Sales Letter to Myself #14: Why Dog Training Is The Secret to a Good Life

original: Facebook post written on November 13, 2021: https://www.facebook.com/mike.ying.personal/posts/pfbid036eySamGecxC74wFkWymNRMDnvv2c31XMg2gSbNfXaHptu6gtRaGk1YCWe4WNqKrol

Why Dog Training Is The Secret to a Good Life

One of the core principles of dog training is that you want your dog to associate massive pleasure with good/desired behavior. (by giving your dog high-quality 100% meat treats)

One of Tony Robbins' core message is that you want to associate massive pain to your bad habits and you want to associate massive pleasure to your good habits.

You had some random thoughts recently: "Am I not doing the exact opposite of this?"

When you work, you complain in your head, you want a break, you feel exhausted.

Before starting to work, you read a manga chapter, you read a light novel chapter, you listen to some amazing music, you drink delicious coffee, you eat a chocolate brownie, you drink tasty water, you dance, you have fun, you scroll the Facebook newsfeed, ...

So basically you create a state of massive pleasure with thousands of different dopamine hits from multiple sources.

You associate not starting to work with massive pleasure & you associate starting to work with massive pain.

Obviously this is not good for behavior change.

You are conditioning yourself deeper and deeper into a procrastination loop.

Now think of yourself as a dog.

When you are doing your desired behavior, keep getting rewards. Get tasty water and great music constantly.

Now, there is a concept called management in dog training.

You want to avoid situations where you do undesired behaviors in the first place.

Create a great environment for yourself where doing your desired behaviors is easy and doing your undesired behaviors is hard.

For example, avoid playing addictive games + listening to great music + drinking tasty drinks + eating sugar + watch porn all at the same time.

It will be impossible to create a situation where you do a good habit + get more pleasure than the previous situation.

That's why Alex Becker is so big on dopamine detox.

You will never be able to create a work environment where you get more pleasure than when you play addictive video games.

From now on, think of yourself as a dog you need to train.

Only get rewards from desired behaviors.

+ Design your environment smartly.

Associate massive pleasure to good habits.

Associate massive pain to not doing your good habits.

Writing this post is kinda a good habit so drink some water now.