how to choose better habits
on resistance & desire
I recently received a question from a follower which I think will resonate with a lot of people:
For the past few years, I've been struggling with grinding/discipline based productivity. I get productive for a few days, stick to habits, stop scrolling, etc and then eventually, I just get a really strong "ugh" feeling of aversion to sticking with the habit, or continuing to stay off youtube. Like I just REALLY don't feel like sticking to it. In the past, I've tried noticing how it feels, but that urge still stays and eventually I have a really unproductive couple of days where I stay up late, feel terrible (like revenge procrastination?).
I'm interested in "do whatever you want & notice how it feels", but when I follow that, I end up staying up late and scrolling a lot. It feels good at first, and then eventually it feels bad. I can sort of feel in my body that it feels bad to scroll, but I still keep doing it, maybe out of inertia? Similarly, doing productive things, like studying, running, or writing sometimes feel pretty good in my body, but especially if I try too hard to like doing something, I get that "ugh, I don't wanna" feeling.
I also think focusing attention on my body when I don't want to makes me think of meditation as a chore. I like "do nothing" "meditation", and also just increasing self-acceptance and love, so I'd like to do more of that whenever I feel like it. Also considering "doing anything I want except scrolling".
Do you have any advice?
So, there's two things present here. There's inertia in what we might call bad habits, doing something that feels good at first but eventually feels bad. In the moment, we’re aware of that bad feeling creeping on, but we continue to engage in the activity. There’s awareness of the felt experience, awareness that the felt experience is negative, yet continuing to act in that direction.
On the other side, there’s resistance to positive habits. Knowing that things will eventually make us feel good and yet there's this block to starting that process, to start studying, to start running, to start writing. And paradoxically, the more that this person tries hard, the more resistance they feel. This is really well articulated and it hits on something that comes up a lot with my clients, which is:
“Okay, if I follow my intuition, if I follow what feels good, follow what feels good for me, I won't do anything. I'll just laze around. I'll just watch Netflix all day. I'll just play video games all day. If I do what I intuitively want to do, then I'll fall into bad habits.”
On the surface, this conclusion seems true. We seem to be drawn towards activities that take less energy, even if our soul yearns to engage in more energetic pursuits. So how can we reduce the pull of the bad and increase our desire for the good?
bad habits & aversion
Let's start with the bad habits. The first thing we want to ask is, why are you continuing to scroll, even when it starts to feel negative? Why are you continuing to do something that feels bad? There must be a reason there.
This is going to depend on the individual, but that reason is often avoidance: avoidance of a particular feeling or sensation. What gets really tricky is sometimes it's avoidance of shame. If I'm scrolling on TikTok and it's starting to feel bad, and I know it's feeling bad, and I'm also starting to feel this creeping shame… as long as I stay on TikTok, there's a distraction from that shame. Even if I’m aware of that feeling, I don’t have to fully feel it.
As soon as I get off TikTok, then I'm left with that feeling of, “oh, I wish I didn't do that.” So I'm actually motivated to spend more time on TikTok because I don't want to encounter that shame, and I know it's coming. If that's the case, then the answer is pretty clear. If we remove the shame around that, then when I get sick of TikTok, there's no reason to stay on it. There’s no reason to not just stop there.
But, of course, it might not be about shame. Maybe it's about something else. Maybe there's a fear of getting overwhelmed. Maybe there's a fear of being bored. And I'm using TikTok, or whatever the bad habit is, to escape that feeling.
We need to apply this curiosity of: if I am continuing to do something bad that feels bad, what is the thing that I am avoiding? Why is this “bad feeling” my preference? What other feeling am I trying to avoid?
Once we get clear on that, then we can come up with a strategy for decreasing the intensity of what we’re trying to avoid, which will make the escapism less necessary.
For example, if I’m avoiding shame, then the answer might be to totally de-shame the activity, to encourage myself to spend as long as I want on TikTok. If I’m avoiding anxiety, then we can investigate where that anxiety is coming from, and work on that. The idea here is to always go a level deeper, past the “I’m doing a thing that is bad” and into the territory of “I am trying to escape something worse.”
procrastination & good habits
Now we go to the other side of things: the good habits. I know logically that running is good for me. I will feel good if I go for a run. But there is resistance to that. So where does that resistance come from?
Again, this is going to depend on the individual, but I'm going to go into an analysis here based on what I see happening in this answer, which is that “ugh, I don't wanna” feeling that he named.
That feeling is about resistance to confinement. Nassim Taleb has this great line that “procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.” The “I don’t wanna” feeling is a part of us saying, “fuck you, I don't want to keep doing what you've been telling me to do.”
That's the anger of asserting unmet desires. The question to ask here is, “what are the desires that aren't being met?” Why does part of my soul feel confined, feel entrapped by the idea of going for a run?
Maybe the answer is there is that I actually don't like running that much. Maybe I would rather be doing some other form of exercise. Or maybe I've been pushing myself really hard this week, I haven't been giving myself space to relax.
Part of me is sick of that. Part of me is objecting to working so hard without rest. That comes from a benevolent place. It’s a part of me saying, “hey, I feel like we are being pushed too hard, which is going to have negative consequences… Therefore, I'm going to rebel against doing another thing.”
Through curiosity, we can bring that internal conflict from the subconscious to the conscious. Once that's in our conscious mind, once we recognize what's happening within us, then we can come up with a strategy, through dialogue.
Maybe I can say, hey, let's go for a run today and we'll take tomorrow off. Maybe that's enough. Or maybe it's, okay, hey, let's go for a walk, and if we feel like running, then we’ll start running. Or, let's run for as long as it feels good and then walk back.
Now we're engaging in dialogue with ourselves. Now we're recognizing our desires. Now we're making space. There's no entrapment. There's no forcing. There's just dialogue. There's just engagement. There's just curious, loving attention.
the dictator & the caretaker
Our best path forward is to understand ourselves at a deep level, acknowledge all our desires, and work to find a compromise through dialogue between the competing parts of us. Yet some people want to avoid that dialogue. They want to have perfect control over themselves. They want to be the dictator of their own behavior.
I know that place well. I lived there for most of my 20’s. Sometimes it works, sometimes it produces results. But over the long-term, it seems to produce more internal tension, conflict, subconscious rebellion, and self-sabotage. A dictatorial regime is never stable; it requires ever more fear & rigidity to stay in control.
Nor is the path to just surrender to our every whim. We still want to use our discernment, to think carefully about our choices, to nudge ourselves in a positive direction. But that is the energy of the caretaker, not the dictator. We want to lead ourselves through trust, curiosity, and understanding.
I wrote a tweet recently about how in any moment, you’re either building trust with yourself or you’re fighting yourself. The latter is the path of the dictator. The former is the way of the caretaker. The choice is yours.
For me, being a thriving human means being in constant dialogue with yourself, being in constant conversation, making compromises along the way. That’s how you build consistency. That's how you build joy. That's how you build alignment through that conversation.
And it all starts with curiosity.
With love & appreciation,
Scott
P.S. if you’d like support in choosing more productive habits, DM me on Twitter or Instagram, or click here. 🏹
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