TL;DR: If we train our minds to routinely embrace aversion, things that used to be hindered by procrastination become easier to achieve and require less and less internal convincing for their accomplishment.
Aversion Therapy – Do what sucks until what sucks does itself.
Welcome back UpRiver biohacker.
Today we will be exposing you to a concept embraced by many different types of high-performers but notably those in business, and those in the military. This concept is called aversion therapy.
What is Aversion Therapy? Some background.
Spiders, snakes, heights, small spaces, clowns, holes and Steve Buscemi. These are examples of well-known and documented phobias that people all over the globe suffer from day in and day out. If modern psychology has taught the academic and even the layman community anything about getting over phobias, it’s that the single best way to do it, is exposure. [1]
While this portion of psychological exposure therapy is well understood, there exists another finding to this therapy regarding how the behavior of subjects actually continues to change in what is best described as a domino-effect. Namely, after having conquered one phobia, subjects who utilized exposure therapy are actually more likely to continue the pursuit of conquering other fears they are plagued with. [2]
What do phobias and psychological exposure therapy have to do with my procrastination towards meditation, working out, or starting a business? Well, allow us to explain…
It turns out that aversions work in the same way as phobias. In other words, if you routinely expose yourself to things that, basically, you don’t want to do, then you will actually get better at doing so.
Importantly however, that doesn’t just mean if you don’t want to go for a run, that getting your ass outside and running will make subsequent runs easier (although that is also true); it means that by routinely getting out of your comfort zone and actually seeking discomfort, you will actually be more comfortable in all similar stressful situations [3]. Furthermore, doing tasks that you simply don’t want to do become more automatic and feed less into procrastinative tendencies.
How To Implement Aversion Theory
Okay, so now your interest is peaked and you’re ready to get comfortable with discomfort. Irrespective of where you foresee the allocation of your newfound superpower, the natural follow-up question for us at UpRiver, is “how” – how do I begin to practice aversion therapy?
As always, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a classic template example on how to conveniently train yourself to embrace discomfort.
Cold Shower Regiment:
This will be a 30 day regiment and it will go something like the following:
- Days 1 – 7 → Each day you take a shower, end your shower with a 30 second cold blast. I personally bring a waterproof stopwatch in the shower with me so I can record my progress. Turn the shower as cold as it can go (and no, you wont get hypothermia… relax)
- Days 8 – 14 → Over the course of these days, increase the amount of time you are in the cold water at the end of your regular shower, upping the time each time by 15 seconds.
- Days 15 – 30 → This is the hard part, but that’s fine because that’s exactly what we want. This time, you will start the shower off cold. I mean freezing. Remember, as cold as your shower will go. This time you will be spending 5 minutes under the cold water. However, this time around you will be making a conscious effort to expose all the most uncomfortable areas of the body to the cold water i.e. armpits, back of neck, ribs and groin. It will be hard. But this is where the benefits really kick in.
- BONUS: Guys, if you really want this to be hard, we recommend doing your CSR aversion therapy first thing in the morning. The reason for this is that you are warm, groggy, and the last thing you want is freezing cold water on your balls. Let’s be honest here.
Admittedly, we chose the Cold Shower Regiment because:
- It’s a convenient way to embrace discomfort; and
- Because of the tremendous health benefits associated with routine cold exposure (SEE COLD EXPOSURE ARTICLE HERE)
Although it will take some time, you will begin to see that you procrastinate less and your stress management gets better and better in difficult to manage situations. Again, this is owing to the phenomenon discussed above regarding exposure therapy.
Authors Motivation
This article was inspired by my love for psychology and my endless pursuit to find productivity hacks. The more I looked around for things to help me squash my procrastination, the more I found arrows pointing away from traditional “development of willpower” and more towards developing an aversion towards procrastination. Namely, the more I searched and the deeper I dug, it became more and more obvious to me that the proper approach to these matters was not to focus on building up my ability to stay away from the things I liked that were sucking my time away (such as video games, smoking marajuana and going out drinking); but it was more effective to build up my resistances to my aversions. Thankfully, with the help of academic psychological studies, along came my intrigue into aversion therapy – and honestly, it’s the real deal. Give it a try.
Conclusion
In life there’s lots of shit we just… don’t want to do. Better yet, when moving UpRiver, there are lots of hurdles to becoming a truly developed person that you are proud to see staring back at you when you catch your reflection in a car window on the street. Aversion therapy, in its various forms, helps orient and calibrate our minds such that what used to push us away, simply attracts us as a challenge. With the abilities provided to us via routine exposure to things that, well, suck, we are properly equipped to take on any challenge; ranging from reading that book you said you would, talking to that pretty girl who caught your eye in the mall, doing that first rep on the pursuit of a better physique, or giving that speech you never thought you’d have the confidence to. This is aversion therapy. It sucks, and that’s so you won’t.
Until next time biohacker, and keep moving UpRiver.
REFERENCES
[1] (Lin, Xiangting Bernice et al. “Exposure Therapy With Personalized Real-Time Arousal Detection and Feedback to Alleviate Social Anxiety Symptoms in an Analogue Adult Sample: Pilot Proof-of-Concept Randomized Controlled Trial.” JMIR mental health vol. 6,6 e13869. 14 Jun. 2019, doi:10.2196/13869)
[2] (Craske, Michelle G et al. “Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.” Behaviour research and therapy vol. 58 (2014): 10-23. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2014.04.006)
[3] Ibid.
