You want them, you crave them – they’re right there on the counter, and what’s more they’re already open.
All it would take is one small step and your hand would be in that packet, teasing out one of the finer specimens – one of the ones that’s a bit darker because it’s abundantly covered in that flavourful Dorito dust. (Anyone else’s mouth just fill with saliva?)
The feeling of desire is pulsing through you. Everything in you is saying have one, one is not going to kill you.
And while that’s true, you’re not going to fall down dead at the hands of a Dorito, if you give in and follow your compulsion, you are going to neurologically strengthen the habit. So you think the pulsing desire is bad now? Just you wait until next time, then the time after that, and the time after that.
Do you want this moment right here to be the worst you ever experience that feeling of desire? Or do you want this moment to merely be the base camp, the jumping off point for things to get really bad?
But you can’t fight the feeling with logic. If that was possible, none of us would have a problem with food and we wouldn’t be here now. You know you’re not going to stop at one, you know that it’s not going to make a snowflake’s bit of difference to your day whether you have Doritos or not. You’re not trying to kill hunger, only boredom, so as soon as the last of the dust has disappeared down your throat, you’re going to be back to feeling bored again. But you know all this. You know it’s a pointless activity that’ll lead to lethargy and unwanted flab. But, that’s more logic. The Nudge (the wily little bastard) doesn’t respond to logic.
He does respond to a neat little mind trick, however, that I’ve perfected over the years and am now going to share with you here. And when I say respond, I mean he disappears. Fucks off. Does a runner. Nice, huh?
First up, you REMEMBER and ACKNOWLEDGE that you’re only feeling thought right now. You’re not feeling the corn snack directly, you’re not feeling an addiction or some kind of weird flaw in your being. Your feelings of desire are reflecting your thinking in the moment and nothing more. You don’t just say this to yourself, you feel it in your bones, at a visceral level. You go inside yourself, into your box, into the place that is untouched by the outside world.
Then, you do an exaggerated eye-roll – a real corker like a surly teen would give a parent – but you do it at yourself. You aim it at your own mind. It works like an etch a sketch. It wipes the slate clean of all that icky unhelpful Dorito thinking that’s lingering up there, and returns you to a place of calm. Then, you get on with something else.
If your will is to return to your set-point of peace, clarity and calm —> the eye roll will take you there. Make no mistake, your will coupled with the eye roll are an unstoppable force that no Dorito, no matter how flavourful? Can usurp.
Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash