With consistency, positive reinforcement can help you build habits that will lead to your best life.
If you have children or if you’ve watched someone experience the ups and downs of being a new parent, you may be familiar with the term self-soothing. When babies learn to do this, they cry less and learn to entertain, distract, or reward themselves. This is a form of positive self-reinforcement. It’s a healthy habit that marks the beginning of autonomy.
The term positive reinforcement simply means giving a reward for a desired action. Over time, this causes the desired action to happen more often. Studies show that many adults struggle to use positive reinforcement on themselves. They rely on external reinforcement. And when the reward doesn’t come as they’d hoped, they give up on their goals.
But when we learn to use the tool of positive reinforcement effectively, it creates long-term habits because it makes the habit something we enjoy and look forward to. We may see a more immediate change with negative reinforcement (punishment), but the change won’t be as permanent.
When Positive Reinforcement Becomes Negative
Positive Reinforcement is often used in a way that’s ineffective. When this happens, it can do more harm than good. For example, if a person rewards himself with a Dairy Queen blizzard after every workout, the effects of the caloric ice cream treat will cancel out and even outweigh the good that came from the workout. They may workout more often, but they probably won’t meet their health goals.
Another instance of positive reinforcement with a negative outcome would be laughing when someone makes an inappropriate comment. The laughter encourages the negative behavior to repeat in the future.
Use Positive Reinforcement Effectively
The key to using positive reinforcement effectively is matching the reward with the desired outcome. These can be physical rewards, social/emotional rewards, or natural consequences.
Here are some examples:
- Token: You treat yourself to a cup of your favorite coffee each time you write 1,000 words on your novel or read a chapter of an assigned book.
- Tangible: You add $5.00 to a jar for every box of clutter you remove from your house. When you’ve finished decluttering, you treat yourself with the money earned. Or you work hard and do your job well to meet the requirements for a raise and end up with the raise.
- Natural consequence: You stick to your diet and exercise program for a year and reach a healthy weight and feel better.
To practice positive self-reinforcement effectively, keep the following tips in mind:
- Don’t accidentally reinforce the wrong behaviors. For example, when rewarding yourself with ice cream after working out, the goal could become the ice cream instead of the exercise.
- Try to mix natural, tangible, token, and social reinforcers. While token and tangible reinforcers are great motivators, social and natural consequences tend to be more powerful and permanent.
- Match the reward to your personality and preference. What works for someone else may not work for you, and that’s okay. For example, one person may reward themselves with uninterrupted reading time. Another person may respond better to watching their favorite sports team.
Positive self-reinforcement is a great tool to help you create practices that will improve your life and help you reach your goals. Be sure to give yourself the benefit of time. For example, giving yourself six months to a year to declutter your home or lose weight allows for a few failures and mess-ups. The goal is to improve over time so the change is more permanent.
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