What’s your biggest goal right now, the one you most want to tackle? If you don’t know that off the top of your head, that may be a big obstacle to getting much done. If you do know, great–and on to the next question, which is this: what is the very next thing you’re going to be doing to further that goal?

Do you know that one off the top of your head? If so, go to the head of the class! If not, you can still go to the head of the class, but first you have to get in the habit of queuing things up for yourself. It sounds simple and inconsequential, but it’s actually simple and crucial.

The logic is pretty straightforward: if I know what my next step is, then I’ll recognize as soon as there’s a good opportunity for me to take it and am prepared to take that opportunity. Once I’ve tackled that step, I take a moment to think about the next step so that I know what that is. Working this way, I’m never that far from thinking about or being able to act on my goals, and sometimes my subconscious may even be able to make extra progress on my project without me expending any real effort.

Looking at it from another perspective, knowing your next step is an effective way to minimize anxiety about a big project. If there twenty things you could do next and you haven’t picked one as being the first, then you’re in a position where you have to worry about all twenty. If you’ve carefully chosen one of those things to do next, you only have to worry about that one until you complete it; then you choose the next one and still only have to worry about one, even though you’re moving right on down the list.

By the way, “the next step” means something that you actively have to focus on to do. If the next thing you need to do to achieve your goal is something that you don’t even have to think about, something that’s already set up for you or already an ingrained habit, ignore it for the purpose of knowing what’s next. But those are specifically the kind of areas where no motivation work is needed. What we’re talking about here is the next step that’s going to take some kind of effort or attention from you.

This approach separates choosing something to do from actually having to do it, which also combats anxiety. Since considering all the things you might have to do can be a source of stress, and since getting yourself to do something difficult can also be a source of stress, taking the two separately can make each piece easier to deal with.

Some examples of choosing the next step: If you’re writing, it might be starting the next chapter, or planning out the next piece of the outline, or editing a particular section; if you’re working on fitness, it might be exercising in the evening, or planning your next meal; if you’re organizing your home, it might be the next area you plan to clean up, or the next habit you need to practice; if you’re quitting smoking, it might be simply restocking your supply of gum or reading up on emphysema. Regardless, always knowing your next step keeps you literally one step ahead.

Photo by Tojosan

Wednesday’s post talked about what it means to have a bad day and how that kind of day can often be turned around, even in really difficult circumstances, by changing our thinking. Today’s post goes into some practical approaches for using our thoughts to improve our mood on all levels. Here are some specific strategies.

Idea repair: Our emotions are profoundly influenced by what we tell ourselves. If we’re coming up with thoughts that are misleading and destructive, we can break through that interference and feel relief quickly with idea repair.

Emotional antidotes: Emotions tend to keep themselves going, while going out of our way to think of things that make us happy or inspire compassion or love tends to counteract negative thoughts.

Mindfulness meditation: Meditation can relieve stress and give us more emotional resilience. If you haven’t tried mindfulness meditation and want to, you might take a class or look up materials by Jon Kabat Zinn.

Music: Music can be a direct path to emotional responses. Listening to exactly the right kind of music can turn your mood around quickly and powerfully.

Changing the environment: Opening the curtains, going to a place you enjoy, sitting in a garden … anything that tends to make you happier or to remind you of what’s good in the world can get you out of a negative mental rut.

Writing things down: Problems are easier to deal with if they’re clear instead of vague anxieties. Listing things that are bothering you or that you need to do can create clarity and a sense of purpose in place of general stress. More generally, writing freely about your thoughts can accomplish the same thing when you’ve got a bad mood going on and are not sure why.

Talking things out: Like writing, talking things out with a friend who’s a good listener can help clarify the situation and relieve stress.

Changing facial expressions: As silly as it sounds, research seems to show that changing our expressions–especially smiling–can help change our mood on a chemical level.

Working with a good therapist: If anxiety, stress, or bad moods come up for you a lot more than you’d like, a good therapist can make all the difference. Unfortunately, a lot of people associate therapy with mental illness, but it’s clear from recent research that psychology has a lot to say about how even an entirely healthy person can become happier and more effective in the world, and there are some therapists who are very good at helping make that happen.

Photo by Today is a good day (again)

We tend to think of “wanting” and “liking” as being closely related: if we want something, then we will necessarily like it when we get it, and if we like something, then we will feel moved to action–or so the thinking goes.

People have been known to do some interesting things using this assumption, for instance working very hard to get somewhere in life, and then not liking where they are when they get there, or bingeing on a particular food and not enjoying a single bite.

gremlins: the real root of the problem?

So what’s going on here? Are we not enjoying things because we aren’t paying attention? Is it ennui? Are gremlins somehow involved?

The root of this matter is that liking and wanting are separate systems in the brain. Under normal, healthy circumstances, they’re pretty closely related: there’s a good chance that getting something we want will give us feelings of pleasure. But there are situations where they’re actually at odds with each other: the more we want something, the less pleasure it will give us when we get it. This is true of drug addiction, but also true of many other habitual behaviors, like overeating, compulsive shopping, and video game obsession.

The logical thing to assume (you would think) would be that people who overeat enjoy food more than people who don’t, and that’s why they overeat; or that people who max out their credit cards with unnecessary purchases enjoy getting a new pair of shoes a lot more than people who stay within their budgets. Yet when someone does something to excess, it often doesn’t look like they’re enjoying it more–it just looks like they’re more compelled–they want it more, but they don’t like it more.

And in fact, much of the brain chemistry of doing things to excess is the same whether we’re talking about watching too much TV or eating too many doughnuts or drinking too much coffee or shooting heroin: the more we overdo something, the less our brain reacts to dopamine release when we have that thing. Dopamine is a brain chemical that tends to make us feel calm and satisfied, and its normal purpose is to remind us to do things like eat and procreate, because if dopamine levels are low (as when we don’t do things we’ve evolved to want to do), we feel agitated. Doing too much of something makes our brain less receptive to dopamine, which means we require more of that thing to feel comfortable and happy. To someone who doesn’t drink much alcohol, one beer can be very satisfying–but to an alcoholic, one beer is barely noticeable.

There are at least two other reasons that we might want something we don’t like. First, there’s habit: if we do something very regularly, regardless of whether it makes us happy or not, our brains have reinforced the neurons devoted to that activity, and we will feel strongly inclined to keep doing it even if it doesn’t provide us any enjoyment or benefit.

And second, there are the broken ideas I’ve written about here before (more formally called “cognitive distortions”). These are things we tell ourselves that contain some kind of basic flaw. For instance, deciding that someone is a jerk and shouldn’t act toward us as they do can make us act unkindly toward that person, which can contribute to an increasingly aggravating relationship.

And what about not wanting things we do like? This is the effect of broken ideas again. For instance, we might have a task in front of us that seems very difficult,and think “There’s no way I can ever finish that, and it would be painful and awful to try”–when in fact, just getting started on the task can begin to relieve stress, and enough determination can get the entire task done, which can then deliver great benefits. Take for example cleaning out a room in the house that has long served as a “junk room.” Avoiding the junk room can be a continuing source of low-level stress, while getting it cleaned out can be very rewarding (especially after turning it into that home knitting studio we’ve been dreaming of having). Yet do we say to ourselves “Wow, I’m really excited to get that junk room cleaned out”? Not usually.

the junk room: shouldn't this be the kind of thing we can't wait to tackle?

Given these insights, that wanting and liking are not always in step with each other, what do we do about it? The simple answer is that we’re happier when we 1) question our wants and 2) remind ourselves of what actually makes us happy.  If an incident with a coworker makes you want to march into that person’s office and deliver a scathing review of their personal failings, it can be useful to think about whether you’ll really be happy doing that, or might ultimately be happier if you decide to calmly explaining what you didn’t like about the incident (maybe after a suitable cooling-off period). If you’re staring at a menu and feel inexorably drawn toward the buttered onion rings with fat sauce, it may be worth thinking about whether the minute or two that you are really enjoying those onion rings (after the first few bites, our enjoyment of food sometimes drops considerably) is going to be worth the over-full, sleepy feeling you’ll get soon after you eat them and the quarter pound heavier you’ll be as a result. Putting things in this kind of perspective can make doing things you’ll actually like much easier, bringing wanting and liking more in line.

Gremlin illustration by ibtrav
Junk room photo by Steve Jenkins