Designing your life, part two
The classic example revolves around junk food: if you’d like to snack healthier, a negative default setting would be for to have lots of junk food available around the house — making the path of least resistance to snack on that. A positive default setting would be to have no junk food in the house; so you have to go out to get it; and instead, to have lots of healthy food around; encouraging the behavior you want.
What other day-to-day behaviors of yours could you apply this to?
Once you’ve ascertained the default settings are in your favor, here’s how to step up the game: train yourself the way you would a wild animal.
We’re hardwired to shy away from pain; and move towards pleasure. Our brain works by association, linking on a visceral level emotional and physiological reactions to pain- or pleasure- producing events.
The original demonstration of association comes from the work of Nobel-prize-winning Dr. Ivan Pavlov; who rang a bell every time he fed a group of dogs. Pretty soon, all he’d need to do was ring the bell, and the dogs would start drooling.
Psychologist B.F. Skinner created a whole host of habits in animals by linking pain and pleasure to various behaviors. We humans work exactly the same way– we associate emotions to songs, for instance, or smells or tastes.
We also learn to link behaviors– if you put your hand in fire, you get pain; so the hand-in-fire-equals-pain link its pretty strong. What behaviors of yours would you like to have more, or less of, in your life? Find ways to use the pain & pleasure links to them.
Smart living mastermind Ali Binazir gave several great explanations on this at the recent Renaissance Weekend in Santa Monica.