One choice becomes a wave.
Use it when
- You're about to make a reactive decision under pressure
- You're choosing the short-term option and know the cost is coming
- You want to build a habit but the daily effort feels insignificant
- A small daily choice is presenting itself and you want to choose deliberately
The steps
- Pause five seconds.
- Map it: next hour, next month, next year.
- Choose the smallest action with the best long-term ripple.
- Reinforce with the Self-Reward Loop.
What to expect
The choice may still look small, but you will have weighed it against next month and next year rather than only against the next hour.
If this isn't the one
- The wave is panic rather than an urge → Panic Protocol
- It is anger, and it is about to cost you something → Anger Protocol
- The wave keeps arriving at the same trigger → The Full Trigger Map
Where it comes from
- Session 7 — the full handout
- WB 1.7 — The Wave (p.11)
- Chapter 7.
- Promising
Prefer it one step at a time? The same protocol as a guided runner in the app, which also keeps a private record if you want one.
This is one of the tools a seventeen-session series teaches, ninety minutes at a time, in a room of six to twelve people. It is peer-facilitated, free to host, and every handout and worksheet it uses is free to take.
Where this one comes from
You have just run one protocol. Behind it is one idea: everything you do is paid for out of a single account, and almost nothing is charged at the moment you do it — which is why the fifth repetition is worse than five times the first, and why a bad night does not present its bill until the following afternoon. Shoulder the Bill is that argument as one continuous read, written out of a workplace injury and the four years afterwards. The manual is the one you open at a page. The Workbook is the one you write in.
three books, one system →Check what stayed 3 questions
Answer in your own words, out loud or on paper. Nothing is scored, nothing is marked, and nothing is stored — this is for noticing what you have, not for anybody to grade.
Before you map anything, the protocol asks for one thing first. What is it, and roughly how long?
Across what three time horizons do you map the choice?
What is the anchor phrase, and what does it say a single decision turns into?