On dreaming of bubble tea

I am a fourth into Gabrielle Oettingen's Rethinking Positive Thinking. It is surprising that her research found that dreaming about an act made folks feel like they had done it. This is one of her key thesis points. In goals and achievements, only dreaming of the action would make you less likely to do so. She found this to be true with graduates applying for jobs, students doing homework, weight loss, and even dating. In a culture so steeped in positive thinking, this is far beyond just going against the grain. This type of thinking is liable to bring forth the same forceful pushback as a minimalist lifestyle. It has not been mentioned yet, but the culmination of this book's thesis is the WOOP methodology. WOOP : Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan.

Too soon to say on the last three words. But I had a very interesting idea on the first one. What if we could be using dreaming/wishing as a way to break bad habits. Does dreaming about eating hypersatiable foods ...make you less likely to eat more? I am not so sure. It seems worth a try though? Common knowledge makes me think that dreaming about something is more likely to have us doing it. However the author's research contradicts that.

This goes against every other thing I've read about breaking bad habits. Most tell you to stop thinking about it because doing so strengthens the neural pathways. That makes sense. But I thought to myself, what if we're just not taking the dreaming far enough. Conventional thinking has us stopping right when these impulses originate. Perhaps that is why we are left wanting. The desire for the object has not yet been sated. What if we were to just continue pushing through? I really would like a nice frosty bubble tea, with all the toppings and cheese top. Let me write a narrative in how this would go.

Perhaps it is a magical bubble tea that appears in my hands when I desire it. It is a dream, so why not. I close my eyes and whisper the magic words. I have a bubble tea in my hand. Oh, this magic bubble tea also charged me 12 dollars to my credit card associated with this store. That stings a little. But back to the bubble tea. What a nice store, they omitted the straws so I could use my own silicone one. None of that paper straws, and certainly no plastic ones. This store really loaded on the bubbles. It even has two different types of boba: the regular, and my favourite, juice filled. It is sweet, but not too much so. The cheese foam is dense and adds a delicate tang. They have used real strawberry mash in here. I can tell these strawberries were picked at peak season, they taste sweet. They have used quite a lot too. Not at all like the one bubble tea place I went to that used artificial strawberry flavouring and instead had strawberry pieces printed on the bottle. The illusion was good, the taste not as much. Back to how satisfying this dream bubble tea is. I can keep sipping on it and it does not seem to go down. This tea doesn't run out until I am sated. What an invention.

I keep drinking.

I can perhaps drink a liter of it before I get too full.

Oh no. I feel full. But also very hyper. I drank so much sugar. What will my doctor say? Surely this is not going to be great for my blood sugar. I must have also drank a lot of caffiene. What kind of tea did they use? Did I tip the delivery driver enough? Or am I going to have to deal with a disgruntled employee? Oh no, what are the ethical concerns of the using gig-workers like this? I should have just gone and gotten it myself. Should I have just saved tihs money? Perhaps this was not a good idea.

These latter thoughts may not happen. Though it is likely; this is 1:1 how my brain jumps from one anxious thought to the next. Doctors call it "catastrophizing". This is me trying to be a little funny.

Surprisingly though, I no longer want a bubble tea. In fact, if I were to continue thinking about it- I may well want it less and less. It is not because I feel like I have drank already. More than that, it just feels like pure mindfulness. I don't want it anymore because I have switched from a basal instinctual thought to something more. Fun thought experiment.

I also found out that instead of jamming everything into a single deck in Anki, I can actually just have sub-decks. This way I can do a daily "whole-deck" review and still leave the option open for more targetted review i.e. brush up on my coworker's family members' names before a meeting or on a topic when presenting for it.