Why can’t I stop doing things I don’t want to do?

You have decided to leave sweets alone for a while. Then you walk into the kitchen and find a box of fresh doughnuts.

“You’ve been good all week. You deserve one. One doughnut isn’t going to ruin anything.”

It sounds reasonable, and you are still standing beside the box. You open a cupboard, close it, and look at the doughnuts again. The urge gathers until you seem to be moving toward one before you have agreed to anything.

Then you have eaten three. There is glaze on your fingers, and you cannot find the moment you chose to abandon the decision you had already made.

Now the conversation changes: “Look at you. You have no discipline. You can’t even keep a promise to yourself.”

A moment ago, this voice was making an excellent case for eating. Now it is shaming you for doing exactly what it encouraged. The persuader and the accuser are one and the same.

And that voice is not yours.

I think recognizing that alone can change a great deal. We tend to believe the conversation because it happens in our own head. We follow the encouragement, then accept the condemnation, without stopping to notice the reversal.

You can recognize it around anger, jealousy, eating, sex, alcohol, drugs, or another habit or addiction. “Say it; they need to hear this” becomes “You ruin everything.” “You’ve had a hard day; have another drink” becomes tomorrow's self-reproach.

Notice what is brewing

The words are only part of it. There is also an energy that starts to build, pulling your attention and your body toward an action.

You can feel it gathering at the base of your throat before a cutting remark, or in the urge to send one more message. Sometimes you know perfectly well that you do not want to do it, yet the pressure keeps growing. Acting begins to seem like the way to get that energy out of you.

This is worth becoming familiar with. Where do you feel it? How does it gather? What is it trying to get you to do?

As you notice it, you begin to create some distance. You can recognize the voice and the impulse as things happening within you, without immediately following them. You can feel the pull without handing it the decision.

There is a familiar quotation about that space:

Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response.^[1]

I call the practice of staying there “contain it to transform it.” Let yourself feel the energy and become familiar with how it moves and changes. You can begin in ordinary moments, such as noticing the impulse to pick up your phone whenever nothing else is happening.

When it is stronger than your willpower

Sometimes you will see the whole thing happening and still feel overpowered. Recognizing an impulse does not automatically make it easy to carry.

There is no need to turn that discovery into another reason to shame yourself. You have identified a place where you are weak. That is precisely where you can invite God's strength.

“Jesus, this is where I am weak. I need Your strength here.”

You do not have to arrive before God having already conquered the thing you need His help with. His grace is sufficient.

And if you only notice after you have given in, you can still recognize the accusing voice. Be honest about what happened, put right what you can, and return to God. Struggling with the same weakness again does not mean His grace has become unavailable.

And then there is being in love

Oddly enough, I know there are times when none of this seems to have the same hold on me.

In the honeymoon stage of a new love, I am floating around in la-la land. Someone is in a bad mood, and it does not touch me. The little things that usually unsettle me lose their importance. I feel full and whole.

Even the doughnut can sit there without starting an argument in my head. I am not putting up a heroic fight against it. I simply do not care.

I didn’t need willpower because my desire itself had changed.

That is what interests me. The world around me has not suddenly become easier. The same people have the same moods, and the same doughnut is sitting in the kitchen. Yet their ability to pull me about has changed because of what is happening within me.

The person I am in love with does not even have to be in the room. Thinking of them, remembering something they said, or looking forward to seeing them can bring that feeling flooding back.

They have awakened something, but the feeling itself is happening inside me. I already know what it is to feel that full, that whole, that untroubled by things that usually have such a hold on me. Being filled with love has done something that another resolution could not.

If that feeling can arise within me, wouldn’t it be grand to learn how to return to it whenever I need it?