Conditioning Oneself towards Success

You may occasionally come across circumstances when you are aware of what needs to be done but are struggling to find the motivation to carry it out.

Or perhaps you can begin a task, but you just can’t seem to keep up the motivation to see it through to completion.

You’ll undoubtedly start to notice a negative impact on your general sense of confidence if such a problem persists for too long.

You can start to believe that you lack motivation and that you simply don’t want success badly enough.

Conditioning, which has two main varieties—thought conditioning and behavioral conditioning—can be used as a remedy for this issue.

The goal of thought conditioning is to influence your thoughts.

This cognitive model of success operates under the premise that if you think the proper thoughts, you’ll behave the appropriate way and ultimately achieve your goals.

The use of positive affirmations in speech or writing, visualization of a successful outcome, transformational vocabulary (using positive rather than negative words to describe your circumstances, such as “I’m having a wonderful day”), and specific types of meditation are all examples of thought conditioning.

And in many circumstances, thought conditioning is quite powerful, especially when unhelpful thoughts are what’s generating the issue.

A behavioral model of success is the source of behavioral conditioning.

According to this paradigm, irrespective of what you think, if you take the right steps, you’ll get the outcomes you want.

Behavioral conditioning places minimal emphasis on your thoughts and is more concerned with creating new patterns of behavior.

Many behaviorists argue that if you act appropriately, the appropriate thoughts will naturally follow.

Setting an alarm clock to wake you up every morning, rewarding yourself with something material after putting in a few more hours of work, or disciplining your child for misbehaving are all examples of behavioral conditioning.

Many have had terrific results with both types of conditioning.

However, it’s realized that behavioral conditioning is far quicker and more successful.

One issue with thought conditioning is that if the proper steps are not taken as soon as possible, your conduct may end up counter the precise concepts you are seeking to embrace.

For instance, if you’re attempting to stop smoking and you concentrate on thinking that you’re a nonsmoker and repeat mantras to such purpose every day, but you continue to smoke while doing so you’re sending conflicting messages and you’ll probably relapse.

Your ongoing actions are also a confirmation.

However, if you are physically able to stop smoking even while you believe you are still a smoker, such behavior will usually lead to ideas of not being a smoker.

When modifying your behavior alone (independent of how you think) is sufficient to guarantee a result, behavioral conditioning is most effective.

For instance, contrary of what you may think, if you avoid making impulsive purchases, you will save money.

I concur with behaviorists that activity is motivated by motivation.

Even if you aren’t initially motivated to accomplish anything, you will find that your motivation immediately rises once you really do it.

A successful day may be tremendously inspiring.

Control and substitution are the fundamental concepts underlie behavioral conditioning.

Determine the steps you must take to achieve your goals (i.e., how you need to behave).

Then train your body to carry out those activities.

Make sure your action will lead to the outcomes you desire because you are always acting in some way.

Take charge of the issue and replace the improper behavior with the right one if you discover that your actions are inconsistent with your aims.

Simply putting in the time is sufficient for achieving many goals; doing so will get you 80% of the way there.

The issue is that the majority of people unconsciously indulge in actions that will ensure substandard outcomes.

Review your actions from the previous month.

Have your activities and results been in harmony?

Will acting differently for the remainder of the month affect your outcomes?

Where do you notice discrepancies between the outcomes you desire and your present behavioral patterns?

What modifications do you want to see?

Thoughts of Pavlina