One of my earliest applications of self-programming was to prevent myself from making mistakes, especially social mistakes. I was age 16 when I became determined to develop extraordinary tact. My strategy was to attack the root of the problem, which I identified as losing myself into the social milieu. I felt that being carefree and incautiously letting my inner monologue exit out my mouth was when mistakes would happen the most. And so I came up with a imaginary object to focus on as a recurring wake-up call. I imagined a floating, spinning mesh orb above my head that would remind me to have a moment of awareness. This orb is very similar to the plumbob used to designate player control in The Sims:

If I could always keep this object in mind, then couldn't I eventually be flawless? The way I saw it, my problems all stemmed from insufficient self-awareness.

At the onset of this method I felt totally in command of my person for a whole day. The next day, I kept focusing on the orb, and I felt an even greater sense of empowerment. I started to notice others noticing a change in me, and I felt I had discovered the secret to socializing. But on the third day, I could only bring up the orb half as often, and by the fourth day, it took a significant strain to conjure it for even a glimpse.

Clearly some kind of placebo was what bolstered this method initially. I think this was the first time I had a self-programming method collapse on me, and I anguished over having only had a taste of ideal social composure.

In retrospect, trying to force myself to be more self-conscious made being a teenager much worse. My repeated attempts later to maintain social self-control made me feel fake and stilted. It took me a handful of years to eventually let myself loose in socializing again.