Tell yourself that you trust yourself
Go ahead and eat all the clover you want, little guy. (Image by Pixamio)
The other day, I felt like playing hooky.
It was just past 10:00 AM and I had completed my planned tasks for the morning. For fifteen minutes, I scrounged for things to do, but I didn’t want to do any of the things I turned up.
An hourly employee gets paid for that kind of “in between work,” in which you are technically at work but not really doing anything. However, as a business owner, I do not. I realized that there was no reason to sit at my desk. I wanted to go outside and play, and I could.
On a workday! For no reason except that I wanted to! How deliciously rebellious (never mind that I had worked until 8 PM the night before). So I put on some sunscreen and went out. I ended up shoveling dirt into the wheelbarrow and carting it over to the garden plot, load after load.
After thirty-five minutes, I realized that I was done for now. I was thirsty and pleasantly tired. I went back inside, got some water, and got back to work on the laptop.
I keep finding new ways to learn this lesson, but over and over I have seen that if I trust my impulses, I’m going to be fine. I’m going to get all my work done and my bills paid, and life will go on. Nothing will fall apart. This works most effectively when I tell myself that I trust myself.
I’ve seen the same dynamic with students at The Little Middle School. “We’ve got a student visiting tomorrow,” a teacher might say. “I know that all of you know what it feels like to be the new kid. It makes me feel good to know that you will help this person to feel welcome and included.” And then, the students do their best to follow through on their teacher’s good faith. Afterward, there is the opportunity for praise: “I am so grateful to work with such a kind and generous group of students. Here are some specific examples of the way in which our community came together to welcome this new student…”
Now, this doesn’t work if it’s just manipulative BS. But if it’s sincere, it is transformative. And we can actually use this tactic on ourselves. Our impulse for immediate gratification doesn’t have to eclipse our understanding of long-term effects. We don’t have to rebel against what is best for us by going wild with what is not. I’ve found that when I let myself have the things I want, I have less resistance to doing the things I must.
After all, for there to be resistance, you’re pushing against something. When you stop pushing back, there’s nothing to resist. I’m not sure I’d recommend giving kids open access to screens and media and junk food, but I can understand why people do. For some parents, this access is the result of a laissez faire style or even neglect. But for others, it’s a way of reducing the power of the forbidden. The idea is that the kid might actually get bored with the device and put it down of his own free will, no nagging necessary. They’re trusting the kid to learn to self-regulate.
Of course, once we have fetishized junk food, television, wasting time online, and other reliable sources of dopamine, it is difficult for us, even as adults, to treat them as benign. We have good reason not to trust ourselves. Moderation may be impossible, and abstention may be necessary. But the shame and guilt that we might carry as a result of our unwanted habits and tendencies compounds the damage that they do. The more we can release the sense of what we “should” be doing and forgive ourselves for our missteps, the easier it becomes to make healthier choices. We are allowing those beneficial impulses to be part of our identity and routine.
As adults, we no longer have as many people telling us what to do. We’re supposed to make good choices without supervision. However, we don’t always, even when it would benefit us to do so. We might want to stick it to the man, but we’re really sticking it to ourselves. We’re being the stern parent and the misbehaving kid at the same time. In these moments, chafing at our own authority, we can choose to become the benevolent grownup who see the best in us and believes in our ability to turn things around.
I can be a pretty intense taskmaster for myself (and for others!), but I do know when to say when. I don’t clamp myself down so tightly that I have to blow off steam. If I want to play hooky, I can let myself do it, and I trust myself to eventually be ready to return to work again. There’s no fight and there’s no breaking point. There are a bunch of different choices at my disposal, any one of which is valid and reasonable at a given moment. I know I can navigate that.
If you’re struggling to maintain the willpower to accomplish a particular thing, what happens if you ease off a little bit? If you set yourself free, what will you do? Will you take off running like a hunting breed that’s just been let off of a leash? Will you take a break and come back refreshed of your own accord? There may be too much at stake to take the risk—but there also may be too much at stake to maintain the status quo. There exists the possibility that you don’t need willpower at all, and you can actually summon the determination to do the important work because you want to, not because you have to. You may find that you can trust yourself to do what matters, when you let yourself.
