Crying with a Cookie in Your Hand
          by DR. AMY JOHNSON on JULY 9, 2015

Much as it pains me at times, my kids are growing up.

Saturday night we made chocolate chip cookies. When we were finished and each kid was happily watching BattleBots with a whole cookie ...

(their favorite complaint to overindulgent grandparents is “our mom makes us share one cookie”. Horrible, I know),

... Miller asked if he could have another cookie when the one he had was gone.

I said no, and he started to cry.

He had a whole cookie minus one bite in his hand, and was crying about not getting another cookie.  As I heard myself say in disbelief, “You have a whole cookie in your hand and you’re crying?!?” it hit me how, at almost 3 ½, he’s not as completely consumed in what is right in front of him as he once was.

He’s more able to use his amazing power of higher thought to leave this moment and mentally travel backward and forward. I mean, to be fair, he doesn’t travel into the past or future much. He still lives largely in the present unless we prompt him to recall a memory or we encourage him to excitedly anticipate some upcoming event.

Or, unless he has a whole cookie in his hand and wants another when that one’s gone.

Watching him stand there with a cookie in his hand, crying about not getting a second cookie, shocked me.

Not only because he is using his mind in increasingly complex ways, but I wondered: how often do I cry with a cookie in my hand? How often do you?

It was so shocking to see my baby do this which is interesting, because we adults do it all the time, don’t we? Really, all the time. Some of us live more often than not in this kind of illusory life. We all spend a good chunk of time there.

Every time you use your imagination to recreate an unhappy memory or to create a mental picture of something you fear will happen (something that is not actually happening in that moment), you’re doing it.

Every time you check out of life as it is and instead decide how life should be or how you think it will be, you’re doing it—crying with a cookie in your hand.

Each and every time you worry, you’re leaving a perfectly nice moment and crying with a cookie in your hand. Worry is your imagination running wild. (Yes, 100% of worry is you using your imagination. Sit with that one a second.)

There is some magic in understanding the way we tend to do this that really, really helps.

As human children, we will eventually retreat to our mind when life scares us. It’s our attempt to figure out and control what’s going on outside of us. That retreat into a mental life will be reinforced and will become somewhat habitual. It’s what we all face as human beings.

But seeing that helps. It helps a lot, actually. We all live in our heads often, and we might cry with cookies in our hands when we do. But we snap out of it too. We all wake up to the life that’s right under our noses at times. Waking up from thought is always possible.

Fortunately, as we see how this works, we find ourselves waking up more and more, and appreciating it more and more when we do.

And we get to fully enjoy the whole cookie we’re holding rather than cry about the one we want later.

The Willpower Instinct (2011) was written by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., who is a health psychologist at Stanford School of Medicine where she teaches a course called “The Science of Willpower”.

This book combines insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to explain exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. The book has 10 chapters which reflect the author’s 10-week course, and is written in an interesting and easy style, without academic pompousness:

1. Effective willpower - just noticing what's happening is key.

2. The willpower instinct - anything that puts a stress on your mind or body can sabotage self-control but too much willpower is stressful.

3. Self-control is like a muscle - it gets tired from use but regular exercise makes it stronger.

4. Why being good encourages bad behavior - we use past good behavior to justify indulgences.

5. Why we mistake wanting for happiness - even false promises of reward make us feel alert and captivated, so we chase satisfaction from things that don't deliver.

6. How feeling bad leads to giving in - self-compassion is a far better strategy than beating ourselves up.

7. We discount both future rewards and future costs - we consistently act against our own long-term interests and we illogically believe our future selves will (magically) have more willpower.

8. Why willpower is contagious - humans are hardwired to connect and we mimic and mirror both willpower failures and willpower successes of our social network.

9. Inner acceptance improves outer control - attempts to fight instincts and desires ironically make them worse.

10. Final thoughts - the aha moment.

If one wants to change a Habit or understand why one has failed at doing this in the past, "The Willpower Instinct" is worth reading. Kelly McGonigal presents neuroscience and psychology in a way that a reader can understand, and provides concepts that one can use to improve the quality of daily life. She encourages experimentation and self-inquiry, while presenting practical, tried and true methods to help to kick bad habits and to create new ones.

This book could be a valuable resource for those who are struggling with a Diet, or dealing with an “Eating Disorder”, as it can help to provide insight and understanding. At the end of the day, creating or sustaining a habit or an addiction involves making choices.

Turning to a substance in a time of stress, or whenever, is a choice one makes, and through repeatedly performing this action, one’s brain creates "shortcuts" that enable one to do it more often/efficiently and make refusing very difficult and anxiety-inducing. The author explains this in a very clear, well-researched manner, including the ways our primitive brains trick us into saying "yes", and she then provides strategies for improving one's ability to say no.

Originally posted on November 4, 2012, updated for new viewers.

Colorful names have been given to many types of dilemmas.

• Catch-22: damned if you do, damned if you don't.
  
  
• Chicken or egg: which is first of two things, each of which presupposes the other
  
  
• Double bind: conflicting requirements ensure that the victim will automatically be wrong.
  
  
• Ethical dilemma: a choice between moral imperatives.
  
  
• Extortion: the choice between paying the extortionist and suffering an unpleasant action.
  
  
• Fairness dilemmas: when groups are faced with making decisions about how to share their resources, rewards, or payoffs.
  
  
• Hobson's choice: a choice between something and nothing; "take it or leave it".
  
  
• Morton's fork: choices yield equivalent, often undesirable, results.
  
  
• Prisoner's dilemma: An inability to coordinate makes cooperation difficult and defection tempting.
  
  
• Samaritan's dilemma: the choice between providing charity and improving another's condition, and withholding it to prevent them from becoming dependent.
  
  
• Sophie's choice: a choice between two persons or things that will result in the death or destruction of the person or thing not chosen.
  
  
• Zugzwang: One must move and incur harm when one would prefer to make no move (esp. in chess).
  

Fighting the Urges, (2013) by Amy Johnson, Phd. is a 23 page e-book. 

NOTE:  7/3/2016 update.  At the time this review was written, Dr. Amy Johnson gave online free access to this e-book.  Since that time, the e-book link has disappeared, but this review remains valuable because an expanded view of the book's concepts are contained in her new book (2016) which is:

The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking Any Habit  by Amy Johnson, PhD (2016). Combining modern neuroscience with spiritual principles, Dr Amy Johnson delivers a new understanding of habits that is practical and simple. She explains why harmful habits aren’t powerful, stable parts of who we are, but merely temporary logjams that cloud our natural state of well-being; and points readers toward the guidance of their innate wisdom. Those with any type of harmful behavioral or mental habit could benefit from reading this book.

In "The Little Book of Big Change" Dr. Johnson tells us that the book uses principles from Kathryn Hansen’s book Brain over Binge and Jeffery Schwartz’s book You Are Not Your Brain.  These principles are also similar to those found within Gillian Riley's book, Ditching Diets.  

In "Fighting the Urges" the author says that the book is designed to help permanently change unwanted habitual behaviors. She offers a way to relate to one's addictions, compulsions, and habits in a way that she believes will literally physically change one's brain. 

Dr Amy Johnson gives four steps to rewiring your brain.

Step #1: View your urges as neurological junk. This is also referred to as Re-labeling.

This means you stop believing your urges signal a real physical or emotional need—you see that they are insignificant. You view them as automatic brain messages generated in your Lower Brain that deserve no attention.
 

Step #2: Separate your highest human brain from your urges. This is also referred to as Reframing.

This means you realize the urges aren't really you; they are simply Lower Brain- based messages. The you that has a personal identity, makes conscious decisions, is smart, and has opinions and preferences and dreams is something altogether different.

Step #3: Stop reacting to your urges. This is also referred to as Revaluing.

In step three, you stop giving your urges attention and allowing them to affect you emotionally. You view them as neurological junk, with no judgment or emotion attached.

Step #4: Stop acting on your urges. This is also referred to as Refocusing.

When you stop acting on our urges, your brain rewires around the new normal of not acting on your urges.

 Dr. Johnson says that having conflicting desires about our behavior make it feel like we have two minds, and discusses the "Higher Brain" and the "Lower Brain. The animal part of us—the Lower Brain—believes our survival depends on performing a specific action. However, our Higher Brain—where decisions are made—is ultimately in charge of our actions. These areas are pictured in the graphic at the bottom of this book review.

She says that our brains are wired to produce urges because we’ve acted on those urges many times in the past. When we stop acting on the urges, we rewire our neural circuitry and the urges stop.

The book gives the following example:
 

"Let’s say your compulsion is food. When you’ve heard the urge from your Lower Brain to eat large quantities of unhealthy food in the past, you’ve obeyed that urge and followed through—probably many, many times in your life.

Each time you do this, you strengthen the habit in your brain. What you practice becomes fixed, and your brain literally changes to support the behavior. This is how a habit is formed.

Given that repeated practice is how you created this habit in your brain to begin with, it makes sense that you will reverse it by not acting on the urge many times. When you do that, you’re teaching your brain that the habit is no longer necessary.

You can’t reason with the Lower Brain. It’s a non-thinking, unintelligent machine, and it has no ability to understand reason. So you can’t talk your brain out of your habit by trying to convince yourself that the urges are ridiculous or by talking back to the urges or pleading with them to leave you alone. All of that attention actually reinforces the urges and makes them stronger. Attention and emotion are neural super glue. What you focus on is strengthened."
 

The book was short, simple, and informative. I personally found it to be helpful, and I highly recommend it to others.

Author Dr. Amy Johnson says:

"My intention for this work is that it is widely shared with as many people as possible. Please feel free to reprint, publish, and share any part of this e-book with anyone who you think might benefit from it." and "Please include the following with any portion you reprint:Reprinted with permission from the author, Dr. Amy Johnson (www. DrAmyJohnson. com)"

You can learn more about Dr. Johnson's writings at dramyjohnson.com.