Chocolate and the Suggestible Mind

My newest buddy whom I’ve never met, Charles Duhigg, journalist and author of The Power of Habit:  Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, has the best idea I’ve heard in a while that could go wildly awry:  He says to form a good habit, we need only deceive our brains with chocolate. 

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m squarely behind a belief in the brain’s gullibility and the deceptive powers of chocolate.  In fact, I’m a pioneer in the field.  I’ve completed concentrated semi-scientific studies in my own private laboratory.  I’ve applied the concepts and replicated my experiments.  And now that we have a new champion, in the interest of fairness and forward thinking, I’ll don the lab coat again. 

Oh yes.  I’m down with the hypothesis that forming good habits requires chocolate and tricking your brain.  My brain is already so tricked.  And I don’t mean like a teenager’s ride. 

I haven’t told my brain the truth since Spanx.  Or “skinny jeans.”  Or fat free fruit loops.  Having been off the truth train for many miles of track, my brain might not even be able to distinguish fact from pie-in-the-sky fantasy.  Pie?  Where?  I don’t see any pie! 

See what I mean?  

Given my brain’s current state, I don’t think trying to slip chocolate past the gray matter is going to be all that challenging.  I majored in rationalization at the school of Really, Who Knew?  Therefore, my hopes are high for the prospect of deluding myself into a new life-altering routine starring my favorite downfall from See’s.   

Let’s explore. 

Duhigg (Don’t you just want to pinch his cheek and call him Doohickey?) says the formula for creating a “good” new habit to replace the lifelong familiar self-defeating habit you’ve theoretically extinguished through application of undisclosed self torture is this:  Cue - Routine - Reward.   

In the dark days of bad habits, the formula played out something like this:  Cue – Oh my goodness!  It’s 10am.  Time for my bonbon!   

Routine – locate said confection and consume delicately.  Repeat until shame, guilt or good sense sets in.   

Reward – yumminess. 

When I set about becoming perfect evermore by making resolutions and gritting my teeth, I find that I’m skilled at Step 1, cues.  They’re not that difficult, after all – look at the clock.  Set the alarm.  Gracious me!  It’s already midmorning!  Time for my rejuvenating, healthful workout.  

I’ve even managed Step 2 with reasonable ease and established an exercise routine:  I go to the gym and workout madly for the prescribed 55 minutes.  I get red-faced and sweat.  I stand around after the U-Jam class in my stretchy pants; mop my brow; walk with an athletic swagger and relish the intrinsic value of the workout.  Oh yeah.  I’m good. 

So why does my doofus brain dread the routine and invent every lame excuse to avoid it? 

According to Thingamabob it’s in Step 3, the reward.  I wander afield in cementing the new, more desirable, life-affirming habit because I’ve essentially skipped the reward!  Or, more accurately, I’ve tried to bully my brain into believing that baked banana chips and tofu are rewarding.  No wonder my enthusiasm fizzles!  No yumminess. 

Even the most naive brain can see that eight glasses of water and a celery stalk do not constitute a reward.  All the gold stars and atta boys in the weight room cannot compete with chocolate.  What was I thinking? 

Whatchamacallit says that we need to give ourselves a real reward.  One our brains will recognize as desirable.  Something we already love, like chocolate. 

Instead of a salad, he says, after a workout reward yourself with a small piece (of course small, you nut!)  of chocolate.  That is, if you like chocolate.  If not, then maybe a thimbleful of beer.  Even a Hershey’s Kiss should be enough to make your workout something your brain hopes for. 

According to Dofunny, even though we know the exercise doesn’t cause the chocolate Kiss to appear, like a lab that fetches forever in happy anticipation of his chewy treat - our childlike minds form the association nevertheless.   

After as few as 10 days of repeating the Cue, Routine, and Chocolate Reward, voila!  You’re hard wired for a new life. 

What could possibly go wrong?

St. Valentine's Day in the 21st Century

Having just learned the origins of Valentine’s Day can be traced all the way back to a mid-February fertility festival named for the she-wolf of Rome, I can see why a person might have conflicted feelings.  I’m not sure how much chocolate it will take to eradicate from my tender thoughts of love the image of the mother-wolf Lupa in a cave with Romulus and Remus, even though she saved their lives and they went on to found Rome itself.  OMG.

Even after that the stories wax a bit medieval.  Legend has it that Valentine, a Roman priest, defied his Emperor Claudius by continuing to marry young lovers in spite of Claudius’s wartime decree against marriage, intended to keep men on the battlefield.  Made a martyr by his imprisonment and sentence to death for his defiance, Valentine received countless gifts of roses and sweets from those whom he’d dared to wed. 

It’s said that Valentine fell in love with his jailor’s daughter.  And on the day of his execution, he sent her a note signed, “Your Valentine,” and voila!  The tradition was born of suitors dying with expressions of sweet, if unrequited love. 

We can’t impugn Valentine for our predicament today.  He couldn’t have known from that messy point forward, he’d be canonized, and the rest of us would be duty bound to spend $448 million per year to show our affections. 

Even though an element of coercion clings to the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day, I do enjoy shopping for cards for my loved ones.  Every year I browse the aisles of red and pink, collecting ever so carefully the perfect sentiments for my husband and son, my father-in-law, each of my brothers, my nieces and nephews, my cherished friends, my elderly neighbors, and my cats.  More than once I’ve gotten home and set about addressing the envelopes only to find the cards can’t have been perfect after all.  I don’t remember which one I intended for whom!  Oh well.  It’s the obligatory thought that counts.

I don’t think my husband will get me candy this year as we’ve been hiding candy since the day after Halloween.  It’s the only way not to eat what we didn’t drop into the bags of boogey men or those stockings hung by the chimney with care.  I put it out of sight, or he does.  Then we each forget where we put it.  If we’re lucky, by the time we run across it again in the hall closet or the laundry room, it’s all filmy and undesirable.  One less hour on the treadmill.

Roses are nice.  He used to send me roses at work, from a florist.  That was the best!  I was the object of envy.  Now that I’m retired, our florist is Safeway.  He carries a bouquet home in its cellophane wrap and sneaks it onto the kitchen counter.  But be clear:  I’m not complaining.  I’m blonde, but I’m not stupid.   

I wouldn’t mind a dinner out.  You know, white tablecloths, two forks.  Champagne flutes and a toast to us.  But I know him well enough after 21years to accept that he hasn’t made reservations and now there are none to be made.  All the posh eateries booked themselves full up a couple of weeks ago. 

We’ll have take-out in front of the TV.  A TiVo’d movie and a clink of soft drinks across the end table.  And you know what?  I’m looking forward to it.  He’s the greatest, really.  As his mom told me so long ago – he’s as comfortable as a pair of old shoes.

My favorite old shoes are my go-to fleece-lined boots.  They keep my toes toasty all the way up to my calves.  They’re not really made to wear outdoors, but I do sometimes, to get the paper or feed the dog.  They have a tough soul, er sole, and stand up to the elements. 

He bought them for me actually.  No surprise.  I circled a picture of them in a catalog and left it on his chair.  He took the page and ordered online.  When UPS delivered the box, he wrote on it with a Sharpie, “I love ya, Honey!”

He does.  Of that I’m certain.  And Honey, I love you too.

Happy Valentine’s Day.