What are you setting yourself up to be captured by? We creatures of habit are always looking to be captured by rewarding things. Once we creatures of habit are captured by a rewarding activity, we keep repeating it until it stops being rewarding, then we look for the next habit to be captured by.
Strategies, plans, triggers, disciplines are the things that interrupt one capture from the next. If there is no interruption, the activity goes on and on. We are sleeping and our alarm interrupts and some sort of discipline gets us up and to our business. Watch little kids at play and they are captured by one thing, then the next and the next, running, spinning, climbing, talking, chasing, drawing, ….. Each one lasting as long as a trigger for a more rewarding activity isn’t seen. Plans and strategies engage us or captures us until the step or purpose is satisfied, then it is on to being captured by the next step, and on to completion
We are creatures of habit. We have certain things that are the most rewarding and we know them. We set ourselves up to be captured by them. I remember as a kid, I loved to go body surfing. I would go to the beach as often as possible. I would swim out and catch a wave and it was amazing. I would ride it and as soon as it ended, I would head back out as fast as I could. I would do this for hours. I was captured by it!
It’s like the chemistry of you and that certain special someone hits, you are captured by them and the chemistry between you. You try to get yourself to be with them and captured by them as much as possible. You are in love and you know it and it is wonderful. The habit machine of you, naturally, automatically interacts with them, no pressure. Being next the them is on fire rewarding. Captured!
When you have painful things in your life, you are looking to either destroy the painful thing or run from it. Either habit machine will be relatively rewarding, compared to the pain. This is the fight or flight response. It is very basic. If we take the pain, face it and handle it, we get some apparent ability or strength. This is not the fight or flight response. This is a trained higher level response, but can be very pleasurable and produce productive results. In weight lifting, this is called the “burn”. It is a pain warning that muscle cells are being destroyed, but it also “means” a stronger muscle will be built and will replace it. As opposed to fighting or stopping or running from this pain, it is embraced as pleasure and something that can capture weightlifters.
When a person can’t read, reading is painful. Reading can be attacked as “bad”, run from ,,,, or embraced as growth. When a person has low social skills, being with people can be painful, and attacked or run from or embraced for growth. If the poor social skills are embraced, it can be a place to be captured by as a “burn” or growth period. Meaning puts pleasure or reward into habits or doings. This meaning will determine if the habit or doing can capture us creatures of habit.
We can not be forced to be captured by an activity. We either are captured or not. We have to set up the habit and ourselves to be captured by it. You can’t expect to be captured by weightlifting, unless you get to the gym and see the “burn” as a very rewarding thing. You can’t expect to be captured by socialization, unless you get yourself around people and see their interactions as amazing and rewarding.
When an alcoholic goes to the bar, he is setting himself up to be captured by the drink. When a person goes to the movies, they are setting themselves up to be captured by the movie. When I went to the beach, I was setting myself up to be captured by body surfing. When we go to the kitchen, we are looking to be captured by something good to eat.
When we go to a boring job, we are praying and hoping we will be captured by something to make the day go by faster. When we do a boring task, we force ourselves through it, suffering from not being able to be captured by what we are doing. These are huge clues! Put things into what you are doing so it captures you. You are a creature of habit and require that.
People that force themselves to go running and hate running, won’t last long. People who eat food they aren’t captured by, won’t eat that food long. People that read stuff that doesn’t capture them, will soon not be reading that stuff. It’s not the running, the food or the reading material, …..No! It’s what we add to it, the meaning, that makes it something that captures us. It’s a training. We could be in control of this.
Kids that hang around kids that love to eat their vegetable, learn or are train to love eating their vegetable. So the easy training is the “hang around” training. If someone you admire and respect, put a certain meaning to something, you try to do the same thing, more hang around training. …. But notice we are being trained to “add” meaning or stuff to things.
If you have a belief, philosophy or mechanism of how things work, it gives meaning to things. The “burn” is an example. Feel the “burn”, build muscles. Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit ups he did. He commented something to the nature of: I don’t know, I don’t start counting until it starts to hurt! When he feels the “burn” he starts count and goes for as much growth as he can handle! Did you catch the meaning he adds to this warning muscle tissues is being broken down?
If you see traveling the road to success as: abundant failure and just a few little wins. The road to success has lots of hard work, training and practice to capitalize on these little wins. But it’s all of it: the abundant failures, the little wins, the training and practice are all part of the road. They are all good and very important things! Yes, even the abundant failures. In fact the failures become exciting as they indicate the speed of travel. This is a very important training.
These little insignificant wins need to be made meaningful, important, ….SIGNIFICANT! … like the”burn”. Yet little wins are not born without all the failures. These failures are so important, too. They go together, and one can not exist without the other. This is a training. You have to start seeing to travel the path you must have both. Your path, is the only way, for you get there and it has both wins and failure. Is this the right direction? I don’t know, the only question is: “Have I set it up so I am captured by it?” Can you imagine being captured by your road to success? Captured by the success habit?
What’s the old story? If you are on the right track to success, and you are not moving, you will soon be run over. Pick a path, get excited about it, get captured by it and get moving. Get connected to your values and dreams and put meaning juice to being on the path and moving, going for it. Success, win, failure, I don’t know. Moving on the path! Meaningful, juiced, rewarding such that it captures your creature of habit.
Are you getting this we setup what we get capture by with meaning, importance. It’s rewarding. We have created so many artificial games like football, basketball, chess, tag and they all have limits and restriction. We artificially set up by what means you score. We create strategies and plans on ways to score. We put meaning into fakes, passes, blocks ….. and so many other things that capture us and our creatures of habit. Playing these games are rewarding, because we have set them up that way. We have added “meaning” to things.
Gamifying things is artificial. Gamifying things means it’s not real and really doesn’t count. In real life we artificially make things important because society, cultural or our beliefs say they are important. Like failure is bad! Agreed? I hope you are re-considering this. Failure is just part of the path to success! It is good! Pain is bad, right! The “burn” says it’s good. We add meaning to things. We need to be adding meaning to support us.
We are creatures of habit. We are captured by rewarding things, but we have a lot more control over what we are rewarded by then you may have originally thought. If we control how we are rewarded, we can control what we are captured by. That is, we can control our lives by what we set ourselves up to be captured by. Meaning we give controls what we get captured by. It’s all about set up. What are you being captured by? What would you like to get captured by? How could you set it up, create the meaning, so that happens?
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