once, a long time ago, the rationalists were briefly into this idea of "operant conditioning yourself" for doing things you wanted to do - e.g. going "yes!" and pumping your fist after you completed a task on your to-do list
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i mostly don't think this works and it felt fake and lame and bad to me for a long time
but lately i've been catching myself doing a kind of congratulating myself after doing things i'm glad i did. but it feels good and i don't feel like i'm forcing it
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and it's not about "conditioning myself" which to me is just such an icky and gross frame, one part of me treating another part as if it has no agency
it just sometimes feels like the right thing to do, the same way i congratulate other people
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also i do it by... i'm not sure how to describe it but i take on a particular personality when i do it, like i used to be as a teenager playing halo with the lads, or like a gaming youtuber
like "yooo let's fucking gooo" kinda energy which feels great and not fake to me
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this sorta goes back to when i started trying to enjoy video games on purpose - when i did a cool thing i felt good about i wanted to congratulate myself by saying shit like "i am a GENIUS, i am the SMARTEST MAN ALIVE" and i just rolled with it 😅
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so one of the several things i tried was this: i noticed that i wasn't really paying attention to the video games i was using to self-soothe. so, even though it felt extremely self-indulgent and kinda cringe, i tried enjoying them more on purpose
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me [feeling pleased about a cool thing i did with a client]: big brain strats over here. big... big heart strats?
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this thing about being called a chad by your grandma feels related. there's probably a whole thing here about like "how would you like an ideal parent to congratulate you" or "how would you like an ideal older sibling to congratulate you"
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i guess i am just very sensitive to the implied relationship in whatever kind of congratulations. the self-conditioning stuff the rationalists tried to do felt like a boss-employee relationship which is *not* the kind of relationship i wanted or want to have with myself
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i've been doing a lot of talking loudly and animatedly to myself lately and it's looking like the relationship i actually want to cultivate with myself is "my own fraternity brother" which i fucking love. the landscape of parts as an "inner fraternity"
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i was in a fraternity in college and it was one of the happiest and most socially fulfilling times of my life so that particular vision has a resonance for me it will probably not have for many other people. finding a vision that is resonant for you is probably highly personal
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the ideal parent connection is worth elaborating on in a bit more detail - they talk about "five elements of secure attachment" and the one that surprised me the most was "unconditional support for explorations." like imagine smiling at a baby as they learn how to walk
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when unconditional support for explorations is missing people grow up terrified of stepping outside of their comfort zones. sound like anyone you know 😅 (it's me, i'm people)
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to expand it out a little, according to the ideal parent guys, one of the things your parents were supposed to do was beam love and support at you as you explored the world and tried new things. this is part of the natural learning process
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i've been working with a few clients on, for lack of a better word, math trauma, and in every case so far there was nothing even remotely like "unconditional support for explorations" - one of them was actively punished for exploring 😰
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it's been really wild to see, feels like a whole aspect of the human experience has been slowly rotating into view the more i work with these clients. *learning* can be disrupted by *attachment wounds*
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does a lot of cool stuff in his short snippet of self-dialogue i QT'd the other day, there's a moment here where he congratulates a part for drawing an image of a tree, you can catch moments of unconditional delight in there too
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Replying to @nickcammarata @visakanv and 2 others
feel can you do it? Flash it in our mind. Wow that’s beautiful that makes so much sense, I love the waves on the side like that ....
Okay that’s like a random 30 second livestream. Except almost none of it is lingual it’s mostly just feelings. Maybe 20% lingual
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it's maybe not good to analyze this stuff in too much detail because it's not as if you can replicate it by replicating the details. if i've learned anything about self-love it's that i already have a vision of the kind of self-love that feels real to me and it's really personal
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in conclusion: help me think of greek letters for my inner fraternity so i can chant them to myself, thank you
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oh duh i'm just gonna use my actual fraternity. theta xi! theta xi! theta xi! theta xi!
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