Previous Fridays

Five reasons I love my husband this Friday!

1. I love how you got rid of the empty boxes in the guest room for me.

2. I love that you offered to help me with some of the things on my to-do list.

3. I love when you compliment my cooking.

4. I love your photography.

5. I love it when you rub my back.

I’m working on my ability to use positive reinforcement in my life, but I’m finding it very difficult. This seems to be something that does not come naturally to some people – or maybe all people (or just Americans) – but it is a very useful tool. I think that many relationships in my life and in yours could benefit from using positive reinforcement more often.

Definition

One easy way to define positive reinforcement is by contrasting it with its opposite, which is, of course, negative reinforcement.

• Negative reinforcement tries to alter behavior by removing a negative stimulus. Wikipedia’s examples include a child being granted the request for his parents to turn off an annoying song and a mouse avoiding a shock by pressing the correct button.
• Positive reinforcement, on the other hand, involves giving a reward or positive stimulus in order to alter behavior. For example, you give your dog a treat when he correctly performs a trick he is learning, and you reward your child with desert for sharing (or something).
• Punishment attempts to alter behavior by presenting some sort of unpleasant stimulus when a wrong behavior is exhibited. For instance, shocking a dog when he barks or putting a misbehaving child in time-out (or giving said child a spanking). Some people group this as a type of negative reinforcement, but it is actually more similar to positive reinforcement since it involves adding a stimulus to an environment, rather than taking one away.

Usefulness

We seem to use positive reinforcement naturally and easily when dealing with animals. We speak in happy, high-pitched voices to praise them, and it’s really easy because the animal usually doesn’t care what words are actually coming out of our mouths. We give them treats, which is also easy because we buy them at the store, and one tastes as good as another as far as our animals are concerned.

But we don’t always find it as easy to use positive reinforcement in relationships with our peers. In fact, even in parent-child relationships, it is often easier to use punishment and negative reinforcement. Perhaps part of the reason is the complexity of human beings: Children have different tastes and appreciate different types of rewards. The tastes vary not only from person to person; they can even change from one year to the next, or within an even shorter span of time. Children, and people in general, also tend to get bored. They don’t want to be rewarded for their behavior the same way every time.

We can throw our dogs a treat from the same box every time they do well, but humans need variety, or the reward will lose meaning.

Benefits

Because of my upbringing, I think it’s especially easy for me to use negative reinforcement by default. I usually feel that there is no need to comment on something unless it’s wrong or bothering me. If I could learn to use positive reinforcement instead, I think my relationships would benefit quite a bit.

Only I know how pleased I am with something unless I say so. If I say nothing, no one knows. If they only hear the negative, they see me as a negative person in turn, and sometimes will come away feeling unappreciated or brought down by my complaints. Maybe you have found yourself in situations like that as well.

The other option is to refrain from voicing the majority of negative thoughts and instead focus on the positive. Initially, this will not change your thoughts. You’re still having the same number of negative thoughts and the same number of positive thoughts, but you’re voicing and acting on the positive rather than the negative. At first, struggling through the awkward sensations of change, only others will notice a difference, I think. Over time, though, I can’t imagine but that this would begin to change you inside, too. I think you would eventually grow to appreciate the positive more, notice it more, and find more things to praise or reward.

Of course, some of that is only speculation, because I’m still working on this ability.

What about you? Do you find it easy or hard to use positive reinforcement? I’d love to hear from you. I’d especially love to hear if you’ve been able to teach yourself to use positive reinforcement and how you did so. Are there any other benefits you see to using one type of behavior reinforcement over another?

Previous Fridays

For the second week in a row, I give you my Friday’s Five (things I love about my husband)!

1. I love how hard you’re working to reach your goals in the Army.

2. I love how you try to talk to me in your sleep.

3. I love your strong arms.

4. I love how you helped us start our little garden (sure made it easy on me)!

5. I love when you help me cook meals.

“A love-hate relationship is a personal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and enmity.”
– Wikipedia

I have a love-hate relationship with the Army. How the Army feels about me, I can never quite determine. Maybe the simultaneous contradictory feeling is mutual, for all I know.

Hate

Sometimes, I hate the Army. My husband would probably argue that sometimes is actually most of the time because I definitely complain about the Army much more than I brag on it or praise it. When I do hate it, I downright loathe it. I’ll tell you, the emotions can get pretty intense during these times. What has the Army ever done to me, you ask? Plenty.

1. The Army owns my husband. I come second after the Army; I don’t really have first dibs on him. When the Army chooses the flaunt this, I can get pretty catty.

2. The Army mistreats my husband. How can I take care of him when he’s constantly coming home with new wounds and problems? Tell me that, Army!! I try to get him caught up on his rest, and then you go and deprive him of sleep again!

3. The Army is too fickle. Make up your mind! Are they coming home at 0730, noon, or 2100? Does he get weekends off or not?

4. The Army strings us both along, promising things, and when we begin to suspect it may never deliver, they give us another bit of hope to keep us going. Sometimes, I don’t think the Army intends to deliver on its promises at all!

Plus Love

On the other hand, I do love the Army, sometimes. More than you might think! When I love it, I could go to tears thinking of life without it.

1. The Army pays our bills, like any faithful employer should. In fact, the Army’s regularity in this area is most pleasing. It’s never late.

2. The Army gives us security. We can’t get rid of the Army, no matter how bad we might want to at times. It’s always going to be there, and while it may seem fickle, it’s in many ways one of the most constant things in our lives. Even its fickleness is steady and constant, like a security blanket (or teddy, or hippo).

3. The Army takes care of our basic needs. Sure, it gets to decide whether other things are important or not, but the basic needs we have for food, shelter, and medical care, are taken care of, always.

4. The Army actually has a useful purpose. It can be hard to remember, when caught up in day-to-day life as a soldier or a soldier’s wife, but the Army does have a purpose, and serves that purpose well. Our country would probably be in bad shape without it.

Equals Army Wife Life

All of this together makes up a big portion of life as an Army wife. These last two weeks, as my husband was gone yet again for training, I had moments when I cried about how much I hated the Army and moments when I cried about how much I love the Army. Imagining life without it is hard, now. I pray for God to help us through this time in the Army, and to help us through the time when we have to face life without it!

Would you like to add in any reasons you love and/or hate the Army? Or do you, perhaps, have a love-hate relationship with someone (or something) else that you’d like to share?

As far as I know, this trend started with the blog His Birdie’s Nest, but it’s growing more popular in Army wife blogs across the board. I decided I really wanted to jump on this bandwagon. So here are this Friday’s Five things I love about my husband!

1. I love that you call me “Love.”

2. I love that you offered to help me with some Avon stuff when you get home.

3. I love your idea for making the camp appear flooded by bringing dixie cups full of water from the creek.

4. I love that you need to hear my voice when we’re apart.

5. I love the workspace you set up for me in the newly cleaned Junk Room.

After writing on Popularity, and then reading Web Worker Daily’s post on Our Emotional Lives in Social Media, I began reflecting on this subject. How do our real emotions differ from the emotions our virtual identities appear to have? How much do we show, and how much is good to show?

Living on the Webz

Running a blog and an online store has put me in a perfect position to develop my virtual life to an extent which it has never before seen. In many ways, my virtual life is a reflection of my real life: On Twitter and Facebook, I talk about what happens in my day-to-day real life as well as what I do on the computer and internet. I think the distinction between my two lives comes from what is left out of the virtual one.

It’s not always done on purpose. There’s just not time to include every part of my life in my Facebook status updates, and the character limits on my Tweets makes me condense even more. Besides, there are things that I feel are too private to share – or too uninteresting. Part of this group of “things not shared” happens to be a good portion of my emotions.

Thinking Too Hard

As Hubby and I consider whether to start a video blog, or vlog, I had to assess my virtual-emotional outlets again. I’ve settled into a routine of posting my problogs here, my daily life updates there, and my emotions in my private blog. I write and write and write, basically. I Tweet, Facebook, blog, blog again, and then write at 750words.com.

But what, I thought, if I start a vlog with my husband? I don’t want to have too many emotional outbursts on YouTube for all the world to see, and you don’t want that either. I don’t want them on my problog, and I don’t want them on my social media. But! I could drop my private blog and let vlogging take the place of that, and let 750words.com become my emotional-ranting-place. *pants*

I had to put all that thought into the issue of where it was okay to show my emotions!

Virtual Emotions

My negative virtual emotions are much more subdued than the emotions that come out in my real life. My positive virtual emotions are sometimes magnified. My anger is virtually shrugged off, and my jealousy virtually (ha, I can use two definitions of the word in one!) hidden. Thus my virtual persona has an appearance that differs from me, the real me.

It’s all about acceptance and reputation. When it comes to our virtual lives we have to consider the balance of what is seen and shown.

• Do I appear to be always unhappy, always happy, or in between?
• Who am I going to upset, and who is going to worry about me?
• Who is going to look down on me, and who is going to be driven away from my store/whatever because of the image they see?

In other words, how is my reputation going to be affected by my virtual persona?

I like how Aliza Sherman was able to look at the situation. She allows herself to be bathed in the support of her virtual peers, and she chooses not to worry about the effect on her reputation. More precisely, she believes that the impact on her reputation will be mostly positive, as we are drawn to people with whom we can relate. I, on the other hand, cannot shake the mentality that there has to be some regulating done.

What do you show, and what do you hide? Where do you vent your emotions, if anywhere?

Oh, and most importantly, should Hubby and I make a Vlog?

Ready, and……discuss!

I am a Burry.

What?

I am one of over ten thousand people following the tweets of @strawburry17. I, like many of the other Burries, also watch her YouTube channels. And what’s more, I found myself recently in a live video and chat session with her and about 100 other fans.

It’s Got Me Thinking About Popularity.

I began to grasp the idea of popularity sometime during my middle school years. I remember in particular an incident that must have occurred during fifth grade. A new girl was put in my class whom I hoped to befriend, but it turned out that she never gave me the time of day. She was immediately taken in by the others who never gave me the time of day. The cool kids.

In junior high, I remember a moment of clarity when I realized why I felt un-liked by my teachers. Teachers loved me in elementary school because I was quiet and I never caused trouble. As I got older, I realized that this was making me unnoticeable. A nobody. The teachers began to relate to the students as little adults, and they were drawn to the popular kids, just as other kids were drawn to their popular, charismatic peers.

What Does it Take?

What makes one person popular, and the other unnoticeable? I’ve already mentioned what I believe to be one of the biggest factors: charisma. Here’s what Wikipedia says about charisma:

Charisma (Greek "kharisma," meaning "gift," "of/from/favored by God/the divine") is a trait found in persons whose personalities are characterized by a personal charm and magnetism (attractiveness), along with innate and powerfully sophisticated abilities of interpersonal communication and persuasion. One who is charismatic is said to be capable of using their personal being, rather than just speech or logic alone, to interface with other human beings in a personal and direct manner, and effectively communicate an argument or concept to them.

That’s not the only requirement, of course. You and I probably both know people who are charismatic but not particularly popular. Good looks and money can take you quite a ways. Being in up on current trends will put you in the “in crowd.” Plain old confidence can carry one a long way in and of itself. I think it’s a combination of factors, and sometimes just chance, that puts people in the popular category.

Where I Stand

Well, first of all, I still enjoy being a Burry. Though I may be unnoticeable to Meghan, I find something attractive in her personality, and I think she makes great videos. The problem is, as much as she wants to relate to people, she can’t be friends with everyone, and some people are going to feel slighted. And it only makes sense! Over ten thousand people may mention her in a given day, and she has to wade through all those tweets and decide which deserve her attention. I don’t feel slighted by her any more than I feel slighted by not being given personal attention from Mandy Moore (another popular person I follow on Twitter).

Second of all, I’m going to keep being me.

I was never popular in school, and I didn’t really want to be popular; I wanted to be liked. I’m realizing now that they’re the same thing. Do I really want to be popular, though? Would I be, if I could snap my fingers and make it happen? I might, but I’m not really sure. Do I want to have thousands of casual relationships? Would that make it easier to find people with whom I could be close, or would it just make it harder, since there would be so many interactions to choose between?

I still have that desire to be liked, though. I want my words, art, videos, tweets, and personality to be liked by others.

Not necessarily by everyone.

At least by my friends.

Do you have any thoughts? How important is popularity to you?

One parting observation: Being casual friends with a popular person is almost indistinguishable from being a fan.