Willpower

I often have battles with my own willpower. If I'm making a conscious effort to try and avoid doing something, my brain will immediately find a way to make it ten times harder. I guess that's just basic human nature, really.

I may have talked about this before, but I've been thinking about it a lot over the last couple of weeks. There are a couple of things I'm struggling over at the moment, in a way it feels like I'm trying to keep control of myself, which is easier said than done.
For example, I'm challenging myself to not eat chocolate every other month this year, as I like to tell anyone who'll listen. I've started that this month, and it is getting a little easier to deal with as time goes on, despite the odd craving. Although, it does help that it's being overshadowed by something else that's occupying my mind.
The most common struggle I have is trying not to make contact with someone - whether through text or any other kind of social media message - even though everything inside me wants to, so much. It is a little strange how such a mindset can come about. It's like I feel the need to challenge myself to see how long I can last, as if I'm better as a person if I'm not always surrendering to my impulses.

There was a time a couple of years ago when someone I was talking to a lot went on holiday with family, so I said I wouldn't text him because I didn't want to get in the way of his time with his family and suchlike.

Well, that was bloody hard.

It didn't help that he was still texting me and trying to get me to give in, but even without that, it would have been a struggle. I tried to help myself by using the notes in my phone to write what would have been my responses, and even tweeting relevant GIFs where I knew he would see them, but I still ended up caving a lot sooner than I'd hoped.

Now, I'm currently having a similar problem.
I'm trying to hold myself back, and I'm using my trick of writing what I want to say elsewhere to get it out of my mind, but it isn't easy in the slightest. My brain is going mad with overthinking and worrying - no different to usual, I guess. I know it could hopefully be solved by just giving in, but I'm being stubborn. To me, it would feel like a failure if I did, which is stupid, really. In a way, I guess I'm probably - definitely - making a big thing out of nothing, but the way my mind works means that to me, it's not necessarily unjustified.

Thinking about it, doing this means that the promise I made to try and talk about any overthinking I do isn't being kept, not directly anyway. But I suppose that's kind of the point of this. This is my way of getting my thoughts out, while still holding onto a fraction of my willpower: by waffling into the thin air of the internet. I guess you could call it 'indirecting' of sorts.

I know, it's silly, isn't it?