you get home from work? If so, that’s a good place for redirection. You need to fill the space the lack of the thing you’re removing takes up in your life with an alternative, and have a plan to respond to the triggers for that habit in a preferable way – for instance, you might decide to have a cup of tea after work, or take a shower – something to become a new habit replacing the old one. It’s VERY helpful if the new habit meets the same need as the old one (for example, a habit of drinking a beer after getting home from work might serve as a transition ritual, to signal to yourself that it’s time to stop thinking about work and switch into Free Time mode, in which case doing something similarly low-key and relaxing that clearly signals Work Time Is Over to your psyche would redirect your habit much more easily than something that leaves you feeling hung up in work brain). Also, it often helps if the new thing is superficially similar to the old thing (eg drinking a cup of tea instead of drinking a beer - both involve consuming a bitter beverage). But most crucially, the new habit needs to be something you can consistently do as a replacement when the old habit would typically trigger, or something that prevents the old habit from triggering in the first place (habit triggering is why so many people who want to quit smoking find that they can’t effectively quit until they also quit drinking, if they’ve habitually smoked when they drink. The drinking acts as a trigger for the smoking habit, and they might do well at not smoking the rest of the time with other redirections supplemented with willpower, but find that they consistently slip when they drink due to the combination of alcohol impairing judgment and willpower, and the habit being triggered by association). -- source link
#real life#signal boost