As an example, i just took my own advice from the previous post.
Each year after i do my taxes, I then file away all of that years tax info into a bankers box, and then eliminate the tax info from 7 years ago. I go through the 7 year old envelope, and shred everything, and also scan some key docs for my own records.
This was not a task i was motivated to do in the least, and i put it off for a few days. I was demotivated, and avoiding doing it.
Right after making the previous post, i decided that no matter how i felt, that NOW was the time to do this, and i started doing it by pulling out the files, and a few hours later i was finished, and also organized my tax info library as well, while i was at it.
There is a motivational enjoyment of having DONE this routine task, but the reality is that there is more resistance than motivation to doing it.
What makes me do this stuff now, is just telling myself that i don't have to enjoy doing something to do it.
I also don't have to hate doing it.
I just have to do it, and either feel good about it, or feel bad, or feel Glad
- Sad :cry: - Mad :evil: - :shock: Scared, guilty, embarrased
- Dysphoric :twisted: , or even feel nothing about it. 8)
It doesn't matter what i feel, just as long as i DO it.
I think that creates a sense of detachment about it, which makes it much easier to do.
But even if its hard to do, it doesn't matter. It just needs to get done, in the time frame i decide it does, for my own purposes.
That is also creating a sense of High-Frustration Tolerance, vs a Low-Frustration Tolerance. Even if i feel enormous frustration while doing it, that is good! That shows i am building HFT, and overcoming LFT.
Its the same thing as developing the capacity for delayed gratification. You realize YOU CAN STAND THE PAIN of not having what you want right now. It might feel unpleasant, but it won't kill you.
If we have HFT, we can do things that make us feel uncomfortable, and even extremely frustrated, and not let it bother us too much, or stop us from doing what we want.
This also makes me think that some of us are Emotional Perfectionists. We want to feel good all the time. In my view, that is a very unhealthy and unrealistic way to look at human emotion.
(there is a subtle Cognitive trick in this, in that by not being afraid of experiencing dysphoric feelings, we diminish their power over our behavior).
Its the fear of fear, the anxietizing over anxiety, the depressing over depression, the raging about the anger, which is the real problem.
We simply just make ourselves do what we want to do, and practice feeling really bad about it while we're doing it, while simultaneously realizing that its not THAT bad, and it certainly won't kill us, and even if the pain does kill us, well, then we have no more problems!
But to Practice Dysphoria, and build up our tolerance for feeling frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, pain, disappointment, and all the rest, slays the imaginary dragon, and allows us to get our stuff DONE when we say we want it done.
Coz
PS: a lot of folks obsessively drink, drug, smoke, watch tv 24/7, gamble, chant, read, and do other "activities" for the same reasons, methinks...
PPS: notice how this is the exact opposite idea to so-called "positive thinking", and various new-age approaches to handling emotions? I wonder who's method is the most sound...
:wink:
