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jackFor many people it helps to think of your brain as an eager puppy. It *wants* to help, but it's not always very good at it. If it's sad, you may need to cheer it up first: trying to train a puppy who's just cringing whatever you do doesn't achieve much.
You might think that you could praise it for achieving the objective and blame it for not achieving the objective, but often that doesn't work, and blaming it for "coming really close" just translates to "feels like it might as well not try". Often better results come from encouraging each baby step on the way until they become routine.
Sometimes it has too much energy and you need to let it calm down a bit. Sometimes its eager for a walk. Sometimes it's eager to help, but what you're doing isn't very fun and you need to make it a thing you enjoy doing together.
But over time, you get there. That was the thing that wasn't obvious to me, that sometimes there wasn't a one technique which fixed the thing, you needed to keep practising and only after months or years, did it start coming naturally. And practising kindness and empathy help, and rage should be used in very cautious moderation if at all.
However, as with many of these metaphors, that's one I expect to help *some* people and be actively damaging to *other* people, so don't force yourself to do this if it doesn't seem right to you, work on what does work.
You might think that you could praise it for achieving the objective and blame it for not achieving the objective, but often that doesn't work, and blaming it for "coming really close" just translates to "feels like it might as well not try". Often better results come from encouraging each baby step on the way until they become routine.
Sometimes it has too much energy and you need to let it calm down a bit. Sometimes its eager for a walk. Sometimes it's eager to help, but what you're doing isn't very fun and you need to make it a thing you enjoy doing together.
But over time, you get there. That was the thing that wasn't obvious to me, that sometimes there wasn't a one technique which fixed the thing, you needed to keep practising and only after months or years, did it start coming naturally. And practising kindness and empathy help, and rage should be used in very cautious moderation if at all.
However, as with many of these metaphors, that's one I expect to help *some* people and be actively damaging to *other* people, so don't force yourself to do this if it doesn't seem right to you, work on what does work.