NAC MASTER STEP 5

Condition the New Pattern Until It’s Consistent.

Conditioning is the way to make sure that a change you create is consistent and lasts long-term.^* The simplest way to condition something is simply to rehearse it again and again until a neurological way is created. If you find an empowering alternative, imagine doing it until you see that it can get you out of pain and into pleasure quickly. Your brain will begin to associate this as a new way of producing this result on a consistent basis. If you don’t do this, you’ll go back to the old pattern.

If you rehearse the new, empowering alternative again and again with tremendous emotional intensity, you’ll carve out a pathway, and with even more repetition and emotion, it will become a highway to this new way of achieving results, and it will become a part of your habitual behavior. Remember, your brain can’t tell the difference between something you vividly imagine and something you actually experience. Conditioning ensures that you automatically travel along the new route, that if you spot one of the “off ramps” you used to take all the time, now you just speed past them—in fact, they’ll actually become difficult to take.

The power of conditioning can’t be overestimated. I read recently that Boston Celtics great Larry Bird was doing a soft-drink commercial in which he was supposed to miss a jump shot. He made nine baskets in a row before he could get himself to miss! That’s how strongly he’s conditioned himself over the years. When that ball hits his hands, he automatically goes through a pattern that is aimed at putting the ball through the hoop. I’m sure that if you examined the portion of Larry Bird’s brain that is linked to that motion, you would discover a substantial neural pathway. Realize that you and I can condition any behavior within ourselves if we do it with enough repetition and emotional intensity.

The next step is to set up a schedule to reinforce your new behavior. How can you reward yourself for succeeding? Don’t wait until you’ve gone a year without smoking. When you’ve gone a day, give yourself a reward! Don’t wait until you’ve lost eighty pounds. Don’t even wait until you’ve lost a pound. The minute you can push the plate away with food still on it, give yourself a pat on the back. Set up a series of short-term goals, or milestones, and as you reach each one, immediately reward yourself. If you’ve been depressed or worried, now each time you take action instead of worrying, or each time you smile when somebody asks how you’re doing and you say, “Great,” give yourself a reward for already beginning to make the changes necessary to ensure your long-term success.

In this way, your nervous system learns to link great pleasure to change. People who want to lose weight don’t always see immediate results—usually losing a couple of pounds doesn’t miraculously transform you into an Elle McPherson or a Mel Gibson. So it’s important to reward yourself as soon as you take some specific actions or make any positive emotional progress, like choosing to run around the block instead of running to the nearest McDonald’s. If you don’t, you may find yourself saying, “Okay, I’ve lost a pound so far, but I’m still fat. This will take forever. I have such a long way to go …” Then you might use these short-term assessments as excuses to binge.

Understanding the power of reinforcement will speed up the process of conditioning a new pattern. Recently I had the pleasure of reading an excellent book that I highly recommend to those who really want to make a thorough study of conditioning. It’s entitled Don’t Shoot the Dog! by Karen Pryor. This book sets forth some simple distinctions about modifying animal behavior that parallel my own distinctions gained in years of shaping human behavior.

What’s fascinating is how similar animals and humans are in terms of the forces that drive our actions. Knowing the fundamentals of conditioning enables us to take control of those forces and create the destiny of our choice. We can live like animals, manipulated by circumstances and those around us—or we can learn from these laws, using them to maximize our fullest potential. Pryor discusses in her book how she learned to utilize pain to train animals for years: whips and a chair for lions, the bridle for horses, the leash for dogs. But she ran into difficulty when she began to work with dolphins, because when she tried to give them pain, they just swam away! This caused her to develop a more thorough understanding of the dynamics of positive reinforcement training.

“There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.”

—MARK TWAIN

The first organizing principle of any type of “Success Conditioning” is the power of reinforcement. You and I must know that in order to get ourselves to consistently produce any behavior or emotion, we must create a conditioned pattern. All patterns are the result of reinforcement; specifically, the key to creating consistency in our emotions and behaviors is conditioning.

THE LAW OF REINFORCEMENT

Any pattern of emotion or behavior that is continually reinforced will become an automatic and conditioned response. Anything we fail to reinforce will eventually dissipate.

We can reinforce our own behavior or someone else’s through positive reinforcement, that is, every time we produce the behavior we want, we give a reward. That reward can be praise, a gift, a new freedom, etc. Or we can use negative reinforcement. This might be a frown, a loud noise, or even physical punishment. It’s crucial for us to understand that reinforcement is not the same as punishment and reward. Reinforcement is responding to a behavior immediately after it occurs, while punishment and reward may occur long afterward.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Appropriate timing is absolutely critical to effective conditioning. If a coach yells, “Great!” when the basketball team executes a perfect pick-and-roll, it has a lot more impact than if he waited until they debriefed later in the locker room. Why? Because we always want to link the sensations of reinforcement in the pattern that is occurring.

One of the problems with our judicial system is that when people commit criminal acts, they are sometimes not punished until years later. Intellectually they may know the reason for their punishment, but the pattern of behavior that generated this problem in the first place is still intact—it has not been interrupted, nor does it have any pain linked to it.

This is the only way to truly change our behaviors and emotions long term. We must train our brains to do the things that are effective, not intellectually but neurologically. The challenge, of course, is that most of us don’t realize that we’re all conditioning each other and shaping each other’s behaviors constantly. Often, we’re conditioning people negatively instead of positively.

A simple example of this occurred with my daughter Jolie’s ex-boyfriend. Jolie was very busy with school, dance, and a play she was in. He wanted her to call him every single day, and when she missed a few days and then called him, he gave her tremendous amounts of pain. He clearly wanted her to call more frequently, yet his strategy for reinforcement was to badger and berate her when she did call.

Have you ever been guilty of this? If you want your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, or significant other to call you more often, how effective do you think it would be to nag them to call? When they finally do call, do you greet them with statements like, “Oh, so you finally picked up the phone! Will wonders never cease? Why do I always have to be the one who makes the call?”

What you’re doing is training him or her not to call you! You’re giving pain right after they do the very thing you want. What will happen as a result of this? Pain will be linked to calling you; he or she will avoid it even more in the future. In Jolie’s case, this pattern was continuous, going on for months until Jolie felt that she couldn’t win. If she didn’t call, she’d get pain. If she did call, she’d get pain. As you might guess, this pattern of negative reinforcement permeated many aspects of their relationship and, eventually, the relationship ended.

If you truly want someone to call you, then when they do call, you need to respond with delight. If you tell them how much you miss them, how much you love them, how grateful you are to talk with them, do you think that they’ll be more inclined to call again? Remember, link pleasure to any behavior you want someone to repeat.

In my consulting with companies across the United States, I’ve noted that most companies try to motivate their employees by using negative reinforcement as their primary strategy, trying to use fear of punishment as its prime motivator. This will work in the short term, but not in the long term. Sooner or later, companies run into the same problems that eastern Europe has: people will live in fear only for so long before they revolt.

The second major strategy companies use is financial incentives. While this is an excellent idea and is usually appreciated, there is a limit to its effectiveness. There is a point of diminishing return at which all the additional incentives don’t really induce a greater quality of work from people. In fact, most companies find that there’s a limit to what they can do in this area. If one constantly reinforces with money, people begin to expect that when they do something of great value, they must have an immediate economic return. They begin to work strictly for financial reward and won’t do anything unless they get it, surpassing and stripping the capacity of the business to keep up with the economic demands of its employees.

The third and most powerful way to motivate people is through personal development. By helping your employees to grow and expand personally, they begin to feel passionate about life, people, and their jobs. This makes them want to contribute more. They do it out of a sense of personal pride rather than pressure from the outside. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an incentive program; just make sure you have the most powerful incentive of all, which is to help people expand and grow.

“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.”

—JOHN LOCKE

SCHEDULE YOUR REINFORCEMENT SO CHANGE LASTS!

When you’re beginning to establish a new behavior or a new emotional pattern, it’s very important that you reinforce yourself or anyone else you’re trying to establish these new patterns for. In the beginning, every time you perform the desired behavior (for example, pushing a plate away with food still on it), you need to give yourself acknowledgement—pleasurable reinforcement of a type that you truly will appreciate and enjoy. However, if you reinforce the behavior every time thereafter, eventually your rewards will no longer be effective or appreciated. What at one time was a unique and enjoyable surprise will become an expected norm.

Because of my commitment to help those in need, whenever I go through airports, I invariably give to those who request money. I’ll never forget one particular gentleman who had staked his claim in a particular spot in front of a terminal I frequented. Every time I came by, I gave him some money. On one morning, I was very rushed and had no money in my pocket. As I walked quickly by, I smiled and said, “Hello! I’m sorry, but I don’t have any money today.” He became angry because I was no longer giving him something that he once was thrilled to receive from me.

You and I need to remember that the element of pleasant surprise is one of the most enjoyable experiences that a human being can have. It’s so much more important than most of us realize. This is the very reason why, if you want a behavior to last long-term, it’s invaluable that you understand and utilize what’s known as a variable schedule of reinforcement.

Let me give you a simple example from dolphin training. In the beginning, to train a dolphin to jump, trainers wait for the dolphin to jump on its own. They catch the animals doing something right and then reward it with a fish. By doing this each time the dolphin jumps on its own, the dolphin eventually makes the neuro-association that if he jumps, he’ll get a fish. This pairing of pleasure to a behavior that the trainer desires allows the trainer to condition the dolphin to jump again and again.

Eventually, though, the trainer will give the fish only when the dolphin jumps higher. By slowly raising the standards, the trainer can shape the dolphin’s behavior. Here’s the key: if the dolphin is always rewarded, he may become habituated and will no longer give 100 percent. So, in the future, the dolphin is rewarded sometimes after the first jump or perhaps after the fifth, or after the second. A dolphin is never sure which jump will be rewarded. This sense of anticipation that a reward may be given, coupled with the uncertainty as to which try will be rewarded, causes the dolphin to consistently give its full effort. The reward is never taken for granted.

This is the identical force that drives people to gamble. Once they’ve gambled and been rewarded—and linked intense pleasure to the reward—that excitement and anticipation pushes them to go forward. When they haven’t been rewarded in a while, often they have an even stronger sense that this time they’ll be rewarded. What drives the gambler is the possibility of winning again. If a person were to gamble without ever receiving a reward, they would give up. However, receiving just a few small rewards, winning just a few hands, “earning” back just some of their money, keeps them in a state of anticipation that they could hit the jackpot.

This is why people who discontinue a bad habit (like smoking or gambling) for a period of months, and then decide to have “just one more hit,” are actually reinforcing the very pattern that they’re trying to break and making it much more difficult to be free of the habit for a lifetime. If you smoke one more cigarette, you’re stimulating your nervous system to expect that in the future you’ll reward yourself this way again. You’re keeping that neuro-association highly active and, in fact, strengthening the very habit you’re trying to break!

If you want to reinforce a person’s behavior long term, you may want to utilize what’s known as a fixed schedule of reinforcement. In her book, Karen Pryor describes training a dolphin to make ten jumps. In order to make sure that the dolphin consistently jumps ten times, you’ll want to reward them on the tenth jump each and every time. You can’t demand too many behaviors before reinforcement occurs, but if the dolphin is rewarded only on the tenth jump, the dolphin soon learns that it does not need to make as great an effort on the previous nine jumps, and quality declines.

This is the same reaction we might see in people who receive a paycheck every two weeks. Employees know there are certain things expected of them, for which they receive regular compensation. The challenge is that many people learn to do only the minimum necessary to receive the reward because there is no surprise. In the workplace, pay is expected, of course. But if it is the only reward, then workers will do only what is expected and the minimum they can do for the pay.

However, if there are occasional surprises—like recognition, bonuses, promotions, and other perks—then they will put forth the extra effort, in hopes and anticipation that they’ll be rewarded and acknowledged. Remember, these surprises must not be predictable, or they become ineffective and taken for granted—this expectation will drive the behavior. Vary your rewards, and you’ll see greater results in making change within yourself or anyone you’re managing.

There is a third tool for reinforcement that can also be used: it’s known as the jackpot. A jackpot can help you to compound the reinforcement. If, for example, once in a rare while you give a dolphin not only one fish, but three or four, for its behavior, it makes the dolphin anticipate even more that if it just puts out that extra effort, there might be a huge reward. This compels the dolphin to consistently give more of itself.

Human beings respond similarly. Often in companies, when people are given a reward that’s much greater than anticipated, it can create great motivation to continue to give great service in the future with the anticipation that they may receive an even greater reward. This same principle can work like magic with your children!

CREATE A “JUMP-START”

The jackpot principle can also be used with someone who’s not motivated to produce any results whatsoever. Again, if dolphin trainers have an animal which they seem to be unable to motivate at all, they will sometimes give it a dozen fish, even though it has done nothing to earn it. The pleasure that this creates is sometimes enough to break the dolphin’s old pattern and put it into a state of such pleasure that it then becomes willing to be trained. Again, human beings are similar. If someone who seems not to have done anything right is suddenly given a reward, just out of compassion and caring, this can stimulate them to take on new levels and types of behavior and performance.

The most important thing to remember about conditioning, however, is to reinforce the desired behavior immediately. The minute you find yourself responding playfully to what used to frustrate you, reinforce yourself. Do it again and create even more pleasure. Laugh a bit. Remember, each time you create a strong emotional feeling, either positive or negative, you’re creating a connection in your nervous system. If you’ll repeat that pattern again and again, visualizing the same imagery that makes you feel strong or makes you laugh, you’ll find it easier to be strong or to laugh in the future. The pattern will be well established.

The minute you, or anyone you want to reinforce, does something right, create an immediate reward. Reinforce it consistently with the kind of reward that you, or that individual, personally want or desire most. Give yourself the emotional reward of turning on your favorite music or smiling or seeing yourself accomplishing your goals. Conditioning is critical. This is how we produce consistent results. Once again, remember that any pattern of emotional behavior that is reinforced or rewarded on a consistent basis will become conditioned and automatic. Any pattern that we fail to reinforce will eventually dissipate.

Now that you’ve accomplished the first five steps, let’s go to the final step….