"I've had a hard day, I deserve it"

This is the belief I most want to be careful with, because there's something right in it and something that's been smuggled in alongside.

You do deserve things. A hard day earns a rest, a glass of wine, a bath, a bar of chocolate, a new jacket if you've been meaning to get one. I'm not going to argue that pleasure is suspect or that rewards are a weakness. A life without rewards is a grim life and this book isn't trying to sell you one.

What I'd like to separate is the reward from the remedy, because they wear the same clothes and do different jobs. A reward is chosen. It's the thing you'd pick on a good day, for its own sake, and you enjoy it. A remedy is reached for. It's the thing your hand goes to at the flicker, to make the flicker stop, and you don't so much enjoy it as get through it. The wine at half past six on a day you'd like to celebrate is a reward. The wine at half past six because the half hour before dinner is flat is a remedy, and the fact that it's the same wine doesn't make it the same act.

There's a test, and it's the good-day test. Would you choose this on a good day, in this form, at this time? A glass of wine with dinner, yes. A glass at half past six in an empty kitchen, on a good day, probably not. A biscuit with a cup of tea at four when you're pleased with the afternoon, yes. A biscuit at twenty past three from the drawer while staring at the screen, no. The good-day version is a reward. The other is an escape in a reward's clothes, and "I deserve it" is the clothes.

So keep your rewards. Have more of them, in fact, chosen, at times you'd choose, for reasons you'd give happily to a friend. What the book asks is that you stop letting the flicker choose them for you, because a reward chosen by a flicker isn't enjoyed. It's used, and the second feeling afterwards is the proof.