Addictive Traps

Addictive Traps

Listed below are six traps that interfere with the exercise of will; you will be more vulnerable to some than to others. The Trap Detector, in the Appendix section, will help you identify those to which you are most vulnerable:

• The PIG The Problem of Immediate Gratification: Motivation is much more influenced by the immediacy than by the magnitude of the pay-off.
• Perverse Motivation Motivational quirks that interfere with intention
• Reactance As soon as there is a restriction there is a perverse motivation to violate the restriction – especially if you are forbidden something that is not forbidden to others.
• Urgency You don’t want to miss the chance to get it during the limited opportunity when it is available
• Validation You want to show that you are not a loser, weak, or dependent

• The Karma of Behaving Badly You don't pay for your sins in the next life, you pay for them during this life [the sinful behavioral sequence becomes stronger with exercise and therefore progressively harder to interupt]. Your path of least resistance is your Karma.
• Recursive Traps Paul Wachtel described this trap in as few words as possible: "It is often possible to discern a structure to people's difficulties in which internal states and external events continually create the conditions for the recurrence of each other."
• Attachment Some people fail because they don't care enough to perform well, and others fail because they care too much about outcomes to perform well.
• Dependence If your happiness or unhappiness depends upon an agent outside yourself, you will become its slave, and eventually lose the ability to act as you choose.

Click here to use the Trap Detector to determine your vulnerabilities.