Many people are very capable of doing the right thing, but they don’t. They may even know the right thing to do, but they can’t get themselves to do it. They may be very capable of savings and investing for their brighter future and they can’t get themselves to do it. They may know what to do to be healthy, trim and fit and here they are fat, sickly and out of shape. They may want desperately to be great parents, but everything is so overwhelming and confusing. They may have tremendous potential to excel in their work, but they just can’t seem to put it all together. They may cherish great relationships, but burdened with shallow unmeaningful acquaintances.
They may be very capable and even know what to do, but they can’t get themselves to do it. They are a creature of habit and the same things happens again and again and it seems so far out of their control. Their habits or habit machine does what it does and they don’t know how to train it or build it to do anything differently. The point is: Training your creature of habit is what is needed. That’s right, training!
Get the whip out and train your lion. That’s training, right? Force yourself to do what you are supposed to do. Inflict “Pain”! Whip, whip, whip! Now, do what I told you to do, you tell yourself. How did that work?
“Pain” is a very powerful driving force. We creatures of habit have a very special system to deal with it. It’s called “Fight or Flight”. Our goal is to either eliminate or push away the pain or run away from the pain. Pretty simple. When we run, there are an infinite number of ways to get away from the pain The only direction you don’t want to go, is toward the pain.
This makes pain a very slow and ineffective way to get to a specific goal. Getting away from the pain has infinite number of possibilities, and the goal you may want is very specific. The lion trainer whips, and pain is initiated. The lion tries to escape, but in the wrong direction. The lion trainer whips, to try to herd the lion to his goal. He goes in another direction or does another unwanted act and the whip is used to guide the lion back to what is desired. Whip, whip, whip!
Creatures of habit are only driven by habits. Habits have the very simple goal of doing things to get rewarded. Getting away from pain is a reward. So pain drives a habit machine. Pain is a very powerful driver of the habit machine. ….. BUT, the goal is to get away from the pain, not learn a lesson or do a job. Once you’ve escape or pushed away the pain, the habit has done its job and STOPS! Yes, habits that are trained with pain, STOP, once the pain stops.
If your goal is good money, good health, great kids, good relationships, excellent job performance, training with pain will last only as long as you keep inflicting the pain. Whip, whip, whip!
The lion moves, Whip! The child doesn’t act properly, Snap! The employee doesn’t do his job, Yell! And everybody jumps to attention to avoid the pain. Does the lion do tricks to show off? Do the children do their chores to contribute and be part of the family? Does the employee do his job to make the company successful?
No, they jump to avoid pain! The lion jumps through the hoop up to a stool because of the pain. He then growls and raises a paw and might attack. The child does his chores and tells his parents he hates them and wants to move out. The employee threatens to leave or drags his feet and does a mediocre job. “Fight or Flight” to get away from the pain.
Creatures of habit do things for rewards. Get away from pain, starts action, but what kind of action? Is it supposed to be some wake up call? Or an attack or revenge: I’m going to teach that guy a lesson. And so many other little sayings that get forced, avoid pain action. It may not be the action you want and it will probably only last as long as the pain or threat of pain lasts.
When a person has a heart attack, the pain and scare may be a wake up call and initiate some good behavior. He may stop smoking, eating healthier, and exercise. This may last a while. … But when the pain subsides, he will probably slip back to his old ways of smoking, eating poorly and not exercising. We are creatures of habit. We do things because of reward. The pain is gone, now smoking, unhealthy food and sitting around is more rewarding.
So if whipping the lion, snapping at my kids and yelling at my employees isn’t the answer? What am I supposed to do, bribe them? Why can’t the lion see if he performed all these great tricks, I could get him all the food and toys he wants? Why can’t my kids see how my wonderful training is going to help them be better adults? Why can’t my employees see if they did better jobs, I would be able to pay them more?
Why can’t I see if I could save money and invest, I would be better off financially? Why can’t I see if I ate and exercised better, I would feel better, perform better and be more attractive? Why can’t I see if I could just develop myself more, I would be more valuable and promotable on my job?
OK? Creatures of what? What do creatures of habit do? >>> Creatures of habit do things for reward. Immediate rewards! That’s why pain works so well, “temporarily” and we often get addicted to using it. So what do I mean reward, immediate reward.
Let say you try to bribe yourself to do work you hate, to get to a great dream or bribe! Then you should know this is going to result in exhaustion, stress, pressure and not getting your dream or bribe the way you want it. Hate of the job will win out and you will end up with some settle for dream. You won’t be able to take the pain and pressure of doing a job you hate and force yourself to do. It may have all the “HUGE” wonderful potential, but you go to work hating your job. Whip, Whip, Whip! You’ll be like the lion that moves and does the least it has to do to ward off the pain, grumbling the whole way.
School is not to be fun: teaching the whipping! Work is not to be enjoyable: teaching the whipping! Doing your chores is not to be fun or enjoyable: teaching the whipping. That is how we are trained and taught. We don’t know any other way. Force is the only way! Isn’t it? Could there really be a way that might work better, last longer and be more productive?
What if the job of schools was to train students to find excitement, meaning and challenge in learning? What if people took jobs that would help them see and train themselves to be valuable and make a difference in making the world a better place. What if children felt honor, pride and value in the little things they did to contribute to the family.
Creatures of habit, we are driven to reward. What we do, needs to have rewards. How do we add rewards? Sense of growth, getting better, love, contributing, making a difference, challenge, honor and pride in a job well done are a few rewards for starters. How are these added? We might be poorly train in adding rewards to our habits. Our lack of training and experience might make this more challenging and difficult, than the easy familiar “pain” or force method.
When a mom makes their infants bed, they do it with love. When they become teenagers, the child is capable and may know how to do it, but is untrained. Should Mom make the bed? Should Mom yell and inflict pain to get the child to make the bed? ….. Or could she train them how to put rewards, like love, contribution, honor, pride into the bed making? What reward could she train to get the child to feel and be rewarded by as he makes his bed.
Why do you need to train that? Why can’t he just make his bed like he is supposed to? Creatures of habit do because of rewards. Rewards that are attached to the habit or habit machine. Attaching value might be modeled, explained and talked about. If we help the child get a reward for him attached to bed making, He will automatically make the bed to get rewarded. But that’s his job, to find the reward, isn’t it? It seems so foreign teaching attaching rewards to things we do, because no one teaches it or trains it. You weren’t taught. So how good do you think you are at adding intrinsic rewards to habits or things you do? Teaching, training or modeling adding value or reward to actions.
Well, let’s ask? Did you teach him how to add reward to his habits, such that he is driven to do it to get the reward? That is he just loves doing his chores? Does school teach their students how to add value what they do to learn, such that they just love learning and doing homework?
I got it! You weren’t trained that way. They used the whip on you and you are exhausted, have stress, guilt, high blood pressure and a “settle for existence”. Is that what you want for your children? Hey, do you want to continue that way yourself? Just because we were trained with the whip, doesn't mean we can’t learn a more productive way to power and guide our habit machine. We could re-train ourselves. We creatures of habit are driven by rewards. What we get out of life, is directly related to the person we become, or the creature of habit, we become.
If you want natural power, get rid of the whip. If you want natural power find ways to attach values to your actions. Moms attach a lot of love, care, pride and joy. Creative people attach love, challenge, creation and excitement. Workers might attach production, quality, functionality, ….. And on and on. Machines are just machines, and do what they do, only if they are powered. If they are intrinsically powered by your values, they will work automatically and naturally. WOW! Work will just get done, and done well!
I don’t want to do it! No added value here. Why do I have to do it? Maybe they are looking for value? Because I said so, just doesn’t seem too valuable. But you are tired and the “Pain Way” seems easier. You know it won’t last, but the reward >> you get to escape and do it later. Wait, they are attacking back. I have to fight! The reward >> to win the battle! This is so rewarding, let’s do this again tomorrow. Neither one learned their lesson. They just got rewarded and learned to fight or flight.
Why do people climb a mountain? Maybe the challenge, to prove something to themselves. Whatever it is, it is inside them. It is intrinsic. They add that to all the doing and beings of climbing the mountain. Why does a person draw or sculpt? The beauty, the appreciation, the challenge, the love of creation? They add it to the doing and being an artist. Why do we do the things we love? We do them because we are rewarded by doing the habit. That’s intrinsic reward. The reward is not from avoiding pain or getting a bribe. Just by doing the habit, we are rewarded. The main question is how did we set that up. How did we add the intrinsic value. What are our intrinsic values and how did we get them? How might we design or create productive intrinsically powered habits?
Here’s the rub. We have a goal and and the habits or actions we are building is weak and poorly rewarded. We are driven by rewards. Instead of taking on the challenge, we distract ourselves with our strengths. These habit machines, already give us values or rewards automatically. When the “pain” of our inability surfaces or someone attacks or points out our weakness, we fold. We get distracted by our strengths. Remember we push back or run from pain. This rewards our escape or attack.. The challenge is there are an infinite number of ways to do that and we look to our strengths for our escape or attack.
The challenge is we are not building the new machine we need to produce our new results. We need new better relationships machine and in the “pain” of the relationship not working we might escape with a strength of work that is valued, acceptable and rewarding. We might need a better financial habit machine and our strength of proper social or status gives us attacks the idea of investing and savings. We might need better health habits and attack the plan with a social or status excuse. New habits, new functional habit machines, do not have the intrinsically powerful drives of our strengths. So what do you do? We use them to avoid pain and get their intrinsic reward to boot.
Bribes and “Pain” are extrinsic, temporary powers. But they can be used to initiate a weak new habit machine: Initiate, start, …. NOT maintain! Machines started with bribes or pain must be quickly finding, training and developing intrinsic rewards, ... immediately! A person can start a running habit with a bribe or ridicule on how out of shape and fat they are, but that will not last. He has to quickly find rewards in the running. He might set it up so he finds challenge, value, joy, ….. In the running. He may take on a hill as a challenge. His might sense his growing strength and body tone as he pushes himself. He may find the sense of running freeing and enlivening. As these intrinsic rewards become stronger and more developed, the bribes and “pain” will be less necessary. He will be running, just because he likes it. It is rewarding in itself. It’s just who he is!
The first diaper a mom changes is not fun. She forces herself to do it: “Your the “MOM”, you have to do this!” This will not last, unless she starts to see how important this is to her bundle of joy! How much she loves and cherishes this pooping machine. Changing diapers will soon become something she just proudly does as she is a Mom and loves her little one.
I’ll teach him a lesson attack, force or bribe will be soon forgotten, when the extrinsic force is gone. Unless it is followed with intrinsic training, it is a waste of time. Creatures of habit are in search of rewards. When the reward is intrinsic, the lesson is learned and it becomes just something the person does! Why? ….. Because it is rewarding.
What are the clues? When something bothers us and we want to avoid it or attack it, ... . we are in “fight or flight” mode. Something isn’t working. We are missing a habit or have a habit machine that is non functional. We don’t know what to do and feel helpless. We want to scare it away or run away ourselves. ….. But we need to face it! Not attack it or run from it, face it. Calmly face it and look for a working solution. Not get distracted by one of our strengths or rewarding easy habits, face it. We are looking for a habit or set of habits (habit machine) that we presently don’t have. This is very uncomfortable. This missing or non working habit machine might be for us personally, our family, culture, society or any human level.
When Jesus was on the cross he said: forgive them, they know not what they do. That is because they are creatures of habit, just doing what they do. They aren’t thinking. They are in fight or flight. Machines just do what they do and aren’t capable of anything else. Habit machines are no different. They aren’t to be blamed, they are to be forgiven and trained. Yes, trained with intrinsic rewards. He had set up 12 disciples to initiate that intrinsic rewarding training. How would they get intrinsic value in these new ways and habits?
Martin Luther King had a dream, but the habit machinery of the society was not trained yet. He also knew not to attack or run from the challenge. He faced it: No panic, fight or flight. Training with intrinsic rewards isn’t going to happen overnight. The training of new intrinsically rewarding habits and ways of a culture take time. He initiated the training of habits that he hoped would build the cultural habit machine headed towards his dreams. What would make them intrinsically rewarding? How would society build intrinsic rewards and values into these new habits and ways?
The things that you love to do, the things that your family loves to do exist because they are rewarding. We are creatures of habit. We are in search of reward. The habits that define us, are filled with intrinsic rewards. We automatically and naturally do those things. The lesson is learned and the training complete when the habit’s intrinsic rewards drive the habit. We can’t help it. We have to do it! It’s just who we are, …. because who we are,.... is …. rewarding!
Wait a minute! Rewarding?? Who I am is not as rewarding as I want it to be. Good! How might you make your life more rewarding? Oh, you don’t have that training. Too Bad. How do you add intrinsic value to the things you do? You don’t know? How did you add the intrinsic rewards to the things you like to do?. Maybe you could start their and figure out how to add it to other things you do?
Oh, that’s right your parents, family, friends, culture, society say you can’t add any more than “they” show you how to add. I guess your happiness and reward is up to them! They are thinking average, … at best, less than them. It’s up to you. You decide: Should work be something you dread and hate or something you love and get excited about. I hope you realized: it’s not what work you are doing. It’s the rewards you add to the work, the intrinsic rewards. It’s up to you.
Let’s review: Pain and bribes are extrinsic rewards. They can be used to initiate weak machines, but if used to maintain machines they wear you out, cause stress and high blood pressure and poor quality work. Intrinsic rewards will give you rewards just by doing the habit. These intrinsic rewards will allow the machine to power itself and be something you just do naturally. Intrinsic rewards will actually energize you and give you higher quality results. Adding intrinsic rewards is not taught or trained. “Force” (pain or bribes) is so much easier. Why waste your time training the stupid intrinsic rewards? Adding intrinsic rewards isn’t taught. How can we learn and train ourselves to add intrinsic rewards to our habits?
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