Do not punish the behaviour you want to see
I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?
But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize, snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?
Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)
Or any sentence containing the word “finally”.
If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.
Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.
I thought this was going to be about animal training, but the same still applies to human animals: Reward behaviours you want to be repeated!
