Day 174 Record Keeping SRHI = 84
Day 142 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 82
Day 88 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 80 (3x3 diamond knee pushups)
Day 15 Writing = 25
Day 188 Eating SRHI = 63
Day 5 No Bread = 32

Great sleep, good wakeup.

Bread, Barcelona, & Arising Urges

In this post I talk about arising urges. I specifically ask the questions:

Imagine if you could tell a smoker that after fighting off the urge to smoke X number of times, the urge would cease arising at all? Of course it would change from person to person, but what if you could come up with an average?

When I first decided to come to Spain I told my friend how I was trying to avoid grains.

“Good luck!” he said, laughing.

Having visited Barcelona before, he painted it as a land where bread arrives continuously. And having been here for a week, it’s somewhat true. With the influx of foreigners, a lot of restaurants ask first before bringing it out automatically. But a number of places still do.

I’ve started ignoring it while sitting on the table. And I think this is a really great thing to cultivate, not only for Spain but for back home in Texas, where I can’t even contemplate how many chips I’ve eaten before any given Tex-Mex meal.

And this gives me an opportunity to do a mini project. Since I AM here, how many times would it take to cement the “ignoring of bread on a table” habit?

This is slightly different than other habits.

It’s not daily
It’s situation dependent and arises sporadically
It would be dependent on the number of times the urge is fought off rather than the number of days

Could I do a SRHI on this?

After looking at it I realize I would have to modify the scale.

Frequency questions like “I do this task frequently” would have to be modified because the task of ignoring bread doesn’t necessarily contribute to the habit. It would have to be tied to a ratio - like “I frequently choose not to eat bread when the basket arrives.”

Periodic questions like “it belongs to my (daily, weekly, monthly) routine” would have to be ignored because this particular task isn’t a daily or routine thing, in that it wouldn’t necessarily happen with any regularity.

And I’m not sure about the last question, that of time. The last question on the SRHI is “I have been doing it for a long time”

Time is not as direct a thing with such a habit as with a daily habit.

In thinking about it I would have to categorize such a thing as different from smoking, or nail biting, or anxiety, simply because it’s so irregular. This is an important distinction - I’ll have to come up with some name for this category of habit at some point.

This all being said I’ve had 4 instances where bread has been at the table, and I’ve ignored it 3 times. There have been 3 other times where the waiter asked if I wanted some, and I said no all 3 times. What I’d like to do is experiment with a non bread eating habit for the next month and see what happens. If I were to take the SRHI with just omitting the periodic question I get:

No Bread = 32

I’ve only become intentional about it roughly 5 days ago.

Day 170 Record Keeping SRHI = 84
Day 138 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 82
Day 84 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 81 (3x8 pushups)
Day 11 Writing = 13
Day 184 Eating SRHI = 54
Great sleep, good wakeup.

Mechanism of Preventing Arising Urges

Despite the awkward description, this has been something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

In many addictions and bad habits there is an urge to do something that wells up. For smokers it’s that bell that says it’s time to light up. The same can be said about nail biting or anxiety.

As an incredibly anxious person, it’s natural for me to worry. It wells up - and even if there’s nothing to worry about, I worry about NOT worrying.

There is a lot of literature that seems to suggesting breaking a habit isn’t a deconstruction, but rather a redirection. Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, suggests that the best way is to replace an already established habit, and describes this without really getting into collapsing one.

All I know is that at some point, by distracting yourself or enduring, the urge ceases to arise. And that fascinates me. Why? And where is that tipping point?

Imagine if you could tell a smoker that after fighting off the urge to smoke X number of times, the urge would cease arising at all? Of course it would change from person to person, but what if you could come up with an average?

Would this be the same for nail biting? For anxiety? At some point, while fighting anxiety, if I do it enough over a long enough period consecutively, do I cease being an anxious person?

And consecutivity seems to be key. My feeling is that a smoker who fought the urge every other time doesn’t become a non-smoker - though it might be a start to slide into the groove of doing it.

This is hilarious because it shows just how in the Stone Age we are when it comes to all this. And it’s exciting to know that change and transformation are at the heart of this project.