Gambler's Ruin and Doggie Treats

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If you were to train a dog, you would use something called "operant conditioning."

Meaning that when the dog did something you liked, you would give it a positive reward.

And when he did something you didn't like, you would give negative feedback.

But you would need to make it seem random.

If you gave him a doggie treat with every good behavior, the dog would EXPECT the good behavior.

So you have to be careful and SLOWLY decrease the frequency.

At first, when the dog sits, you say, "good dog," and give him a doggie treat.

Then when he sits, you only say, "good dog."

Then you vary the emotional energy with which you say "good dog."

You SLOWLY disconnect the "sitting" to the "reward" and replace it with a new connection.

Namely you say, "sit" and the dog sits.

You create one cause-effect link.

And you slowly replace with another.

It turns out this type of conditioning works on all animals.

Including humans.

This is why it is so easy to get addicted to gambling.

The action of gambling SOMETIMES comes with a positive reward.

Just like the action of sitting, from the dog's perspective, SOMETIMES comes with a positive reward.

But add in our human capacity for self-deception, and you've got a disaster in the making.

Namely, the twin demons of hindsight bias and confirmation bias.

Hindsight bias allows us to actually BELIEVE we are "winning" when we are actually losing.

Confirmation bias allows us to see the random and sporadic wins as PROOF that we are on a WINNING streak.

But then we run out of money.

Needless to say, this feels HORRIBLE.

Which is why gambling is so hard a habit to kick.

Because as soon as you get some more money, the most common thing to do remove the recent sting of loss is to create another winning streak.

This happens in many, many ways.

Not gambling addiction, but how our brain and our biases takes RANDOMLY occurring events and turns them into ACTUAL MEANING.

This happened most when we were very young.

Human brains are still developing for the first couple of decades.

But when we are between 0 and 7, this is when they are the MOST programmable.

This is when most the BELIEFS are formed.

Beliefs that form our personality.

The beliefs that serve as our operating programs for how we deal with social situations as adults.

Some people believe these beliefs are FIXED.

They are not.

You can find them.

You can disconnect them.

And you can rewrite them.

You can take those initial events, and re-frame them to mean ANYTHING you want.

So you can FEEL anyway you want in any situation.

Learn How:

http://mindpersuasion.com/beliefchange/