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).