Indistractable

“People prefer doing to thinking, even if what they are doing is so unpleasant that they would normally pay to avoid it.

As further evidence, researchers believe we tend to have an easier time recalling bad memories than good ones.

Good things are nice, but bad things can kill you, which is why we pay attention to and remember the bad stuff first.

By reflecting on what went wrong and how to rectify it, people may be able to discover sources of error or alternative strategies, ultimately leading to not repeating mistakes and possibly doing better in the future.”

Hedonic adaptation, the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction, no matter what happens to us in life, is Mother Nature’s bait and switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don’t, or at least they don’t for long.

As we’ve learned, dissatisfaction is an innate power that can be channeled to help us make things better in the same way it served our prehistoric relatives.

Dissatisfaction and discomfort dominate our brain’s default state, but we can use them to motivate us instead of defeat us.

Dissatisfaction is responsible for our species’ advancements and its faults. To harness its power, we must disavow the misguided idea that if we’re not happy, we’re not normal—exactly the opposite is true. While this shift in mind-set can be jarring, it can also be incredibly liberating.

It’s good to know that feeling bad isn’t actually bad; it’s exactly what survival of the fittest intended.

The results suggested that suppressing the thought for the first five minutes caused it to ‘rebound’ even more prominently into the participants’ minds later,”

The irony being, of course, that relieving the tension of desire makes something all the more rewarding.

What affected their desire was not how much time had passed after a smoke, but how much time was left before they could smoke again.

Certain desires can be modulated, if not completely mitigated, by how we think about our urges.

•    Without techniques for disarming temptation, mental abstinence can backfire. Resisting an urge can trigger rumination and make the desire grow stronger.

•    We can manage distractions that originate from within by changing how we think about them. We can reimagine the trigger, the task, and our temperament.

While we can’t control the feelings and thoughts that pop into our heads, we can control what we do with them.

we shouldn’t keep telling ourselves to stop thinking about an urge; instead, we must learn better ways to cope.

STEP 1: LOOK FOR THE DISCOMFORT THAT PRECEDES THE DISTRACTION, FOCUSING IN ON THE INTERNAL TRIGGER

“feeling anxious, having a craving, feeling restless, or thinking you are incompetent.”

STEP 2: WRITE DOWN THE TRIGGER