Day 15 #100days of writing try 2
July 15, 2019•432 words
It started as a bright Monday and ended up with a rainy night. Had a not so productive day at office but managed to finish what I deceided to do.
Went for a walk for 60 mins listening to Sapiens audio book. Today the author was explaining about how imagined realities continued to exist and explained the concepts of objectivity, subjectivity and inter-subjectivity where the last one is what makes it possible to make the imagined realities like nationalism, religion and caste divisions to exist or even thrive.
Read a chapter of Atomic habits. Started the section that deals with the fourth and final law of behaviour change. "Make it satisfying"
It goes like this "The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. You learn what to do in the future based on what you were rewarded for doing (or punished for doing) in the past. Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them."
This is so true. The first three laws deals with how can you do the habit for this one time and the last one is the one that makes us do it repeatedly.
A year or two ago I read the book called "Marshmellow Tests" where there are multiple research experiments which studied how people who choose delayed bigger rewards to smaller immediate rewards succeed in life. The ability to see the difference in the two and take a good decision had impact on every dimension of the life.
And I liked the idea of "Reinforcement" to enhance the likelihood of us getting instant gratification and repeating the habit. I we want to stop window shopping on amazon or something like that. Everytime you decide against an unnecessary expence just transfer an equivalent amount to the savings account. This action would give us instant gratification of money coming into savings account rather than the hard sacrifice feeling we get when we decide against the unnecessary purchase. Reinforment can be used until the intrinsic rewards of good habits to kick in after that we will be on auto pilot.
I am grateful for another funfilled day and the time God has given me to relax.
Cheers Goodnight.