Designing Your Life

Controlling Your Mind to React The Way You Want

// January 15th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Personal Development

Some of you might be familiar with Pavlov’s dog experiment. This experiment was done by Ivan Pavlov to measure how much his dog salivated and what response it had to food under different conditions. He soon found out the dog would begin to salivate before he was even given the food. He soon got the idea to ring a bell before the dog was fed and then give the food to the dog. The dog soon began to associate the bell with food, so he would salivate when the bell was rung.


Using this same conditioning principle we can use mind control on ourselves. Perhaps you don’t want to salivate at the ringing of a bell, but what if you became confident before talking to a stranger or felt happy during a hard time? You already have feelings that are triggers by actions, so the hard part is just reprogramming yourself into new feelings for a trigger.


First you must identify the stimulus that is causing the reaction. It might not be as easy as you think. Some things are easy, such as the fear of public speaking is caused as soon as you have to speak in front of an audience. A little harder is finding the reason you hate going to work. There could be many different things that cause this feeling, so you have to identify all of them in order to change your reaction.


Once you have found the stimulus, find out the behavior you would like to replace it with. If you have a fear of public speaking then you can practice relaxing once you start to feel scared. If you aren’t enjoying work, then practice feeling happy at work. Here are a couple suggestions for reactions:

Relaxing

Thinking happy thoughts.

Finding something funny

Concentrate on something different

Think of accomplishments

Play your favorite ‘confidence’ song in your head. Eye of the Tiger is always good.

Recite a mantra

Once you have established your behavior, then you must perform the behavior every time the stimulus happens. It is important to always perform the action immediately following the stimulus. As soon as you feel fear as you are about to speak in public then relax or if you start to feel unhappy because work is boring then you start to list off all the happy things in your life. The key is a repetition of the behavior each time. This means that you have to react to the stimulus many times before it will work fully, but it is worth the wait.


If you do not perform the reaction each time then you risk losing the association with the stimulus. If I start to talk to a stranger without giving myself a pep talk each time, then the fear might come back. I might be able to still feel confident a few times, but it will start to fade as I get used to speaking to people without giving myself a confidence boost. Perhaps you will find that you don’t need it. You might feel more comfortable that you don’t require the confidence boost anymore, or you already feel happy. That is great, then you don’t have to keep up the reaction. If you find you start to fall back into the old habit then start practicing the reaction again.

A different approach using the same technique.

It might be easier to associate an action with a reaction in order to apply to multiple situations. An example of this would be continually thinking positively after you think a negative thought. You might think many negative thoughts, but they will be replaced with positive thoughts. Another example would be feeling relaxed every time you put your hand on the back of your neck. You could use this method to easily relax yourself anytime or to feel happier. You can use it for multiple situations such as relaxing before public speaking, talking to strangers, skydiving, etc.

The same techniques apply, but instead the stimulus is an action you perform instead of a feeling. Every time you want to feel relaxed then put your hand on the back of your neck. Once your hand is on your neck then practice relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing, muscle relaxation, stress reduction, anything that achieves the desired effect. After repeating this then the mere action will start to produce the reaction you want. If you are stressed then touch the back of your neck. It will trick the mind into doing what you want.



Here are a few situations you can apply this to:

Public Speaking

Phobias

Dislike of something, job, person, etc.

Stressful situations

Overcoming habits (Such as not smoking, associate it with a undesired reaction . This means each time you smoke then you do something that doesn’t give you pleasure. Soon you start connecting the habit with the undesired reaction so you don’t want to perform the habit because it will not be pleasurable. )

Diets (Connect eating good food to good feelings)

Sleeping (Only using the bed for sleeping instead of reading, writing, lounging, etc. You will be more likely to feel tired if you only go to bed when you want to sleep.)

Exercising (If you feel good about yourself before exercising then you will want to exercise more)

Overcoming Pain (Focus on something powerful as soon you feel pain, and relax as much as possible)

If you have any good uses for these techniques, please leave a comment about it.


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Even If You Fail, It Won’t Effect Your Happiness Level

// January 11th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Personal Development

The bad news is that you won’t be much happier if you do become a millionaire. The good news is you won’t be much less happier if you fail at something.

The point is that you have a baseline level of happiness and it won’t be altered too much by events that happen in your life. Let’s start with a nice example. A study by Affleck Tennen in Coping: The Psychology of What Works showed that identical and fraternal twins are born with a set point for a level of happiness that is inherited by parents. We are likely to return to this baseline level of happiness after good and bad events. This can be seen with an article by Forbes that states, “Lottery winners return to their previous level of happiness after five years. Increases in income just don’t seem to make people happier — and most negative life experiences likewise have only a small impact on long-term satisfaction.” This means that you aren’t likely to ruin your life with taking risks.

Reasons to take risks

So, if research shows that you aren’t likely to greatly reduce your happiness level then why not take a few more risks. Millionaires , on average, describe themselves as happy as blue collar workers. You shouldn’t worry about making less money then, because you aren’t likely to be much less happier. There is a possibility you will be happier though. If you dislike your job then you will increase your level of happiness because you will have changed your circumstances. You can have the job you really want.

You can also take more risks in your life. You might fail, but it won’t affect you forever. There will be disappointment for a little while, but research shows that you will return to a normal happiness level. Think about something that you did five years ago, such as something stupid that you regretted at the time. I can’t remember anything as far as five years ago, but I remember making a fool of myself in front of a girl that I liked at the time. At the time it was a big deal for me and I beat myself up over it. Today I have trouble remembering what the big deal was. I messed up, but it wasn’t the end of the world by any means. I returned to my base level of happiness after a week or two. I cannot think of any mistake I have made that has affected my happiness up until now. The embarrassment you feel today will be a memory in months to come. The mistake you make will be forgotten in weeks or months. If you lose money on a gamble, you will earn it back over time. Time heals all wounds.

Why try if you aren’t going to be happier?

This is where I disagree with the research. I do think that some things effect our baseline happiness. These are our daily activities that we enjoy. I might not remember mistakes, but do I remember achievements? You bet. How hard I worked to get good grades in high school still make me smile because I helped myself prepare for college. I remember every bit of my trip to London, and I am happy that the trip happened. I think that some achievements can improve our happiness. A bad job will lower our happiness because it is a reoccurring bad event, so you can’t forget it. Cultivate relationships and experiences because these will make you happier. Quitting your job might make you lose some money, but you will find a job you want sooner or later. You will be happy. Make mistakes because the bad ones will be forgotten. Make mistakes because they will lead to achievements to remember with a smile on your face.

It is the things that we continually do that make a big impact on our happiness level. You have to try to do things that will make you happy every day. Don’t worry about becoming unhappy. It doesn’t last.


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