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When you try something new and fail, are you rewarding yourself for trying, or punishing yourself for failing?
Training is easy to understand when an animal is being trained. The dog does a desired behavior, it gets a treat, and that behavior is reinforced. Simple.
The secret is: We’re animals too, and we train our brains every day.
If we try something new and it doesn’t work, we have a choice. We can focus on the not-working, tell a failure-centric story, beat ourselves up. Or we can focus on the trying, on how hard and how important it is to try things that might not work, how that leads to improvement and discovery, and tell that story. Same events, but a decision of where to focus.
This came up when a reader tried the double-blind sigil test, didn’t get any results on either sigil (as happens to some people), and apologized for it. I told her this:
You did great by trying the test. So many people never even test themselves. If you can, celebrate yourself for stepping up and doing the work, whether or not you got the result you were looking for.
I think this applies to a lot of life.
(Have you tried the double-blind sigil test yet? We’re getting great results, and there’s still time to participate. Try it, and practice focusing on the fact that you stepped up and tried. Thanks!)
If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.Tags: Learning