How do you guys stop yourself doing it..

I look at keyword.. and for a split second the correct kanji will appear in my head, and them for some unexplicable reason i discount that and think its something else and end up writing it down wrong.. only to see that i've id just trusted my instincts and initial thought it would have been right.

so irritating ><

This shouldn't happen if you have an associated story for each kanji. What you will find, however, is that before long you will be able to just visualise the kanji without even needing the story anymore. At least, I've found that to be the case, and I've only covered the first 104 kanji.

EDIT: You have completed RTK1, so I'm assuming you know what I'm talking about above.

yeah i have stories for 1600 of the 2042.. so theres about 400 i know immediatly without even any thought of a story (as a minimum.. its actually much higher but they still have stories attached)

im thinking its just a confidence thing and i need to trust myself more.. i know all this i just don;t think i do.. everytime i get one wrong and i see the kanji the story immediatly flashes through my mind and its 95% of the time a facepalm moment for my stupidity.

Theres only a few i get wrong because i don't "know" only those that my mind screws up the story (seriously.. how many marriage type keywords did heisig use) or i have a tempory lapse of thought.

altho as a side note on this immersion thing.. i find my retention is lower if im listening to something, i phase in and out of what im listening to ><

I usually find that going with my first instincts work out the best. If my instinct is wrong, I just study harder and really spend some time "internalizing" the story... reading it out loud, tweaking the story, writing it *as* I read it out loud... just really trying to associate the story and the keyword with the parts and the kanji as a whole. I find that after really spending that kind of time (which, on a good day, I'd do when I first learned the kanji), my instincts will be more trustworthy.