The Power of Positive Reinforcement: Rewiring Early Neural Grooves

So many of our neural grooves are formed at a very early age. And these early grooves tend to be deep ones that we don’t overcome easily. A famous study was done many years ago in which researchers followed young children around for many days and tracked how many positive and negative comments the kids received. They were astounded to discover that for every one positive comment the kids received 14 negative remarks from the people they interacted with. FOURTEEN! What this shows is that young minds are mostly molded through negative reinforcement. So they grow up into adults who tend to think negatively about themselves, others, and life in general. And what makes this especially problematic is that they often don’t even realize their way of thinking is negative! Their stories feel like the truth to them. If you have ever been trained by a dog trainer on how to train your dog you learned that you only train dogs through positive reinforcement. That negative reinforcement doesn’t work so well. That it actually frightens dogs and leaves them feel confused and sporadic in their behavior. We humans are a social creature who needs their “pack” just like a dog does. So we do much better when we are socialized and trained how to be through positive reinforcement too! So when raising your kids or trying to create change in how others are showing up in your life, use POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT whenever possible. It really works.