The Complacency Cycle

A narrative on complacency and conquering self loathing.

TL;DR: Round and round and round you go. Break the cycle by taking small steps, understanding should vs want and the seeking of instant gratification, and mutha fuckin writing.

Round and Round You Go

You begin a habit, maybe you begin a few, and you're doing well. You're hitting the gym and eating pretty good. Maybe you've held firm in the face of temptation from a habit you're trying to quit. You don't even have weed in your house anymore. You start actually feeling good about yourself, things are looking up, the sky is more blue and the birds more melodic. You see women and you feel much less anxious now. Your fear of actually having sex has faded so much since you stopped compulsively watching porn. God are you excited for this new life.

Then one day, you eat a brownie you weren't supposed to eat, and the next you miss your workout. And the next day you've got a death grip on your dick beating it out to transgender porn with a joint in your mouth and old cheetos resting stale and sad in the crevices of your computer chair.

You continue to be a sad sack of shit for a while. But soon all your clothes are stained in your own shame and you start thinking about improving again. And you think about it more. You think about it for a few months. Eventually, you start feeling motivated to start making changes again.

And so you spin, round and round, through the complacency cycle.

If you relate to that, than this is for you, straight from a man who has spun around that cycle more times than I'd ever admit.

First and foremost, it is important to understand that there is no magic cure for complacency. You wont ever wake up one day and have impeccable discipline. Impossible. Life will always be this undulating amorphous blob of duality. But what you can do, is better handle the down swings, and reduce the frequency and duration of the down swing.

Baby Steps

The most talked about method is baby steps. Start with what you're confident in being able to do, wait for it to ingrain, and add in another baby step. Continue indefinitely.

This method can work, and I dont want to say dont try it, but I dont believe its the only way, nor do I think things need to be done so incrementally. Which brings me to....

Should vs. Want and Gratification

When we think about something we should do, it triggers doubt due to self-loathing and past failures. We need to stop thinking about self improvement as something we should do, to something we want to do. I never truly stuck to working out until I fell in love with the action itself, instead of chasing the result. Humans love instant gratification. The pride from your successes is enough to satisfy your desire for quick reward, but what happens when the initial jump of self-approval wears off and the action loses its novelty? You quit.

All the most significant actions to take in self improvement (exercise, meditation, reading, etc) are all inherently enjoyable by its own virtue, it's just a matter of you shifting your perspective on them. Do these things out of the love of them, not out of the desire for the side effect.

Journal and Notes

Seriously, write every day. Take notes. Make lists. Keep a diary. There are so many ways in which you can write about your life, and I don't care what way you do it, just do it every day. Writing solidifies things, it makes things like your goals more tangible and real, and makes things like your doubts and fears have a home to live in outside of your head.

For example, I have a journal titled "The Good Things Log". It's a date stamped list of good things from that day. Whether successfully starting a new habit, fucking that hot blonde who inexplicably works at 7-11, or having a deep belly laugh at a joke. Whatever was good, I write it. I reinforce the good things, the things to be happy and proud about, no matter how small.

I also keep a more free form journal of random cranial wanderings, I keep lists for To-Do's, Short Term Long Term goals, and habits both good and bad. I also write things that I understand in an article/blog post form for myself to solidify that understanding (some of which end up here, a la this very post, and my previous ones). If you cant teach it you don't know it well enough.

Just write, it's really been the single biggest thing that has helped me from relapsing into The Complacency Cycle.

This is not intended to be all inclusive, but is a rather personal account of what has benefited me.