PaleoNonPaleo

When you go to bed at night, do you look forward tomorrow?

Do you spend much of your day responding to someone else’s demands, not in charge of your own agenda?

Do you sit a lot, staring at a screen in a cubicle for hours on end?

Do you get bored? Do you feel like you were born bored and you just can’t stand it?

I went to a talk last week on the neuroscience of addiction. It was given by Dr. Alex Stalcup of the New Leaf Treatment Center. The focus was on drugs but as I learned the process of addiction, the changes that occur in the brain prior, during, and after addiction has taken hold, it occurred to me that it is the same process that keeps us hooked on unhealthy food, carbohydrates and sugar especially.

If you’ve read this blog in the past, you’ll know that I view many of the situations our culture terms “failures” as absolutely fantastic opportunities.

Situations where we have had an outcome opposite to the one we want are chock-a-block full of data.

If, following a “failure”, we put our analyzing hats on, we can discern patterns and triggers that lead to the unwanted outcome. We can then predict our behavior ahead of time based on this information and devise strategies to encourage, or even force, different behavior in future.

My experience

I work at home, and late morning, it starts.

Every time the words don’t come. Or I have a task to do that I don’t enjoy. Or I’m bored or lonely.

I’m there.