Why We Do Things We Don’t Want to Do

If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated after spending 3 hours online when you just intended to check your e-mail or after giving up—again—on your promise to get outside, meditate, or eat more healthily, you’re like me. And everyone else I know. What keeps us from turning off the TV, shutting off the computer, or taking one more cookie? Why do we do these things we don’t want to do?

Clearly, some part of us does want to. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), one of the most powerful healing techniques I’ve ever used, starts with a premise that has always made sense to me: every behavior has a positive intention. If we trace back far enough or deep enough, every human behavior, no matter how noxious, serves some benefit we’d all agree on as “good”: protection, self-expression, connection, security, and the like. Trouble is, pursuing those valuable ends often leads us to self- and other-damaging choices along the way. According to NLP, ceasing or interrupting unwanted behaviors means doing the detective work to determine the positive intention and then finding some other way to meet that positive intention. The negative behavior won’t loosen its grip until convinced that its needs will be met some other way.

The world of positive reinforcement would say we simply do what we’re reinforced to do. If we’re doing things we wouldn’t consciously choose to do, some other part besides our conscious mind must be getting reinforced below our awareness. The simplest explanation—and one I intend to research further this year—lies in the power of brain chemistry. The rewards and reinforcers of the behaviors we don’t want remain so concrete that we’re almost powerless to resist. As the “iCRAZY” cover article in this week’s issue of Newsweek describes when talking about the e-mail and texting compulsions, “every ping…[gives us] a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine for answering the bell.” These rewards, according to MIT scholar Judity Donath, “serve as jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion engine.” Like any experimental rat or pigeon, we are animals. We remain subject to our biological and chemical imperatives.

We’re also drawn into the seduction of the short-term. It’s hard to remember long-term goals—reducing the credit card debt, trimming the waist, saving the earth—when the close-by benefits are so tangible. Buying another DVD or good-looking shirt dishes out the dopamine and does it now. There’s no waiting four or ten or twenty years for that groovy feeling. I know every part of my life will work better in the morning if I get more sleep but that next re-play of The Empire Strikes Back popped up on the program guide now.

Often, the compulsions often provide some minimal sense of belonging—or at least the promise of belonging. It need not matter that that belonging may have zero validity on any reality-based measure. Receiving another fund-raising letter from the local land trust doesn’t really mean I’m loved, any more than getting spam from a prince in Nigeria does. But the trip to the post office could bring a surprise package. The ding in my e-mailbox could be an invitation from a friend or a compliment on my work. I may not really care about the latest Red Sox storyline, or maybe I do. Either way, staying up-to-date gives me an avenue for connection with everyone from my co-workers to the guy across from me at the gas pump. Someone agrees with me. Someone likes me. I matter.

Our technologies and social media only amplify these dynamics. Each glossy release brings faster, more life-like sounds and images to stimulate our nervous systems in specific ways. Each shiny update shrinks our attention span further, luring us into the brain-numbing web of multi-tasking. The bells and whistles are designed to distract—and even to addict. The more we watch, the more we buy. The more we play, the more we pay. Corporate minds know full well what techniques break down our resistance. That’s called advertising.

I suspect it’s not just positive reinforcement at work, though, whether through brain chemistry, short-term pleasure or sense of connection. There’s also some negative reinforcement as well. If we shut off all these streams of stimulation, we fear what we’ll find in the quiet. Our demons might poke and prod on an individual level—Where will I find enough money? What happened to my passion? Am I enough?—or they might swirl on a grander scale: How can we do what we’re doing to the planet? How will we stop the spiraling inequality? Will we ever feel safe again? Instead of facing the discomfort, we shrink from what slinks in the shadows. The dopamine-inducing “things we don’t want to do” at least keep us from having to see what we don’t want to see.

Swimming against these tides takes considerable power. As always, though, one takes a first stroke by building awareness. So many of the things we want to avoid—sugar, TV, video games, internet—do offer some benefits but also come with actual addictive qualities attached. They’re set up to hook us. Acknowledging this fact helps us start with making change. When I bought a PS3 video game console for its Blu-Ray capability, I imagined the video games would provide a fun way to connect with my advisees in the dorm. In short order, I was playing the games addictively on my own, cutting into sleep time and course preparation, making me late for classes and meetings, and generally keeping me from connecting with my friends and family. No question, it had me. As soon as I made that realization, I knew it had to go. No shame in the admission. I simply was not capable of resisting the pull.

We can also look to strengthen alternate pathways in the brain too so they’re as robust as the self-limiting ruts we’ve formed over the years. Maybe we start by building in our own self-reinforcement for the positive choices we do make. Here, a strategic mindset can achieve the greatest efficiency. If I reward myself consciously and tangibly for the times I exercise impulse control and maintain mission focus, I’m more likely to make those good choices again in the future. If I reinforce the effort I make, I’m more likely to keep going through whatever challenges I face. Though it’s difficult for those of us raised to be “independent,” we can, of course, ask for help from others to make all these virtuous cycles even stronger.

Connecting with others creates support where we need it and feeds our longing for belonging the healthy way. When we’re in community with others, we actually do belong. We also gain the resilience we need to face our largest challenges together. As Buddhist author, eco-activist and world-transforming sage Joanna Macy has written, despair for the world’s suffering only drowns us when we try to tread it alone. Interweaving our lives with others, with both human and more-than-human communities, places our suffering in the context of larger history and greater resources. We gain greater courage to face the scary places and develop deeper creativity to find new ways out of them.

One choice at a time–or one awareness at a time–we shift towards living the life we intend.