Improve your life

The Sun and the North Wind (change through gentleness and unconditional love):

One day the Sun and the North Wind were hanging together and chatting. As usual the sun was humbly powerful and the North Wind was blustering and boasting. The North Wind said, “I bet I’m more powerful than you are.”

The Sun replied, “Maybe.”

The North Wind felt frustrated and started screaming, “You are scared of me. You know I’m more powerful.”

Once again the Sun humbly replied, “Perhaps, you are. It really doesn’t matter does it, does it?”

For the third time the North Wind tempted the Sun into a show of strength by saying, “You see that old man walking in his heavy coat. I bet you I can force that man’s coat off easier than you can.”

The Sun decided to humor the North Wind, smiled and said, “Go ahead, do your worst.”

So, the North Wind drew his breath in deep and blew and blew and blew. The more the cold wind blew on the poor old man the more he grabbed and held on to his coat. The North Wind became angrier and angrier. He blew harder, and harder, and harder until he was blue in the face. Still the man grabbed hold of his coat tighter and tighter and tighter. The North Wind turned to the Sun and said, “Your turn. I love to see you fail as well.”

The Sun gently blew away the cloud between him and the old man. Gently, he sent warmth and unconditional love to the man. Soon the man felt warmed all over. There was a great smile on his face. His heart became cheerful and before long he took his coat off and went dancing down the road….

Within each of us there are the two forces above. We each have harsh severe side which tries to get its way through force. The more force we use whether on ourselves or others, the more resistance we shall encounter. As the say, “What you resist, will persist.” However, we all have that wonderful warm unconditionally loving source of all life hidden with us. It is hidden deep within our heart. Get in touch with the Sun within. Feel the warmth. Feel the unconditional love for yourself and others. As you accept whatever is and send total warmth and unconditional love toward the current situation changes happen as if by magic.

Note that there are times that a little bit of the North Wind force of the stick may be necessary but a little of the negative goes a long, long way. We need to sprinkle a huge amount of the unconditional loving kindness positive Sun forces of the carrot with the tiny amount of negative reinforcement. In fact modern ways of behavior modification in animals only uses positive reinforcement with absolutely no negative. The easiest way to change an animal’s behavior is to notice the behavior and whenever the animal does something you like is to positively reinforce the behavior with a treat, kind loving words or other rewards.

Thus when a trainer wants to make a dolphin to learn to do a somersault at a certain place in the pool, the trainer notices what the dolphin is doing. When the dolphin goes toward the spot the trainer gives a treat. Next as the dolphin regularly goes to the appropriate spot she is only rewarded for jumping at that spot. Next she would be rewarded for doing a part of the somersault and then only for half and finally when she does the full beautiful somersault at command that we see in the show. Any unwanted behavior is just ignored.

The same method may be used to change your own and other people’s behavior. First select some treats including encouragement and pats on the back. Whenever the person does a behavior which is a step toward the final desired behavior, use a treat (note the rules of positive reinforcement given in the next paragraph). When a behavior is unwanted just ignore it. This is especially true when changing your own behavior. Be forgiving to yourself when you do something you do not wish to do.

The rules of positive reinforcement:

1. Only reward behavior you like.
2. Rewards should be given as soon as possible after the behavior.
3. Random rewards are better than rewards every time. Thus it is better to reward sometimes and not reward at other times. There should be no fixed pattern in when you reward.
4. Following the previous rule it is good to have different size rewards. Some rewards are small, and some are large, and then see the next rule.
5. It is best that at times you give “jackpot” rewards. These are huge rewards again given randomly.
6. Behavior not to be reinforced is totally ignored.