The Prior Obligation System responded with the message: ”You’ve already previously agreed to go somewhere else. You know it’ll be fun, and besides, several people are expecting you to go. Not going bears an unacceptable social cost, not to mention screwing over the other people’s plans.”
This is something I’m very familiar with. My Prior Obligation System is active in the extreme, perhaps overactive, to the point that I once cried for half an hour after sleeping through my alarm when I was supposed to cover a morning swim practice for the coach who was out of town. I feel awful when I have two conflicting commitments and have to choose between them. I’m pretty good at scheduling stuff so it doesn’t conflict, which leads to me being ridiculously over-scheduled, because the long-term suffering of being exhausted a lot of the time is less than the short-term but much more intense suffering of giving something up. This is possibly something I’ll have to address eventually, depending on whether I ever consider “my own happiness” a higher priority than “getting lots of stuff done and not disappointing anyone.”
Great post!
This is something I’m very familiar with. My Prior Obligation System is active in the extreme, perhaps overactive, to the point that I once cried for half an hour after sleeping through my alarm when I was supposed to cover a morning swim practice for the coach who was out of town. I feel awful when I have two conflicting commitments and have to choose between them. I’m pretty good at scheduling stuff so it doesn’t conflict, which leads to me being ridiculously over-scheduled, because the long-term suffering of being exhausted a lot of the time is less than the short-term but much more intense suffering of giving something up. This is possibly something I’ll have to address eventually, depending on whether I ever consider “my own happiness” a higher priority than “getting lots of stuff done and not disappointing anyone.”