Okay, let's get super technical. May as well, it is LW after all.
You start off as a baby who can't even crawl. Eventually, after much effort and encouragement from loving voices you get your feet below you and you stand up.
Now that you're standing (1) you face your first challenge: Walking. You take one leg and put most of it in front of the other, you fall. (1) Why? Because you forgot to move your foot. So you stand up again, (2) and you get your leg AND your foot in front of the other. You crash down on the dog. (2) Gotta get that balance in check, babe!...
you start standing, you end standing.
First comment on this thing. I've lurked for a few months now. :)
I appreciate what super power you're trying to unveil here and I'd like to contribute a few thoughts from my own experience. I'll try to offer a more robust mechanism for coercing your own behavior: Your memory. I think you touched on it when you gave the example of smelling, touching, and staring at the cake followed by throwing it away. You stopped there, however, not citing what about that ritual coerces future behavior. Memory is what makes that happen.
Memory of how good the cake tastes i...
It's a ratio of standing vs falling.
Stand first. Fall. Stand. No matter how many times you fall, stand up once more. That always keeps the ratio of standing higher than falling. This is straight-forward, no?