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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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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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