Social Engineering Blogs

Used Terminology:

Acceptance; Internal reward; Cognitive causation; Ironic Processing a.k.a White bears/Synthetic obsessions; 

TED TALK ON GAMIFICATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2N-5maKZ9Q

[001] Motivation Fundamentals – The Theory behind the Method [001.1] What is motivation? Without going into excruciating detail and omitting some non-vital facts, motivation isn’t actually a thing on its own. To become motivated and capable of motivating yourself, it is key to realize the following: Motivation is not a character trait, nor a situation, nor a state of being. Motivation exists as the product of the equation [Value of Perceived Motivators] – [Value of Perceived Demotivators], where the value is entirely subjective and decided by your own person valuation system. Motivators are: 1) The Expected reward/pay-off; 2) Self-Efficacy (How capable you find yourself to complete the task at hand, or: how likely is it you’ll be able to complete the task?); 3) other Internal or External rewards received during and after your various actions. Demotivators are: 1) Stress in any capacity; 2) Worries or other negative cognitions or emotions that cause stress; 3) punishments, including internal ones, leading to stress, and 4) any counterpoint to your motivators that cause any of the preceding. Example: Your essay is taking longer to finish than you’d have hoped. It’s 0:20 and you should’ve gone to bed before midnight. You lament about how slow you are and how you can “never get anything done in time.” This makes you feel ashamed and worthless. Feeling shame and worthlessness is an internal punishment, stemming from your negative cognition about yourself or your behavior, and this creates stress. Meanwhile, you’ve successfully managed to lower your sense of self-efficacy, which feeds into this. TL;DR version: In one hand you hold your rewards, in the other hand you you’re your stressors. These balance out to create your motivation and, if motivation > 0, will put your brain into action.

TL;DR of TL;DR – Motivation Equation:

Motivation Product = [Expected and actual reward] – [Stressors]

So, to become motivated (Motivation Product > 0), you need to do two things: 1) Increase the value of your rewards, and 2) decrease the negative value of your stressors.
Easy enough so far, right?

Some other facts about motivation.

Fact 1: Internal reward (see: Terminology) works better than external rewards, is easier to last, increases in effectiveness of time rather than decreasing, self-perpetuates, and over-all gradually makes you more satisfied with yourself and whatever it is you’ve done.
*Fact 2: * Internal reward can be generated at will, with practice. Additionally, any arbitrary act or marker can serve to generate internal reward. Further additionally, any act can and should be rewarded, and in doing so motivation becomes stronger and internal reward more valuable, not lesser.
Fact 3: The number one thing stopping you from motivating yourself is your awareness that you are not motivated, and your existing belief, however minor, that you cannot be motivated. These things disappear fastest by exposing your brain to reward constantly, and in any applicable situation, no matter how minor. So, you have to do practically nothing to start the self-perpetuating cycle of self-motivation. How lucky is that?
Fact 4: Smaller steps to a larger goal, as you’ve often heard, work for two reasons, both of which you can deduce by inserting the variables in the Motivation Equation above. The reasons are 1) Higher self-efficacy and 2) Higher perceived reward (since they are all but guaranteed).

[001.2] Simplified Awareness and Acceptance:

*This is a preliminary way to reduce stress, to help you right now, without making you suffer through the elaborate learning process of things like NC/PC lists (Cognitive Reappraisal), exposure and systematic desentization, EMDR-therapy and EFT, etc.
Additionally, in the next section, I’m going to give you a preliminary way to use Awareness and Acceptance, and reward yourself, without making you suffer through creating your own scoring and reward system. For those interested, they will follow in due time.*

Awareness (part of Mindfulness) works, look at this[4] and [this]( http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/08/health/la-he-mindfulness-20110109[5] ]. How does it work, though?

Simply put, brains fuck up, in ways more aptly explained by the theory behind White Bears/Synthetic obsessions. The thoughts/emotions are there, you don’t want them to be there, soon you will fear them being there, you won’t want to fear them being there, and when either the fear or the thought is there or even thought to be there, you will become terribly stressed. Again: brains fuck up. Now how do we unfuck them down?
We acknowledge that they’re there, without doing or thinking anything.
You might think: “What’s this voodoo? What, you’ve heard of this, but how do we learn them? Hey, you said this would be easy, not that I needed to be a Yogi!”
Or, you might not, in which case someone else probably did. So I’m not completely wrong.
Anyway, I promised you an easy, simple way to accomplish ‘Awareness’ and ‘Acceptance,’ without the exhausting process of reappraisal that (Fact!) most skilled psychonauts agree can often cause more stress and fears and NC’s after becoming ‘aware’ of the initial NC’s, and even traumatize you or burn you out in the process. (The theory behind it is interesting but long-winded – think ‘Too aware,’ ‘anticipatory fear,’ ‘fear of what isn’t thought,’ and take it from there.)
Awareness is simply ‘noticing an emotion, physical sensation, or thought’ – those more aware notice increasingly more of these, and as such become better at contextualizing them and devaluing them, or at the very least use the same level of devaluation in a timely and effective manner.
Acceptance is not doing anything about it, effectively allowing whatever negativity (or positivity) is there to exist in your mind without impacting you, the independent and neutral observer.
There’s three other facts that I need to point out, and they all hold true no matter what way of self-regulation or self-management you use (with NC/PC in particular, with EMDR as possible exception):
Not writing down your thinking (specifically: that you’re thinking, though when possible what you’re thinking) is asking for the thought to not leave your mind, unless you’re well-trained at letting thoughts dissipate (through trained mindfulness/meditation). In any situation is better to acknowledge a thought and write it down, both as soon as possible.
Whether they’re positive or negative, lingering thoughts will prove stressful in some capacity eventually.
No even remotely negative thought is worth the energy spent thinking about it, no matter how acute the worry or how real the perceived consequences of not worrying. Caring is okay, worrying is not. This couples with the fact that thoughts are only as real as you let them be.
You’re not going to know every thought or cause of emotion that you’re ever going to have. So, don’t feel anxious not-knowing, don’t try to excavate your underlying thoughts if they’re currently buried to deep – being aware is enough.
If you need help to distance yourself from your physicals feelings or thoughts, remember this: It feels. it thinks. You observe.
Now, finally, we’ll move on to one of the methods to synthesize a limitless supply of internal rewards to boost our motivation, and diminish or eliminate most antagonizing stress the moment it arrives.

[002] Tick Counters and their basic uses:
The first category of helpful tools in any self-betterment arsenal are Tick Counters – incredibly versatile, incredibly simple, incredibly effective.

What is a tick counter?
A Tick Counter is generally a Wrist Counter that you tap once every time you want the number to go up by one. I call it a ‘Tick Counter’ since that’s the sound most watches/apps make when you tap, and because it reminds me of the ticking of a clock, indicating symbolically that every tick is progress. That’s a nice gimmicky addition for me, but call them whatever you want.
Either with an App, or with an actual Wrist Counter, or simply by marking each ‘time’ your ‘x’ happens on a notepad or, in case you’re as forgetful as me, your hand – anything that makes your imaginary count go up is a functional Counter.

What will I use them for?
Anything you want, really – their uses are so plentiful that I’m going to have to cut it down to the bare essentials for the most frequent areas of self-betterment, but I’ll briefly list some alternative uses as I go. These three will be your foremost uses:

1) Positivity Counter: Count every instance you have any unfavorable thought or emotion, about anything, using a general count or categorizing at your leisure.
Now, every time you notice a negative thought, emotion or sensation, become aware of what it is you’re feeling or thinking, or where the feeling is located. Then, preferably out loud, state what is happening in the following way: “It [my body/mind] is experiencing x.”
E.g. *”It is feeling anticipatory anxiety,” “It is frustrated with its spouse’s behavior,” etc.
Breathe in deeply and tense all of your muscles, then breathe out and relax.
That’s one count.
If preferable and believable (depends on your skill at rethinking), you can then quickly rephrase it positively, further distancing yourself: “It will be feeling fine, this is just temporary – and either way, it doesn’t affect me.”
(Further advancement in rethinking will allow you to outright redefine the reality of that thought right then and there, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.)
That’s the second count.
Lastly, you should reward yourself for becoming aware and preventing escalation: “I’ve just kicked the ass of yet another troublesome thought. Damn, I’m awesome.” Using a fist pump or victory stance[6] will help strengthen and heighten that dopamine response you’ll be eliciting over and over.
That’s the third count.

What it will do:
a) You’ll become increasingly aware of how often and what type of negative thoughts you have, and their causes.
b) You’ll become increasingly aware of the relatively low or even non-existent value of any individual negative thought and worry.
c) You’ll learn to distance yourself from your thoughts/emotions and regulate yourself better in stressful situations.
d) You’ll learn to appreciate your own efforts, and your own skill and ability to change your own reality.
e) Eventually, most former blocking NC’s will elicit the feelings of achievement and self-encouragement that d) notes.
f) After a start-up period in which you’ll write down more and more negative counts as you become increasingly aware of their existence, they will gradually lower in frequency.

2) Positivity Counter: Conversely, you could (and should) similarly use a Tick Counter for your positive thoughts and emotions.

What it will do:
a) You’ll become increasingly aware of what makes you feel good, and how often, allowing you to focus on those things.
b) You’ll become increasingly aware of the positivity hidden in the smallest things, and over-all will feel a lot more positive as a result. You’re training your brain to feel positive things!
c) You’ll learn to distract yourself from the negative by paying attention to the positive.
d) You’ll learn to appreciate just how awesome you are. Because you are. 🙂

3) Achievement Counter: Count every instance you’ve done anything remotely worth mentioning, in any way, shape or form, using a general count or categorizing at your leisure.
For this, we are going to describe ‘remotely worth mentioning’ as ‘something you didn’t need to do.’ And something you didn’t need to do is, well, everything.
I won’t go into detail and write out all possible things you could reward yourself for, but drinking that glass of water (tick), brushing your teeth (tick), smiling to that stranger or the street (tick) and noticing his eye-color (tick). You get the gist of it. In fact, be as over-the-top as you want! Creating and amplifying enthusiasm is key to motivation!
In fact, enthusiasm is an extra count! And smiling at yourself for rewarding your own enthusiasm deserves another reward! Counts all around!
Rewarding yourself higher for some things over others is not something I’ll discuss until the section on creating your own reward system, but whatever you do ratio-wise, be sure to reward everything. Learn to appreciate yourself and what you’re doing, however small. If you’re only going to be doing three things on your leisure day, might as well feel like a champion for doing them.

What it will do:
a) You’ll become increasingly aware of what just how many things you already do, allowing you to see yourself as more competent and worthwhile. Additionally, increased self-efficacy.
b) You’ll become increasingly aware of just how much reward you can get from the simplest things, teaching you to be more concerned with what you’re presently doing, and the process, rather than what is in the future, and the eventual goal.
c) You’ll learn to not lament your failings, but instead celebrate your successes, however small. You’ll learn to appreciate just how awesome you are. Because, as I said, you are. 🙂
d) Together with the other two counts, they will help you reach your Critical Positivity Ratio, which is a theorized ratio between good and bad thoughts and feelings that contributes immensely to your happiness and mental health. Aim for at least 3 positive thoughts for every 1 negative thought. Forgive yourself if that’s not feasible at this time.

[002.1] Additional advice

PROTIP 1: Doubt kills motivation. Whatever you want to do: Do or do not, but decide, and support your own decision!
PROTIP 2: It might feel odd rewarding yourself so generously, or learning to love and accept yourself unconditionally. Don’t worry about that – reward yourself for your unease and love yourself for not being able to love yourself.
PROTIP 3: Reward yourself for every n-th counter by writing yourself a small note, explaining just how awesome you are and why, and put it somewhere for you to later find. Alternatively, hug yourself once in a while, and just tell yourself how much you appreciate being you.
People who are content with themselves and accepts are not often lacking in motivation, because they have no reason to discourage themselves. Learn to love yourself and accept yourself fully and unconditionally, or at the very least give yourself an earnest compliment now and then.

[002.2] Possible categories and alternative uses:

For the Negativity Counter, consider separating the worries and fears into distinct categories according to these ‘Domains,’ counting them multiple times if needed:

1) (Personal) Safety, e.g. ‘I am in danger (of punishment or harm).’
2) (Personal) Worth, e.g. ‘I am worthless/incompetent/cowardly.’
3) (Personal) Responsibility, e.g. ‘I am responsible (for our dysfunctional relationship).’
4) Control, e.g. ‘I am powerless (to change this).’

For the Positivity Counter and the Achievement Counter, consider separating all counts into the following categories, counting them multiple times if needed:

1) Mental, counting things that made you correct your thinking, or positive cognitions/reappraisals, etc.
2) Mindfulness, counting meditation/breathing exercises, awareness, appreciation of the Now, seeking out nature, gratitude exercises, etc.
2) Emotional, counting things that made you feel good, things that made you more resilient to future emotional downturns, like gratitude exercises and awareness, physical-emotional things like hugs, etc.
3) Physical, counting physical things, including exercises, walks in nature, dancing sessions, jumping for joy, etc.
4) Social, counting any interaction, like greeting a stranger, answering your e-mails, smiling while greeting a stranger, having small-talk, using social physicality (shaking hands, hugs, touching shoulder, etc.), etc.
5) Personal acceptance, counting every time you’ve made yourself aware of how awesome you are, or have complimented yourself, written yourself a motivational note, thanking yourself for your own effort, hugging yourself, etc.

In general, use these counters to become as aware of what is on any given day as possible, and see what it does for you – then come back and share with me your experiences. I’m curious to see what it’ll do for you!
Be generous, emphasize your successes, mitigate your failures, and gradually build up the stress-tolerance and self-confidence to tackle your larger goals!
Next time, we’ll be taking it a few steps further, and Gamifying life into the way it was always meant to be played.
Good luck, signed with love,
Joven

___Planned chapter:
[003]: Gaming the System – Creating your own reward system!___

For social hacks and mastery, check out my Google Doc: Encyclopedia of Social Engineering[7]
For “THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK TO RELIEVE GRUDGES – PSYCHOLOGISTS HATE ME,” check out my Reddit Post: Grudge Letter[8] (Outdated but still effective)
Join the sub! 😀 /r/mindundercontrol[9]
Like my Facebook page to get updates more quickly, and make me more happy. :)[10]