A nod to Lemony Snicket. But in this case more like a cascade of events. Dominoes. A catalyst.
I used to be able to drink beer with near impunity. No more. Now it goes like this: I have a beer or two at the brewery after work, before dinner. Not only do I get a slight buzz, but I feel like crap, because that’s what beer does to me these days. Now because I feel like crap and am buzzed, I want easy food. I eat something greasy and carby and processed. Now I feel crappy from the beer, not so great from the food, so don’t do anything productive the rest of the evening. Then I don’t sleep well. So even though I only had two beers I end up waking up sluggish and foggy. Then I’m craving greasy food and coffee. Poor sleep has been shown to trigger carb and sugar cravings, which only lead to more blood sugar crashes and carb/sugar cravings. One quick stop at the brewery before dinner and I get nothing productive done all night, eat crappy food, get a bad night’s sleep, wake up sluggish and eat crappy food again and try to fuel myself with coffee. An entire evening and morning, and possibly day thrown off.
There are a lot of triggers like this. Catalysts. Identifying them is important. At least you know what you’re in for if you make the decision. It gives you the power of making a decision consciously. It’s important to identify the catalyst when something really good or really bad happens. It takes work: first the work of realizing there’s a pattern emerging, something good or bad. Then finding what put into motion the events leading inevitably to that outcome. Then training yourself to notice when that decision is about to unconsciously happen, and making it a conscious decision. Before long, it’s second nature and doesn’t take up so much bandwidth.
With the beer example, it’s been a huge help for me to identify this cycle. One night of grabbing beers means a wasted evening with poor food choices. A poor nights sleep means the entire next day is less productive and poor eating and caffeine choices continue. I finally catch up to my full mental and physical capacity more than 24 hours later. The night of the beers is wasted, and the entire next day and night. Put in this perspective, going to the brewery three times a week could mean I would never be functioning anywhere near 100%. I’d always be somewhere in the recovery cycle, never fully “on”. And constantly eating food I know is bad. Consistently suffering poor sleep. Long term low quality food and sleep? Hello disease.
This may seem dramatic, but as we get older, this is the truth. Seeing this cycle has led me to easily cut down on trips to the brewery. The consequences are just too high. The decision is really pretty easy, with this perspective. There are likely a lot of places this can be applied in life. Relationships, exercise, food, drink. No need to make moral judgement, just value judgement. What do I value in my life? Am I doing something regularly that gets in the way of those values?
Identify the particular series of unfortunate events, and do what you can, as often as you can, to avoid knocking over that first domino.