habit hacks

Months after I stopped missing pills and pinot noir, my other addictions had remained.

In fact, they’d kind of transmogrified into this plethora of other strange outlets: my Sephora makeup compulsion increased. My Netflix binges. The bulimia obsession. I’d binge, I’d purge, I’d feel awful, and then I’d comfort myself by repeating the process. Finally, I told my sponsor about it one day when I really wanted to commit oral homicide on everything living in my fridge and then fountain it from my face in a stream of bilious glory. (Are you turned on yet?) It was if I’d completely forgotten what the glistening prize after the culmination of the vomit marathon truly was. I needed to speak with someone like me. Stat.

Her advice?

I’m totally kidding (but that was the advice my own brain was starting to give me).

No, her advice was… nothing. That’s what I love about a good sponsor. They don’t tell you what to do. They infer suggestions via personal experience anecdotes and Socratic inquiries. What she asked – not told – was “And how’s that look afterward?” I tried to comply and envisage this scenario she was suggesting. After you’ve binged and barfed and are laying in a pool of acidic drool and streaming mascara, I won’t lie: there’s the initial satisfaction. There is indeed an element to bulimia that deals with the vagus nerve (whether it’s stimulated by the binge-purge cycle, I dunno). But like anytime you hack your well-being centers by doing something unhealthy, you’d better be ready for a big comedown. So, she asked me to tap into that feeling. The thoroughgoing hopelessness you feel once the high is gone. How the loneliness resumes. The shame.

And, for once, something about this clicked in me.

I’d been gifted this view of my future self – bathed in a more realistic light. I remember reading this article once in Psychology Today about how we tend to have these idealized views of how much better our “future selves” are gonna be. You know? When we say “I’ll start my diet and yoga practice tomorrow” or “I’ll do my chores when I get home” or “I’ll buy a new car in a year”. It’s as if future-you is going to magically be more willing, better at financial planning, or all around less of a dumb whore than the one who’s raining bills on the organic section of Wegman’s like the bins of dried tart cherries are actually tarty strippers on a pole. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. And that day, with my sponsor on the line, I finally got a glimpse of an aha moment about that. Fast-forwarding into the mental time capsule she’d just provided me, I had an epiphany. The insanity-belief I was subscribing to (like most obsessed folk) was the old hopeful-about-something-that’s-never-happened-any-other-time-I’ve-done-this one. My logic? “Why, I’ll shove this in my face, barf it up, and then Tanning Chatum will come in with a mop to clean it in his banana hammock while complimenting me on my girlish figure. Obviously.”

But f’real me at the end of that ritual was miserable. I could feel my teeth starting to hurt. I already was starting to want to do that thing where you free up the blade from your Venus appliance and start scrawling out sanguine dermal etchings into your arm during bath time. And I hadn’t even bought my binge fodder yet, much less eaten it. This was just based on some hybrid abstract lovechild born of introspection, creative fortunetelling, and a phone call I almost didn’t make.

But for those not born with my Stephen King lite imagination, there was one bit from that Psych Today article I mentioned that might help you access that future-self without having to generate all these imaginative brush strokes about how you’ll feel tomorrow. What is does, is ask you to think of your future self as a totally separate entity holding now-you accountable:

A good way to think about how to do this, then, is to imagine our future selves as separate people whose interests and desires matter to us, perhaps as members of our immediate family. This might make it easier for our now-self, when he’s confronted with a choice, to summon up concern for any number of his future selves. (For many of us, it’s easier to feel concern for others than for ourselves.)

If I’m being honest, I take this take on the approach with a grain of salt. While I do believe it works, I don’t necessarily agree that it does so because it’s easier to feel concern for others more than ourselves. Let’s be real here. What I believe is that we educe a motivational fear to do the right thing when we remember that others are going to be holding us accountable at some point. We’re afraid of disappointing them. They may not like us anymore. And if we can remember that both our future self might despise us along with the people we’ve let down because future-self looks bad, it makes the present-moment bad habit suddenly less alluring. So, let’s go from there. Where do you have to be and who do you have to answer to later? Will the other people in your life be disappointed if the bad decision you make now has a domino effect of pissing them off? If future you is sitting there with naught but your shvantz in your palm and an empty apology dribbling from your jaws? (Note, however, that this separate-you-in-the-future concept only works if you comply with good present-moment decision making. You can’t just lambast past-you later and get a pass: “Ah, yeah, boss; blame yesterday-me. What a vapid trollop. Let’s fire her from this company, keep me, give me a promotion, and… a company card. Oh, we don’t have a company card? Alright. I’ll settle for the promotion. Good talk.”)

So, this is where I was in the midst of my chat with my sponsor.

Remembering now how future me would feel even more agoraphobic than usual. Remembering how future me would feel even more insecure, and compulsively apply cosmetics – slathering on glue and faux eyelashes just to walk the damned dog. And the interesting thing – especially since this comes on the heels of an article about “being present” – is how even though this practice seems paradoxical when coupled with the advice regarding remaining in the moment, it really isn’t. When you’re accessing a realistic future because it will help you resolve a present conundrum, you’re not ruminating about some un-solvable problem or regret. You’re just accessing another facet of yourself. One from a place that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, you could almost see it as there being two you’s down the road. One’s miserable and has premature wrinkles. The other’s got a line to toss you to help you outta this mess. The one happening right now. After chasing after the emotionally crippled recluse-me for long enough, I managed to find the one with the line – after getting my sponsor on the line.

And I think that’s the full-bodied answer to doing this successfully:

Split yourself into quantum entities to hold yourself accountable.

And find actual others to hold all two (or three) of you accountable too.