The Two Wolves

Inside of me there are two wolves. One is called “I ought to” and the other is called “I don’t wanna”.

Kinda like this photo meme of an unruly wolf.

Sometimes it’s “I ought to” running the internal monologue, the “school speakers in my brain” so to speak, and verbalizes things that I ought to do and gets frustrated and surprised that they do not get done.

Other times it’s “I don’t wanna” that’s set out to rest and calm the heck down but can’t because there’s a gnawing guilt.

So it’s not that one is always “the conscious” and the other is always “the subconscious”. That can change. (I know calling it "sub"-conscious has fallen out of vogue in psychology but I wanna bring it back, I do think it's a great name for it, bubbling juuuust under the surface, you can barely feel it out.) But they’re both in control; they equally affect what I actually do.

Belatedly discovering this phenomenon in the mid 00s was a huge step forward for me. It was something I wish I had understood much earlier. (The first 25 years I lived on this planet I had severe procrastination issues. That's why I write so much about that.)

At first, I didn’t understand that they could switch places. I thought “I” was “I ought to”, and that I was wrestling with the laziest angel of all time. But even that level of awareness of the other wolf was a good step forward.

I couldn’t “hear” it yet but I could try to deduce from how it influenced my actions and inactions what it really wanted and try to comprommise with it, or be clear to it, or just validate it.

In that era, a powerful technique when it was really hard to do something and I just didn’t know why I’m procrasting so much was to sit down and let wash over me the thought of how much of a hecking schlep the task is going to be, really fully feel how much I don’t wanna do it. A lot of the time, after doing that, I’ll feel myself rise from the chair and go do it.

That was “I don’t wanna” feeling fully heard and validated, and wordlessly being like “Damn, sis! That was all you had to say! I was worried you weren’t hearing me and that you weren’t taking into consideration my warning that this was going to be a huge pain in the neck!”

I came to see “I don’t wanna” less as an impish monkey on my back and more like a cute monchhichi I needed to take care of, make sure it was heard, acknowledged, taken into consideration. “I” still was “I ought to”, or so it seemed, but I tried hard to not overextend myself, to get rest in, to add food and sleep to the mix in with “I ought to”‘s desire to hack the world and write The Great Pan-Galactic Novel.

Mid ’10s, I found out about how psychologist and roshi Marsha Linehan uses two Euler circles for what I’m calling two “wolves” here; and for actions and inactions that the two can agree on, things that are in the intersection of her two “circles”, she calls that the “wise mind”.

By then I had just about figured out how it’s not always the procrastinating, inactive side that’s lurking under the surface. That the two wolves can and do switch who’s on the mic. To no avail because what we tell ourselves what we’ll do isn’t always what we will do.

And that “I” am not the two wolves. Or I am both of them and more. Or there is no clear atomic delination between what’s one person and the next in this cloud of microbiotics and signal substances and neuron fire. Eww, that got trippy.

Back to the practical tips. One technique I’ve discovered only a few months ago has been to offer some choices. “OK,” the wolf-on-the-mic will tell the other. “Option one: you can lie here and if so put a sleep mask on because it’s bright. Fall asleep or don’t, I don’t care which. Or, option two, go up and make oatmeal. Either of the two options are fine by me. It’s fully your choice and I’m happy either way. Video games can wait because I’m tired and I’m hungry.”

Bob the Angry Flower - The Time Looker-Forward Tube

PS

I don’t usually think of them as wolves, it’s more like “I don’t wanna” is some kinda frog monkey and “I ought to” is a stern teacher, but I thought that the wolven imagery might be more readily understood because of this meme:

Two Wolves - Wikipedia

I like that it makes them more similar to each other than different. That makes the picture clearer.

That meme story is telling you to feed one and starve the other. That’s not me. I’m with Linehan, either wolf can give you some pretty bad and destructive ideas. Listen to your heart fully.

Unreasonable