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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Damn, “a boss-employee relationship with oneself” absolutely nails a lot of the subtle dimensions of discomfort I have w rationalism
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what about... an elephant and elephant-rider relationship
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the thing that always really got my goat about the elephant-rider stuff is everyone else seemed to feel like they were the rider and i was extremely convinced that everything that was most real and worth preserving about me was in the elephant
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when i tried explaining this to rationalists i would punctuate my point by using my arm like an elephant's trunk and going AWOOOOOOOOOGA