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Benefits, Celebrations, and Rewards

August 10, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Your brain is wired for survival—survival, that is, in the rough and tumble world of the savanna your ancestors roamed 2.5 million years ago. Part of the wiring for survival includes the reward pathway, the purpose of which is to help you remember and repeat activities that are good for you and remember and avoid activities that are bad—possibly even deadly.

Every cell in our brains—every moment of our mental lives—is intimately connected to entire history of life on this planet. —Ferris Jabr, Scientific American

As a case in point, the reward pathway is even older than we are; it evolved in worms and flies about a billion years ago.

Your brain’s reward system operates with or without your participation, which is why you can develop habits you don’t want to have that may be extremely difficult to change or stop. The most effective way to alter those habits, or any behavior you would like to change, is to make use of the reward system.

But maybe you think you don’t—or shouldn’t—need to reward yourself for doing what you want to do or what’s in your own best interest. Maybe you believe knowing what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how to do it is sufficient. You’re an adult, right? You have self-discipline and self-control. Or you can develop it. Rewards might be OK for young children. Or pets. But you don’t need them.

If that’s where you’re coming from, well, science does not support your position. It turns out all of us are hardwired to be “insatiable wanting machines.” If we don’t learn how to use the brain’s reward system, it will continue using us.

Gold Stars

I hand out a page of stickers to the clients in my Goals, Habits & Intentions course, and the reactions are always interesting. Some people love them and immediately figure out how to use them as rewards. Others hold onto them for weeks, wondering what to do with them. (“Why do I have these?”) Some have no problem connecting awarding themselves a sticker with getting a reward. Others go through the motions without making that connection.

Stars and stickers are obviously only one type of reward, but they’re easy to get and use and can provide a strong visual reinforcement, as I recently rediscovered.

There are four things I do early in the day and again near the end of the day. I can’t turn them into a routine for various reasons, so that’s not an option. They’re all things I want to do. No one told me I have to or should do them. But in the moment, at any given time, the unconscious part of the brain, which is focused on immediate gratification, can almost always find something more interesting or enjoyable for me to do.

I noticed that a lot of my self-talk was taken up with prevaricating about doing one or more of the four things. Should I do it now or later? OK, I’ll do it after [fill in the blank]. And as the day progressed, it would get easier and easier to not do something and then rationalize as to why that was acceptable. I was using a lot of conscious attention and getting mediocre results. Although I was doing these four things twice a day most of the time, I don’t want to do them most of the time. I want to do them all of the time.

Knowing what I know about how the brain works, I mentally slapped myself upside the head and got out a sheet of small but sparkly gold stars. I decided I would reward myself with one gold star after completing the four things in the morning and a second gold star when I completed them again at the end of the day. I apply the stickers to the small wall calendar in my bathroom where I also keep track of how much walking I do each day.

Instituting the gold star system has had two significant results:

I have had zero incompletions, meaning I’ve been able to award myself all the gold stars I’ve been eligible to receive.
My self-talk now serves to remind me what I have yet to do before I can get the next gold star. So instead of dithering about whether or not to do it, my self-talk serves to keep me on track.

My brain anticipates the dopamine hit I’m going to get from slapping that sticker on the calendar. And instead of having to make excuses for myself for why I haven’t done something, I get to acknowledge and enjoy the fact that I’m actually doing what I want to do.

Benefits Are Not Rewards

A benefit is something that is advantageous or good. Benefits can be short-term or long-term. They result from actions you take. (Of course, you can also benefit from actions other people take or from fortunate changes in circumstances, but you have no direct control over those things.)

If there were no benefit to you for embarking on a particular course of action (completing a project or goal action plan, changing or starting a habit, or following through on an intention), there would be no point in doing it. Benefits answer the question of why you want to do something. So it’s useful to clearly identify all the benefits that would—or could—accrue if you accomplish what you set out to do.

But a benefit is not a reward. I get a different benefit from each of the four things I do as well as a general well-being type of benefit from doing all of them. One of the four things is a series of stretches that takes five minutes or so. The short-term benefit is I feel good during and after doing them. The long-term benefit is I’m more flexible and have less back and shoulder tension. I have to do the stretches consistently in order to get the long-term benefit. Giving myself a reward each time I do them helps me be consistent.

I already knew what the benefits were before I began using the gold stars, but that kind of knowledge has no impact on the brain’s reward system. Knowing the benefit of doing something takes place in the conscious part of the brain; the reward system operates at the unconscious level of the brain (remember the worms and flies?). The reward system isn’t logical; it’s functional.

Celebrations Aren’t Rewards, Either

In behavior-change terms, a celebration is an impromptu acknowledgement of something you’ve accomplished. The difference between a reward and a celebration is in how you use it, not what it is. In order for something to be effective as a reward, you need to crave it. That’s because dopamine is triggered by the expectation of a reward. So in order for you—and your brain—to crave a reward, the reward needs to be something you really want (enjoy) and it needs to be identified ahead of time. What exactly will you get when you complete or accomplish the thing you set out to do?

I know my reward for doing that series of four things will be another gold star, so my brain pushes me to do what I need to do to get it because it craves it. (Sometimes my brain is a really cheap date.) And the more gold stars I accumulate, the stronger the craving becomes. If I were to spontaneously decide to treat myself to a movie or a glass of wine for earning the maximum number of gold stars in a week, it would be a celebration. If I planned to do it ahead of time, it would be a reward.

Celebrations are great! Go ahead and celebrate your successes and accomplishments. But don’t try to substitute celebrations for rewards because they will not help you train your brain to do what you want it to do. If you have trouble identifying suitable rewards, pay attention to how you celebrate and the treats you give yourself. You may be able to use some of those things as rewards.

The Bottom Line

Benefits, celebrations, and rewards are all rewarding to experience, but they serve different purposes in terms of motivation and incentive when it comes to effecting behavior change. Because the reward system operates at the unconscious level, you can’t simply dismiss it or try to circumvent it. The best course of action is to take advantage of it and work with it. Otherwise, you may be unwittingly reinforcing behaviors you don’t want.

The Other Problem with
Affective Forecasting

July 27, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The year it was published, I purchased a copy of the Best American Non-Required Reading 2004, which included an article written by Jon Gertner for the New York Times titled The Futile Pursuit of Happiness. The article reviewed the work of several psychologists whose work I eventually became familiar with—including Daniel Gilbert, Timothy Wilson, and Daniel Kahneman—in the relatively new field of affective forecasting. I was intrigued enough to copy the article, reread it, and highlight a good portion. From the vantage point of now, I see it was one of the small handful of bread crumbs along the trail to creating Farther to Go!

But I filed the article away, and in the interim between then and 2012, seem to have forgotten about it. Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness was already a best seller before I came across a copy of it, and I don’t recall connecting the dots between it and the article I’d been so interested in. I’ve recommended the book to numerous people and refer to it in some of my courses in spite of it’s focus on happiness, not because of it.

Don’t Worry; Be Happy

That’s the other problem with affective forecasting (read my previous post, Miswanting). The emphasis is on happiness rather than on satisfaction and meaning. Happiness is an ephemeral emotional state. We’re simply not always going to be happy—and trying to be isn’t even a worthwhile goal.

We are living in an era in which the Happiness Industry invades and permeates society and every unpleasant aspect of life is frowned upon, and dismissed as an unnecessary social ill. Rather than learning to cope with or contemplate certain aspects of life—fear, sadness, loneliness and boredom—we avoid them, gradually removing our ability to tolerate even the most mundane of the difficult aspects of life. —Siobhan Lyons, Philosophy Now

The things that make us happy are not necessarily the things we find satisfying or meaningful. That’s partly because happiness is a function of the unconscious part of the brain (System 1), which is focused on immediate gratification, while satisfaction and meaning are functions of the conscious part (System 2), which is focused on long-term goals and plans. The pursuit of happiness keeps us fixated on ourselves and on gratifying our immediate wants and needs.

Furthermore, because happiness is an ephemeral and transient emotional state, what makes us happy at one point in time isn’t necessarily going to make us happy at another. But because of the way we’re wired, it’s very difficult to recognize and account for that in the moment.

We’re more different from ourselves in different states than we are from another person. —George Loewenstein, Educator and Economist

And maybe a certain amount of something makes us happy, but too much of it makes us sick—literally or figuratively. Too much craft beer, sex, alone time, hanging out with a best friend, tiramisu, dancing, cooking, listening to music, laughing—whatever it is that makes us happy has at least the potential to also make us very unhappy.

To be fair to Daniel Gilbert, he isn’t advocating the relentless pursuit of happiness, either:

If someone offers you a pill that makes you happy 100 percent of the time, you should run fast in the other direction. It’s not good to feel happy in a dark alley at night. Happiness is a noun, so we think its something we can own. But happiness is a place to visit, not a place to live. It’s like the child’s idea that if you drive far and fast enough you can get to the horizon. No, the horizon’s not a place you get to. —Daniel Gilbert, quoted in The Science of Happiness, Harvard Magazine

However, there is a considerable amount of discussion and debate about how we should approach the subject of happiness. This may be the most useful perspective:

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. —Ashley Montagu, Anthropoligist

Satisfying and Meaningful vs. Happy

One way to bypass the errors we make in affective forecasting is to focus on creating satisfying and meaningful lives rather than happy ones by identifying what we really want. Higher order wants or, as I call them, Big Picture Wants, are abstract but they are neither transient nor ephemeral.

Research indicates that if you aim for satisfying and meaningful, you may get happiness as a byproduct. But if you aim for happiness, you will not get satisfaction and meaning as byproducts. And the people who pursue satisfaction and meaning, even when the going gets tough, report higher overall levels of satisfaction with their lives. Because what is meaningful is less transitory, we have a better chance of achieving and sustaining a meaningful life—and therefore a satisfying one—than we have of achieving and maintaining a happy life.

When we’re oriented to something bigger than we are, and bigger than our immediate wants and needs, we’re less susceptible to the pull of immediate gratification. When we give our big brain (consciousness, System 2) something worthwhile to focus on, we can achieve goals or create things that actually make a difference to ourselves and to others.

Our obsession with happiness may reflect a sense that our lives lack meaning, but pursuing happiness is not the solution. George Loewenstein recommends we invest our resources in the things that will make us happy. I think we’ll be much better off if instead we invest our resources in what makes our lives satisfying and meaningful. That path may be risky and not always easy or pleasurable, but…

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster. –Clint Eastwood

Miswanting: The Problems with Affective Forecasting

July 20, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Affective forecasting refers to our attempt to imagine a future event and predict how we’re going to feel about it when it occurs. The term and the research on it may be relatively new, but we engage in the process whenever we attempt to determine a course of action. The results of numerous studies on affective forecasting reveal that (1) we’re not very good at it, (2) we don’t know we’re not very good at it, and so (3) we keep making the same mistakes when pursuing what we think will make us happy. The term for this coined by Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson is miswanting.

The reason we’re not very good at predicting our future feelings is that we routinely make all kinds of errors, some of which are described below. First the good news: we’re generally good at predicting whether a future experience will be positive or negative. And when we make short-term (tomorrow) versus long-term (a year from now) predictions, we’re pretty good at accurately identifying the emotions we’re likely to feel when we experience an event.

Impact

What we’re not very good at is predicting how intense our feelings will be and how long they will last. This prediction error is known as the impact bias.

Whether people overestimate how good or bad they will feel, overestimate how quickly those feelings will arise, or underestimate how quickly they will dissipate, the important point is that they overestimate how powerfully the event will impact their emotional lives—Timothy D. Wilson, Daniel T. Gilbert (2003)

So we tend to believe that both positive and negative events will affect us more intensely and that the duration of those effects will be longer than they’re likely to be. We think that getting the new job, the guy/girl, the new house/car, or winning the lottery will cause us to feel fantastic for the foreseeable future. We think not getting the job, failing a test, losing a friend, or experiencing a financial setback will cause us to feel devastated for the foreseeable future.

Big vs. Small

We believe that a bigger problem will have a bigger negative effect on us than a smaller, chronic problem or minor annoyance will. But that doesn’t turn out to be the case for a couple of reasons. One is that we tend to respond to and take care of the bigger problems but often let the smaller ones drag on and annoy us indefinitely. The other is that we have a so-called psychological immune system that’s triggered by big problems to help us cope with them.

Misconstrual

In order to predict how we’re likely to feel about something, we need to be able to imagine the event. That’s easier to do if we’ve experienced it or something similar in the past. If we’ve been to a lot of parties, we can imagine—in general—how we’ll feel about attending a party on Saturday. If we’ve cleaned out the garage before, we can imagine how we’ll feel about doing that on Saturday, too. But if we haven’t experienced an event, what we imagine or expect may not bear much resemblance to the way the actual event unfolds. Thinking we can predict the future leads us to believe in the veracity of what we imagine.

Memory

Even if we’re able to imagine an event because we’ve experienced it before, our memory of it—and how we felt at the time—may be faulty simply because it’s the nature of memory to be faulty. And the feelings we experience when remembering a past event are not necessarily the same feelings we had when the event took place. Additionally, when we don’t recall actual details of an event, we may come to rely instead on our beliefs or theories about how such an event will make us feel.

Variability

When trying to decide where to vacation, which movie to see, or which house to buy, we tend to focus on, compare, and overestimate the differences between various options and underestimate their similarities. Furthermore, the order in which people are asked to think about differences vs. similarities has been found to influence the accuracy of their affective forecasting. Those who thought last about the similarities tended to be happier about their choices.

Hot vs. Cold States

When we’re in a “hot” emotional state (anxious, fearful, hungry, courageous, or sexually excited, for example), we have a hard time predicting what we will want when we’re in a “cold” (more rational) state—and vice versa. That means when we’re in a cold state—satiated, for example—we’re likely to predict we’ll have enough willpower to avoid binging on the bag of potato chips we’re picking up at the supermarket. But later that evening, when we’re hungry—in a hot state—we do, in fact, binge eat.

These mistakes—which arise because of the way we’re wired, not because there’s something wrong with us—aren’t the only mistakes we make when trying to predict what will make us happy or sad in the future. But hopefully they help clarify why it’s so hard to make accurate predictions and why we’re often disappointed by the choices we make.

Next time: The Other Problem with Affective Forecasting

Give Up Choice; Get What You Really Want

February 26, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Being clear about what you really want and why you want it is essential if you want to bring about a behavioral change. The what and the why provide you with direction: your highly desirable outcome. But if you don’t feel a sense of urgency about creating that outcome, you’re likely to continue operating on the assumption that you can choose whether or not to do what you need to do to get there.

If you want to change the status quo, the outcome you’re after has to be so compelling that you’re willing to give up the freedom to not have it. I’ll give you a personal example.

Vitality is a highly desirable outcome for me. One thing that contributes significantly to my level of vitality is a combination of physical activities, such as walking, hiking, using a treadmill, and strength training. I generally enjoy doing those things as much as I enjoy the results of doing them. A couple of years ago, I had a much more regular schedule that allowed me to walk nearly every morning, hike a couple of times a month, and get in four strength training sessions a week at the gym. But that hasn’t been the case for the past year.

When my schedule changed, my level of physical activity declined and became hit-or-miss instead of regular. At the beginning of last summer, I decided to start walking for 25-35 minutes every day. That seemed like something I could reasonably commit to. Although it wasn’t ideal, it was a start. So from May 31^st through today, I have walked or walked and used a treadmill every single day, no exceptions.

In September, I decided to increase my target to 45 minutes a day and have reached that most days. In December, I took a deeper look at how important vitality really is to me (VERY!) and realized that walking wasn’t enough. I get a better aerobic workout on a treadmill. In fact, I’d made a few attempts to get over to the gym to use the treadmill in the fall, but didn’t get far because I felt like I had a choice as to whether or not to do it. On December 19th, after an insanely busy two weeks, I decided to start using the treadmill three times a week, no exceptions. Since the best I’d managed during the previous 12 months was three times in one month, I may have been overly optimistic.

But even though my schedule isn’t any more accommodating than it was before, I am now using the treadmill three times a week. The difference is that having decided to do it, I stopped giving myself a choice. I schedule the day and time I’m going to go to the gym. I may have to reschedule once in a while, but because I have no choice, I always get my three sessions in.

Going to the gym brought home to me how much I miss strength training and how wonderful I felt when I was doing it. I had a portable weight bench in the garage and a few sets of hand weights in a closet, and I realized that even if I couldn’t go to the gym to do it, I could do some upper body strength training at home. So on January 1^st, I decided to include three 30-minute sessions of upper-body strength training each week, no exceptions.

Of course, I feel much better as a result of all of the increased physical activity, but maintaining this schedule is far from easy or comfortable. It’s winter now, and on the days I’m scheduled to walk outside for 45 minutes, the wind chill might be in the mid-20s, and snow might be blowing directly in my face. Winter, to put it mildly, is not my favorite season. I’ve been known to hike in the Sandia foothills when the temperature was in the mid-90s. If I could dress in shorts, T-shirt, and sandals all year, I would be ecstatic. But as I’m writing this, we’ve just had three brutally windy and cold days in a row, the coldest so far this winter. If I gave myself a choice as to whether or not to put on multiple layers of clothing and subject myself to the elements, I would never do it.

But having made the decision to invest in my vitality, I’m willing to tolerate (not always silently) the discomfort and occasional pain in the moment for the medium and long-term outcomes I’m after. And because I don’t have a choice in the matter, I don’t waste any time whatsoever debating whether or not to follow through or trying to talk myself in or out of doing what I have decided to do.

When the path ahead is clear, why wouldn’t you take the obvious next step?

By giving up the freedom to not have it, I get to have what I really want. And although it isn’t always easy, it is astonishingly simple.

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box under Explore.

How Do Decisions Affect Your Choices?

February 19, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Moment-to-moment, the vast majority of the choices you seem to be making are being made for you by the unconscious part of your brain. You do have both the ability and the opportunity to affect your choices, but you may not be making the best use of either.

The terms choice and decision are often used interchangeably, which muddies our understanding of the process of taking one action instead of another. So let’s make a distinction.

A decision is a conclusion you reach after some consideration of a significant issue. It involves thinking or deliberation. That means a decision is a result of a conscious (System 2) process. Some examples are: moving to a new city or staying where you are; keeping your current job or looking for a new one; trying to iron out the problems in your relationship or separating from your partner.

A choice, on the other hand, is more immediate and—at least in the short term—usually less consequential. Choices are generally the result of unconscious (System 1) predictions and responses. Some examples are: selecting from a restaurant menu; determining which movie to see; getting up with the alarm or hitting the snooze button.

Over time, the choices you make add up: to an outcome you want or to an outcome you don’t want. If you hit the snooze button every morning instead of getting up when you need to, you could end up getting to work late often enough that your employer notices. That’s probably not a desirable outcome. If you regularly select healthy meals in restaurants, you could end up maintaining a healthy weight or improving your sense of well-being, either of which is a desirable outcome.

If you don’t have much influence over your moment-to-moment choices, how can you influence them to add up to outcomes you want instead of outcomes you don’t want?

If you want your choices to add up to positive outcomes, you need to clearly identify what those positive outcomes are. Not only do you need to know what outcomes you want, you also need to be clear about why you want those outcomes. Identifying the what and the why requires conscious deliberation, and anything that requires conscious deliberation is energy intensive for your brain.

The decision-making process is sometimes protracted and even painful. For many people, it involves making a list of pros and cons, which is not a particularly effective strategy. Trying to imagine how you will feel if you achieve a specific outcome is also ineffective. There’s plenty of research to indicate that humans are notoriously poor at affective forecasting (being able to predict how we will feel in the future). No matter how much time you invest or how carefully you consider your options, you still can’t guarantee you’ll be happy with the outcome.

That’s why the default response is to throw up one’s hands and give in to following the path of least resistance. It means letting your brain continue choosing for you because it’s just so much easier. Learning how to use your brain to regulate your behavior (choices) definitely does not come naturally or easily.

Given that the unconscious part of your brain is completely capable of making the majority of your choices for you—with no input from you—why bother expending energy and mental effort on decision-making or trying to change your behavior?

The short answer is because you have consciousness. You’re driven to try to change your behavior because you can imagine outcomes other than the ones you have gotten or are likely to get if you continue along the path you’re on. Simply following the path of least resistance may be easy, but it isn’t satisfying and it doesn’t provide you with a sense of meaning.

In order to have a meaningful and satisfying life you need to master the process of changing the status quo.

So…what do you want to change? And why do you want to change it? If you can’t answer those two questions, the how is irrelevant.

Note: This is the third in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box under Explore.