I understand your interference point and your point about “trying”, however I don’t think either of those are my problem. I suppose if I concentrated on some food or music memory long enough I would make myself feel something like the food or music would make me feel, but that doesn’t seem very useful. It seems like it’d be simpler to just say “listen to music you like when you feel down”. I think I tried this a while ago and it worked alright but not great. (Watching funny videos works alright but not great, and it’s not for lack of my laughter.)
What works for me is scheduling work periods for doing the things I don’t like doing and trying to resolve uncertainty related to whether the task I’m doing will actually help me out.
I suppose if I concentrated on some food or music memory long enough I would make myself feel something like the food or music would make me feel, but that doesn’t seem very useful.
Nope. As I mentioned, the main usefulness of accessing a positive experience is to link it to something, not as a way of stimulating happiness.
It seems like it’d be simpler to just say “listen to music you like when you feel down”.
If you feel down, then doing something in order to feel better isn’t going to work nearly as well as addressing the down feeling in the first place.
If a 3:1 positive-to-negative feedback comment ratio is the minimum required for good performance, and the current ratio is say, 1:2 (1 positive for every two negatives), and you can only change one side of the ratio, which one is easier? Saying 6 times as many positive things, or cutting out 5/6ths of the negative ones?
In general, eliminating negatives is less effortful than adding positives, unless you’re already neutral or positive in the current ratio.
(Note: I’m not claiming the Losada ratio has been shown to apply to individual feelings or internal self-talk… but it would be kind of surprising if it turned out to not apply. There are studies of affective asynchrony, however, that suggest that ratio of positive to negative affect is important on an individual level, such that past a certain point in either direction, we cease to feel things on the opposite end of the spectrum.)
Naively, but in reality it depends on the difficulty of removal/addition for the marginal negative/positive.
...which in turn depends a bit on the current ratio. It’s easier to get happier when you’re already neutral or somewhat happy.
OK, how do I do that?
Mostly, I have people consider a circumstance associated with an existing negative emotion, imagine what it would’ve been like if it turned out differently (in order to access the positive feeling), then imagine what it would be like if they had the positive feeling upon entering that situation, and what they would’ve done differently.
That’s a very vague outline, but it is more or less a technique for getting rid of a learned helplessness in a given situation, when done correctly.
The trick is that “correctly” takes a while to learn, because learned helplessness has a tendency to obscure which aspect of a remembered situation is the leverage point for change, as well as what it is that your emotional brain wanted and gave up on in the first place. It’s generally much easier for one person to see another person’s blind spot than it is to see your own, though it gets easier with practice.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to notice that you are even experiencing learned helplessness in the first place, because its only manifestation are a set of options that are missing from your mental map.… which means that unless you are looking carefully, you’re unlikely to realize they’re missing.
Or, you can notice when somebody else exercises those options, that some of your options are missing. (Which is why I recommend people pay close attention to the mindsets and thought processes of people who are succeeding at something they aren’t… it helps to identify where one’s own brain has blind spots.)
I’ll try out your technique a few times; sounds kind of interesting. I don’t think I have significant problems with learned helplessness. My reaction to observing that I’m not doing very well at something is to ask “what should I be doing instead?”
I don’t think I have significant problems with learned helplessness.
Note that, for the reasons I outlined, that isn’t good Bayesian evidence that you actually don’t. ;-)
If an area has been deleted from your map, you wouldn’t be expected to notice unless something forced you to compare your map with the territory in that area.
That being said, some people seem vastly less prone to it than others, so it’s certainly plausible that you might be one of those people. OTOH, those people don’t have a lot of “ugh” fields either.
I understand your interference point and your point about “trying”, however I don’t think either of those are my problem. I suppose if I concentrated on some food or music memory long enough I would make myself feel something like the food or music would make me feel, but that doesn’t seem very useful. It seems like it’d be simpler to just say “listen to music you like when you feel down”. I think I tried this a while ago and it worked alright but not great. (Watching funny videos works alright but not great, and it’s not for lack of my laughter.)
What works for me is scheduling work periods for doing the things I don’t like doing and trying to resolve uncertainty related to whether the task I’m doing will actually help me out.
Nope. As I mentioned, the main usefulness of accessing a positive experience is to link it to something, not as a way of stimulating happiness.
If you feel down, then doing something in order to feel better isn’t going to work nearly as well as addressing the down feeling in the first place.
Consider the Losada P/N ratio as an analagous example.
If a 3:1 positive-to-negative feedback comment ratio is the minimum required for good performance, and the current ratio is say, 1:2 (1 positive for every two negatives), and you can only change one side of the ratio, which one is easier? Saying 6 times as many positive things, or cutting out 5/6ths of the negative ones?
In general, eliminating negatives is less effortful than adding positives, unless you’re already neutral or positive in the current ratio.
(Note: I’m not claiming the Losada ratio has been shown to apply to individual feelings or internal self-talk… but it would be kind of surprising if it turned out to not apply. There are studies of affective asynchrony, however, that suggest that ratio of positive to negative affect is important on an individual level, such that past a certain point in either direction, we cease to feel things on the opposite end of the spectrum.)
OK, how do I do that?
Naively, but in reality it depends on the difficulty of removal/addition for the marginal negative/positive.
...which in turn depends a bit on the current ratio. It’s easier to get happier when you’re already neutral or somewhat happy.
Mostly, I have people consider a circumstance associated with an existing negative emotion, imagine what it would’ve been like if it turned out differently (in order to access the positive feeling), then imagine what it would be like if they had the positive feeling upon entering that situation, and what they would’ve done differently.
That’s a very vague outline, but it is more or less a technique for getting rid of a learned helplessness in a given situation, when done correctly.
The trick is that “correctly” takes a while to learn, because learned helplessness has a tendency to obscure which aspect of a remembered situation is the leverage point for change, as well as what it is that your emotional brain wanted and gave up on in the first place. It’s generally much easier for one person to see another person’s blind spot than it is to see your own, though it gets easier with practice.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to notice that you are even experiencing learned helplessness in the first place, because its only manifestation are a set of options that are missing from your mental map.… which means that unless you are looking carefully, you’re unlikely to realize they’re missing.
Or, you can notice when somebody else exercises those options, that some of your options are missing. (Which is why I recommend people pay close attention to the mindsets and thought processes of people who are succeeding at something they aren’t… it helps to identify where one’s own brain has blind spots.)
I’ll try out your technique a few times; sounds kind of interesting. I don’t think I have significant problems with learned helplessness. My reaction to observing that I’m not doing very well at something is to ask “what should I be doing instead?”
Note that, for the reasons I outlined, that isn’t good Bayesian evidence that you actually don’t. ;-)
If an area has been deleted from your map, you wouldn’t be expected to notice unless something forced you to compare your map with the territory in that area.
That being said, some people seem vastly less prone to it than others, so it’s certainly plausible that you might be one of those people. OTOH, those people don’t have a lot of “ugh” fields either.