Ok so I saw this hilarious episode of Big Bang Theory and normaly it's not the most "thought provoking" show in the world... but it's not meant to be so hey..

Anyway the other night Sheldon took to feeding Penny treats of chocolate when she did things that he liked and Leonard was like "i see what you're doing, you're reinforcing good behavior with chocolate..." Well ok so it's quite silly and obviously in the nature of the show it was kind of insulting if you are easily offended but it's all in fun, I have to add that.. but anyway... onto my thought.

There is much to be said about positive reinforcment with people even beyond raising children, if you have them and i have just been thinking about this (related to a post that I just replied to this was brought to mind) Well I am not speaking from terms of having used this on other people but thinking about how it would possibly have affected me in the past and could in the future and maybe would work with our significant others, friends or what not.

Thinking about penny, she was all happy to get a chocolate from Sheldon and while this is obviously a simplistic example of reinforcing behavior I can't help but think about when I've received such positive reinforcment from my wife (now ex) at the time and how it quite possibly made me more apt to perform the same behavior again. The thing that comes to mind is that soemtimes giving positive comments, actions or what not (depending on the language of the target of our actions) goes really far to supporting the things that others do the way we'd like them to. I know that I remember these things very well..

Part of my thinking is relating to people with their important SO, friends and others but part of this is me thinking about how we can do this for ourselves too. We do so much analyzing what we do wrong in life that sometimes what goes right gets lost in the mix. For ourselves we need to take more time noticing what we do right and really notice and somehow make a big deal of things when we do succeed in doing something right.

I know this has been a bit of a ramble but I hope my thoughts help someone