I found myself a few days ago in a weird place where I feel I have found myself more tools and built myself a stronger foundation to succeed from while at the same time I lost hope and the drive to try for longer term success. At least for the time being. This has been coming for a while now. I wrote something along these line to my partner a few days ago and here I am now a day or so above my average streak in the throws of it again yesterday and today were hard again with the A.V.E.
It comes and goes. (Hopefully a painted a picture.)
I wanted to write about some ideas I have been throwing around in my head and have been reflecting on in the last month.
1. The first one is that I have found that talking about what works for me can sets me up for failures and
I have found that talking about what to avoid doesn't necessarily avoid this but help me to keep a level head and not have Gaivah.
the idea that I should talk about what works for me is very risky when most things that work for you can be overwhelmed. compared to talking about things to avoid or where the pitfalls are and when you are still working on it you don't really have the authority to say what work but you do have the authority to say what doesn't. I do think you should talk about what to try and what's worked for you so far with a healthy dose of "Don't be sure of yourself till the day you die" and "Don't let your mouth write a check your ass can't cash" in the back of your mind as you speak about it.
2. 48Hours A Tool: A tool I took on from the F2F program (my version of the Emergency Checklist card rule 3)
I chose 48h because that's the time span for me where A.V.E. usually can say its still early enough to give in and start over and I noticed there is a fall-off after this point and a new form of struggle immerges. I also have experimented with this and wet dreams I tried doing 24 for that but found 48 to still be more effective.
3. Be aware of what your subconscious says and dont say I can do it later or you might be setting yourself up for a harder battle in the future.
I found myself struggling and it kept coming up again and again and I would push it down saying: "Not now you cant do this now" "You don't want to be doing this now... a few more hours, keep pushing another day." But I was subconsciously telling myself later was okay and later never came and I got more frustrated with myself and the battle got harder. I see this now as a pitfall to be aware of and avoid in short make sure that when you're saying no now your not subconsciously saying well maybe later is okay. I am not saying don't give yourself room to breath, just when you do don't open the door for imminent failure.
4. Oaths what I use right now (The Battle of Our Generation model):
Oaths are risky and I avoided doing this for a while but came back to this idea when I reread "The Battle of Our Generation"
its (Tip #2 "The Double Vow Method') it appears on page 26 of the book make it your own and adjust where you need.
basically you take 2 oaths.
Oath 1: I need to do these things to get my mind of my urges and you give yourself like 5 options.
Oath 2: If I dont do what I said in Oath 1 I get a large penalty like having to give Tzedakah or Read Tikkun Haklali in one sitting.
and if I do Oath 1 first and then end the streak I get a smaller penalty like Pushups.
The great thing about this version of oath taking is their is no fail state because if you didn't follow the first half you can make it up with the second.
I also take this on a month at a time so I can adjust it as needed.
consider this a rough draft of what I wanted to say
to be continued...
5. A healthy dose of achiras/effort in self control and over reliance on tools and filters.
