(1/10)

A silly, comic yet effective experiment I did on myself:

As a Covid prevention protocol, frequent hand washing was becoming a major cause of irritation. I started associating the act of pressing the soap dispenser with smiling in full glory.

The Drill:
Press the dispenser, smile as I turn my head up and start looking in the mirror. Keep smiling till I wash my hands. Stop smiling as wipe my hands with a napkin and carry on with life.

The smile was artificial, forced and made up in the beginning. Gradually, while smiling and looking in the mirror, it started gaining some spontaneity. I kept on doing it for months, all through the covid phase.

(3/10)

Today, I don't have to force the smile. It is completely spontaneous. During the milliseconds I press and release the dispenser and start looking up into the mirror, the smile emerges totally spontaneously. I am serious & irritated at the thought of washing my hands...

I press the dispenser..somewhere between this point and the point of looking in the mirror, the smile emerges on its own...in full glory. Seeing myself smiling in the mirror, bring a higher degree of laughter nowadays. The irritation is all gone!

It's a very simple, silly, comic yet effective conditioning experiment I have done, associating and act of pressing a soap dispenser, with smile, thereby transforming my irritated self into smiling self! This is unbelievably smooth & spontaneous now!

(6/10)

Pre cognitive emotions like irritation & anger are embedded in our subconscious. They help us mostly, but often run us into trouble in modern times.
It is possible to protect us from them by a three step process:

1) Metacognition - recognise the triggers that cause these pre-cognitive emotions. eg: washing hands causes irritation, a fellow driving overtaking from wrong side causes anger etc

2) Conditioning - Associating a trigger with a conditioned response. eg: pressing the soap dispenser with a smile
3) Iterations - force the conditioning several times, till it gains automaticity

(10/10)

I alluded to a similar conditioning in the Tweets 8 - 13 in the attached thread.. https://twitter.com/flaneur_a/status/1232954524119130112