It all starts with desire

TL;DR None yet

Whenever you have a strong desire to make an improvement in your life, it is a good idea to reflect on that desire first. Desires wax and wane, they grow and shrink. A pattern I’m many of us are all too familiar with is that experience of deciding that this time it is going to be different, this time we are really going to be making a change, starting out with all the vim and vigour in the world, and after 2 weeks petering out, encountering an obstacle, giving up, falling back into our old, bad habits, and getting really disappointed with ourselves. That is an outcome we want to avoid, so we should think a bit about how we can keep our current good impulse going.

There are many different skills that can help do precisely that: take a good impulse and develop it into good action, keep good action going and develop it into good habit, keep good habit going and develop it into good character trait. What all these skills have in common is that they are grounded in and driven by desire. So let’s examine the concept of desire for a moment.

A very helpful metaphor for desire is that of a fire. If you have any experience building, starting, tending, and extinguishing fires then you’ll be able to relate. Desire, like fire, can be really hard to get started. Especially if your fuel is damp or your ignition source is primitive. Both fires and desires are much easier to keep going than to start from scratch. Conversely, both large fires and strong desires can be quite hard to extinguish, but that’ll come up more if we ever cover topics related to addiction.

Additionally, like fire, desires require fuel, but where fires burn out in the world, a desire burns in your heart. So, how do you feed a desire? Well, first of all it will require action. You cannot simply read this article, and the reasons I go through a bit further on, register them with the front of your mind and go “A-hah, yep yep”. You will have to go looking in your heart, connect with your desire, and find something that makes it grow stronger. It is a personal experience of self-management that I cannot do for you, I can only point at the general shape the effort has to take, it is then up to you to make the effort, and through the process of trial and error, find something that makes your heart leap up.

What I can do, though, is sketch out four different categories of thoughts you can think, realities you can dwell on, that are likely to have some success. These break down in a 2x2 intersection of, on the one hand ‘the upsides of’ vs. ‘the downsides of not’, and on the other hand ‘the act of doing’ and ‘the results achieved’. That is to say, the four categories you can forage in for fuel to keep your desire going are: the upsides of doing the tidying up and the upsides of having a tidy space, versus the downsides of choosing not to tidy up right now and the downsides of having a messy space. Let’s go through them one by one, and I will share a few of my ideas inside each of these categories, but I encourage you to think up some of your own, because the upsides and downsides that matter most to you will be closest to your own heart. It is in the thinking it through that you develop your skill.

Let’s start with the benefits of having the result: what is nice about having a tidy space to exist in? Well, first of all, being in a tidy space is simply calming. Think of how you might feel in an over-stuffed knickknack store versus being in a zen-garden. Your brain is primed to look at objects and contrasts and patterns, so simply being in a space with many little stimuli will keep your mind zip-zip-zipping along them. Additionally, it’s a lot easier to not lose things in a tidy space. Your important objects stand out more on an empty background then when surrounded by clutter. Tidy spaces are also much easier to clean, more on cleaning later. And finally, another obvious benefit of not living in a mess is that it’s much easier to invite people over. You have nothing to hide or be ashamed of in regards to your space.

Conversely, the downsides of a very messy space are, firstly, simply the reverse of all the upsides mentioned above. Additionally, being surrounded by a mess that you’re responsible for and feel shame about not only fills the space with stimuli that keep your mind zip-zip-zipping around, every little stimulus is a little reminder of your failure, a little pinprick of shame, and those add up. Another detriment of a messy space is that everything you might want to do in the space becomes harder. You want to cook? Well, your countertop is messsy. You want to stretch? There’s no space for that. You want to spend some time on your hobby? The desk is unavailable. Finally, messes are often composed of dirty versions of things you might need. Want to wear that fancy shirt? Nope, it was dirty on your floor somewhere. You were hoping to cook a nice meal? Well, your pans are still dirty but you can’t wash them because your sink is stuffed. A mess can get really congestive for your other good habits, whereas space and tidiness can be very freeing.

Those were the upsides and the downsides of the results, but sometimes simply the results can be insufficient motivation. If all you can bring to mind is eventual consequences, it can still be hard to get over that initial hump of difficulty. So, let’s look at the upsides and downsides of the actually doing or not doing of the tidying.

Again, let’s start with the positive. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, it can be a subtle thing, but there is a huge internal difference between being resigned to a bad situation or being in a bad situation but having set out to make an improvement. That internal ‘getting back on the horse’ moment will have an immediate effect right then and there, before any of your tidying results have actually taken shape, simply the decision that you’re going to start making an improvement right now changes your whole perspective. That is the first benefit. The second benefit is that tidying can actually be fun if you think about it. If you simply treat it as a rote chore that needs to be performed while your mind is elsewhere, maybe in a worry, a dream, some music, or a video, then this won’t be a benefit that you get, but if you actually treat it like a puzzle, like an optimization problem, then the doing becomes fun, and you can genuinely see yourself get better, quicker, and more efficient at it over time. Finally, a very important benefit you get immediately from the doing is the fact that you’re starting to build a good habit into your mind. You’re taking an obstacle, you’re deciding to tackle it, and you’re making a good effort in a right direction. That attitude, when you hold it, in and of itself, will make it more likely that you will adopt that attitude again in the future. Especially if you celebrate it, more on that later too.

Finally, let’s look at the downsides of inaction. If you’re surrounded by a mess that disgusts you, and you choose not to tackle it, there’s a real ‘giving up on yourself’ experience that can be deeply depressing. We often take this attitude of dealing with it later because something more fun is possible now, but it’s really hard to whole-heartedly enjoy this fun when, on some level, we know we’re not dealing with what’s truly important. There’s this nagging dissatisfaction with the self in the back of the mind that comes from non-responsibility. Another downside of inaction is that of inertia, of heaviness. We know there’s this thing we should be doing, but we’re choosing not to do it now, so we get more down on ourselves, are even less likely to do it later, and it builds and builds. We lie to ourselves saying that it will be easier later, but it never is. One concrete example of this experience that many people have is that of being sucked into scrolling. You were going to start something at 0900, but you’re scrolling, so you’ll do it in 10 minutes, and you get a bit heavier. Then it’s 0910, and you’re scrolling, so you’ll do it at 0930. But then 0930 rolls around… I think you get the picture. The easiest time to have started was 0900, although the easiest time to have stopped scrolling was right before you started, but more on that later.

I hope the exercise of considering the upsides of action and good results, and the downsides of inaction and bad results helped give you some ideas of how to fuel your desires over the course of the next few weeks and months. Once your motivation start running a little low, really try to recall what it was that you were hoping to achieve, and what is was that you were hoping to avoid. You can always repeat the exercise by yourself by drawing a 2x2 grid on a piece of paper, labeling the axes on one hand ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ and on the other hand ‘action’ and ‘result’, and writing a few entries into each quadrant. Also, don’t be afraid to dwell on your uncomfortable feelings around what you want to avoid. We tend to prefer positive movitation, but a real recognition of how easy and dangerous the bad outcomes are is actually very protective and very useful in keeping yourself motivated. Uncomfortable efforts are worth it if they lead to good results.

With this I leave you. May you all learn to look after yourselves well.