The Motive And The Cue Quotes

Somedays you're the cue ball, somedays you are the eight ball

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appall the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing—no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me “villain”? Breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' th' throat As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

Boredom is a cue that needs aren’t being met. It’s a signal that your environment lacks interest, variety, and newness. Just as the pain of a burn tells us where the damage is and motivates us to respond appropriately, boredom motivates us to seek out intellectual stimulation and social contact, to learn and engage and act. To be without boredom would be a curse.

Seeing a tree in an acorn and a house in a plank of wood is hope bringing a new tomorrow.

In other words, a small thank-you caused people to behave far more generously to a completely different person. This is because thank-yous aren’t only expressions of gratitude; they’re crucial belonging cues that generate a contagious sense of safety, connection, and motivation.

Like everything else in our world, we too are energy. Each one of us is an energy being releasing our own distinctive energy signature that is perceptible to others by way of our choices, perceptions, behaviors, attitudes, and physical cues.

small thank-you caused people to behave far more generously to a completely different person. This is because thank-yous aren’t only expressions of gratitude; they’re crucial belonging cues that generate a contagious sense of safety, connection, and motivation.

Women suffer higher rates of depression than men because their survival and reproduction depends more critically on the integrity of social networks (which provide help, protection, and resources). For this reason, they have a stronger evolved motivation to avoid social stressors, a lower tolerance for cues of social conflict, and more intense emotional responses when conflicts break out.

Let’s say that you have committed to running every day for two weeks, and at the end of those two weeks, you “reward” yourself with a massage. I would say, “Good for you!” because we all could benefit from more massages. But I would also say that your massage wasn’t a reward. It was an incentive. The definition of a reward in behavior science is an experience directly tied to a behavior that makes that behavior more likely to happen again. The timing of the reward matters. Scientists learned decades ago that rewards need to happen either during the behavior or milli-seconds afterward. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly. That means you’ve got to cue up those good feelings fast to form a habit. Incentives like a sales bonus or a monthly massage can motivate you, but they don’t rewire your brain. Incentives are way too far in the future to give you that all-important shot of dopamine that encodes the new habit. Doing three squats in the morning and rewarding yourself with a movie that evening won’t work. The squats and the good feelings you get from the movie are too far apart for dopamine to build a bridge between the two. The neurochemical reaction that you are trying to hack is not only time dependent, it’s also highly individualized. What causes one person to feel good may not work for everyone. Your boss may love the smell of coffee. When she enters a coffee shop and inhales, she feels good. And her immediate feeling builds her habit of visiting the coffee shop. But your coworker might not like the way coffee smells. His brain won’t react in the same way. A real reward — something that will actually create a habit — is a much narrower target to hit than most people think. I

HAMLET Ay, so, God be wi' ye; Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing; no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damn'd defeat was made.

We live in a world that has a cognitive bias and assumes that our actions are voluntary. We are confronted with questions related to motivation and outcome. We are asked about costs, risks, and benefits. However, state shifts in the neural regulation of the autonomic nervous system are usually not voluntary, although the state shifts have profound impact on behavior. The state shifts occur in a more reflexive manner when we are confronted by specific cues in the environment.

The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment....The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending people joineth them in a common cause.' The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. 'Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions...that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.' A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: 'Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.' But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; 'the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people;' and 'Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?' What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. 'It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors.' He mentions Seneca, Antonius Pius and Aurelius; it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own.

14 Ways to Become an Incredible Listener 1. Be present and provide your undivided attention. 2. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. 3. Listen attentively and respond appropriately. 4. Minimize or eliminate distractions. 5. Focus your attention and energy with singleness of purpose on what the other person is saying. 6. Quiet your mind and suspend your thoughts to make room in your head to hear what is said—in the moment! 7. Ask questions and demonstrate empathy. 8. Use your body language and nonverbal cues constructively and pay attention to theirs. 9. Follow the rhythm of their speech; hear their tone. 10. Repeat and summarize what you have heard them say to confirm understanding. 11. Be open-minded and non-defensive. 12. Respond rather than react. 13. Be respectful, calm, and positive. 14. Try to resolve conflicts, not win them.

Altogether, these observations suggest that several processes contribute to psychotic experience: the loss of familiarity with the world, hypothetically associated with noisy information processing; increased novelty detection mediated by the hippocampus; associated alterations of prefrontal cortical processing, which have reliably been associated with impairments in working memory and other executive functions; increased top-down effects of prior beliefs mediated by the frontal cortex that may reflect compensatory efforts to cope with an increasingly complex and unfamiliar world; and finally disinhibition of subcortical dopaminergic neurotransmission, which increases salience attribution to otherwise irrelevant stimuli. Furthermore, increased noise of chaotic or stress-dependent dopamine firing can reduce the encoding of errors of reward prediction elicited by primary and secondary reinforcers, thus contributing to a subjective focusing of attention on apparently novel and mysterious environmental cues while reducing attention and motivation elicited by common and natural and social stimuli.

Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (520) Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, (530) That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, (540) And can say nothing; no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, As deep as to the lungs? who does me this? Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall (550) To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, (560) A scullion! Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; (570) I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Cue thousands of Instagram posts encouraging the no-contact rule and implicitly shaming anyone who continues a relationship with their ex. But the story of relationships and their endings is far too complex for us to apply solution-focused changes aimed at reducing pain. Still, every one of my friends and every therapist on Instagram advises against talking to an ex. No contact, cold turkey, zero—a crazy idea to me. In my work, I’ve noticed that more than half of my clients will continue to communicate with their former partner, maintaining some form of connection. Even a friendship. This happens despite the discouraging advice recommending a complete cutoff. But we, as a society, might be better off trying to understand our need to continue a connection with an ex than condemning or strongly advising against it. Maybe it’s time we reconsidered our attitude toward post-breakup connections. Instead of dismissing them as unhealthy, we could try to understand the motives behind our choice to stay in touch. After all, each relationship and breakup is unique, and the two (or more) people involved in a ruptured relationship are in the best position to judge what serves their emotional needs and personal growth. The idea of cutting an ex out of your life completely is also extremely heteronormative. Many queer people (like me) don’t have their family of origin to fall back on. Our “families” are therefore sometimes our friends, partners, and ex-partners, the people we form deep connections with. Alex was my family for ten years. So, for me, cutting him out of my life entirely wasn’t so simple.

I teach excessively agreeable people to note the emergence of such resentment, which is a very important, although very toxic, emotion. There are only two major reasons for resentment: being taken advantage of (or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of), or whiny refusal to adopt responsibility and grow up. If you’re resentful, look for the reasons. Perhaps discuss the issue with someone you trust. Are you feeling hard done by, in an immature manner? If, after some honest consideration, you don’t think it’s that, perhaps someone is taking advantage of you. This means that you now face a moral obligation to speak up for yourself. This might mean confronting your boss, or your husband, or your wife, or your child, or your parents. It might mean gathering some evidence, strategically, so that when you confront that person, you can give them several examples of their misbehaviour (at least three), so they can’t easily weasel out of your accusations. It might mean failing to concede when they offer you their counterarguments. People rarely have more than four at hand. If you remain unmoved, they get angry, or cry, or run away. It’s very useful to attend to tears in such situations. They can be used to motivate guilt on the part of the accuser due, theoretically, to having caused hurt feelings and pain. But tears are often shed in anger. A red face is a good cue. If you can push your point past the first four responses and stand fast against the consequent emotion, you will gain your target’s attention—and, perhaps, their respect. This is genuine conflict, however, and it’s neither pleasant nor easy.

We believe that the caregiver’s capacity to observe the moment-to-moment changes in the child’s mental state is critical in the development of mentalizing capacity. The caregiver’s perception of the child as an intentional being lies at the root of sensitive caregiving, which attachment theorists view as the cornerstone of secure attachment (Ainsworth et al. 1978; Bates, Maslin, and Frankel 1985; Belsky and Isabella 1988; Egeland and Farber 1984; Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess, and Unzner 1985; Isabella 1993; Isabella and Belsky 1991). Secure attachment, in its turn, provides the psychosocial basis for acquiring an understanding of mind. The secure infant feels safe in making attributions of mental states to account for the behavior of the caregiver. In contrast the avoidant child shuns to some degree the mental state of the other, while the resistant child focuses on its own state of distress, to the exclusion of close intersubjective exchanges. Disorganized infants may represent a special category: hypervigilant of the caregiver’s behavior, they use all cues available for prediction; they may be acutely sensitized to intentional states and thus may be more ready to construct a mentalized account of the caregiver’s behavior. We would argue (see below) that in such children mentalization may be evident, but it does not have the central role in self-organization that characterizes securely attached children. We believe that what is most important for the development of mentalizing self-organization is the exploration of the mental state of the sensitive caregiver, which enables the child to find in the caregiver’s mind (that is, in the hypothetical representation of her mind that he constructs to explain her behavior toward him) an image of himself as motivated by beliefs, feelings, and intentions. In contrast, what the disorganized child is scanning for so intently is not the representation of his own mental states in the mind of the other, but the mental states of that other that threaten to undermine his own self.

HOW TO CREATE A GOOD HABIT The 1st Law: Make It Obvious 1.1: Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them. 1.2: Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” 1.3: Use habit stacking: “After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” 1.4: Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible. The 2nd Law:Make It Attractive 2.1: Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. 2.2: Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. 2.3: Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. The 3rd Law: Make It Easy 3.1: Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits. 3.2: Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier. 3.3: Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact. 3.4: Use the Two-Minute Rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less. 3.5: Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior. The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying 4.1: Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit. 4.2: Make “doing nothing” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits. 4.3: Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and “don’t break the chain.” 4.4: Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately. HOW TO BREAK A BAD HABIT Inversion of the 1st Law: Make It Invisible 1.5: Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment. Inversion of the 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive 2.4: Reframe your mind-set. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits. Inversion of the 3rd Law: Make It Difficult 3.6: Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits. 3.7: Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you. Inversion of the 4th Law: Make It Unsatisfying 4.5: Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behavior. 4.6: Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.

Drugs of abuse alter the same brain circuits. The drive to seek out life-sustaining environmental cues like food and water is maintained because these substances activate the central players in the brain motivation circuit, dopamine-using neurons of the ventral tegmental area. These neurons manufacture the neurotransmitter dopamine and release it onto their downstream target cells in brain regions like the nucleus accumbens that are also important components of the motivation circuit. Dopamine neuron firing appears to signal the things we urgently need to survive, and dopamine cells become active in response to food, water, warmth, and even sex.

If victims deny their own terror, the danger they are in, and their rage, how can they understand their strict compliance with the captor’s every order, their state of extreme arousal, and their hypervigilance to the abuser’s needs, wants, and moods? Having denied the danger, terror, and rage, victims look to their environment and to their internal motivations for cues to explain their behavior and state of extreme arousal (cf. D. J. Bern 1972; Festinger 1957; Schachter and Singer 1962). Seeing themselves being compliant and even hypervigilant to the abuser’s needs, they interpret their physiological arousal and behavior as indicating they have strong positive feelings for the abuser (cf. Walster 1971; Walster and Berscheid 1971). The more extreme the state of arousal, the stronger the bond experienced by the victims. The more hypervigilant the victims are relative to the kindness shown by the abuser, the stronger the bond is interpreted to be. The harder the victims have to work to win over the abuser, the stronger the victims’ bond to the abuser (cf. Walster and Berscheid 1971).

We all improvise our way through life, missing cues, mistaking motives, trusting the wrong people. Reason and logic—clear vision, to the extent it’s possible—is our only hope.

Because a woman’s appearance provides such a bounty of cues to her fertility, men have evolved mate preferences that, perhaps unfortunately, give tremendous importance to a woman’s physical appearance. In some ways, it is a psychological fact of life that women are sometimes treated as sex objects, just as men are sometimes treated as status objects.

Categories of appropriate or not appropriate, good and bad, don’t apply. The autonomic nervous system doesn’t make meaning or assign motivation. It simply takes in cues and enacts the response it deems necessary to ensure survival. If the answer to the clarifying question is yes, you’re likely anchored in the present moment

How are Sprints different from just dividing a goal into phases? Unlike phases, which are not ends in themselves, Sprints are independent, self-contained projects—thus the outcome is, let’s hope, a source of satisfaction, information, and motivation to keep going (or, as happened with my stop-motion animation project, a helpful cue to let this particular goal go). One author and entrepreneur, for example, was curious about podcasting. It was something he knew little about. Rather than dedicating himself to becoming a podcaster, he set out to do six episodes with his friend Kevin Rose. That experiment turned into The Tim Ferriss Show, the number one business podcast on iTunes, with

In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward;

ANNE THORNDIKE, A primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, had a crazy idea. She believed she could improve the eating habits of thousands of hospital staff and visitors without changing their willpower or motivation in the slightest way. In fact, she didn’t plan on talking to them at all. Thorndike and her colleagues designed a six-month study to alter the “choice architecture” of the hospital cafeteria. They started by changing how drinks were arranged in the room. Originally, the refrigerators located next to the cash registers in the cafeteria were filled with only soda. The researchers added water as an option to each one. Additionally, they placed baskets of bottled water next to the food stations throughout the room. Soda was still in the primary refrigerators, but water was now available at all drink locations. Over the next three months, the number of soda sales at the hospital dropped by 11.4 percent. Meanwhile, sales of bottled water increased by 25.8 percent. They made similar adjustments—and saw similar results—with the food in the cafeteria. Nobody had said a word to anyone eating there. BEFORE AFTER FIGURE 8: Here is a representation of what the cafeteria looked like before the environment design changes were made (left) and after (right). The shaded boxes indicate areas where bottled water was available in each instance. Because the amount of water in the environment was increased, behavior shifted naturally and without additional motivation. People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. If I walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter, I’ll pick up half a dozen and start eating, even if I hadn’t been thinking about them beforehand and didn’t necessarily feel hungry. If the communal table at the office is always filled with doughnuts and bagels, it’s going to be hard not to grab one every now and then. Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you.

Get people fired up with the prospect of rewards, and instead of making better decisions, as Motivation 2.0 hopes, they can actually make worse ones. As Knutson writes, “This may explain why casinos surround their guests with reward cues (e.g., inexpensive food, free liquor, surprise gifts, potential jackpot prizes)—anticipation of rewards activates the [nucleus accumbens], which may lead to an increase in the likelihood of individuals switching from risk-averse to risk-seeking behavior.”22

In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.

Pretend for a moment that you are in the horrifying situation of watching one of your children being pulled out to sea in a riptide. Would you just go on eating your lunch? No way. The first thing you would do is to scream to get help rescuing your child. You would simultaneously get all other children out of the water as you dive in and try to rescue the missing child, even knowing the danger and that it is probably too late. If you were sensible enough not to swim out or fortunate enough to get back to shore safely, grief would promote endless rumination about what you could have done to prevent the loss. This would help prevent a repetition with other children. Your sobbing would signal your need for help and warn others about the danger. When a child dies of cancer or pneumonia, speculating about what you might have done to prevent it is mostly useless. However, the tendency to blame is built in, so people do it anyway, blaming themselves, doctors, anyone who was involved. Those motives can create marvelous initiatives, Mothers Against Drunk Driving being a spectacular example. Every community has organizations dedicated to preventing the kind of sickness or accident that carried off a loved member of the community. In our ancestral environment, loved ones must often have simply not returned to camp. Searching for them would have been essential. A loss creates mental preoccupation and a search image tuned to detect relevant cues. In the weeks after a loss, bereaved individuals often think that they see or hear the lost loved one. Tiny random sounds or sights are misinterpreted as the person’s voice or form. Visual and auditory hallucinations arise. Such experiences are sometimes interpreted as wish fulfillment, but a more plausible explanation is that they are products of a search image that makes it easier to find the missing person. False alarms in such a system would be normal, useful, and experienced as ghosts. Anniversary reactions are also common and fascinating. Many people occasionally experience sadness that seems unaccountable, until they realize it is the anniversary of a loss. I doubt that anniversary reactions are adaptive in general; however, in ancestral environments many opportunities and dangers recur with seasonal regularity. So smelling overly ripe apples in an orchard may bring back vivid memories of a fall long ago.

The theory is that if all our unconscious motivations were to impinge on our consciousness, subtle cues in our behaviour might reveal our true motivation, which would limit our social and reproductive prospects.

Experts agree that habit starts with a pattern called a habit loop. This pattern is a three-part process. The first part involves a cue or trigger. Whenever this trigger is present, the brain enters an automatic mode and the behavior is manifested. Second is the routine which is the behavior itself. The third step is the reward or something that will motivate the brain to remember the habit.

When you enter a room, a social situation, or a business meeting, be mindful of cues; read between the lines to better understand people and events. What do these things tell you?

How do you know when to advance the conversation or when there's something still unresolved? When you are situationally aware, you watch the body language and notice the cues that are given to you. Listening and observing are being mindful in the best sense of the word.

Mirroring provides social cues through body language and behavior which enable us to develop more empathy and understanding for others.

A smile is one of the most powerful and important body language cues we share with others—and as such a heartfelt emotion, it's impossible to express its effect on others in words.

Physical touch is one of my primary love languages. For those of us who share this love language, touching is an endearing gesture of affection, appreciation, and connection. It is not intended to be inappropriate in any way when we hug you upon meeting, pat your back, or squeeze your arm. For us, it is an enthusiastic demonstration of friendship. However, there are many people who do NOT like to be touched—men or women. In spite of our good intentions, touching can make others feel awkward, offended, and in the worst-case scenario, violated. It is crucial to be vigilant and socially aware enough that you can read people’s cues to know when to pull back and contain yourself.

11 Ways to Be More Engaged 1. Care about others. 2. Be 100 percent in the moment. 3. Keep focus on the person you are serving. 4. Try to get involved, engaged, and interactive. 5. Show interest in what matters to other people by listening, acknowledging, and responding. 6. Arrive in the moment anticipating creating a valuable interaction for yourself and others. 7. Move towards the things that inspire you and provide a sense of joy and connection. 8. Reconnect with the essence of yourself and be grounded in that essential relationship. 9. Maintain eye contact and deliver the non-verbal cues that you are fully with the other person. 10. Limit distractions— close the door, silence your phone, hold calls, put tasks aside, etc. 11. Show up to the moment being your best and giving your best.

The cliche about autism is that the syndrome impedes the ability to love, and I began this research interested in how much a parent could contrive to love a child who could not return the affection. Autistic children often seem to inhabit a world on which external cues have limited impact; they may seem to be neither comforted by nor engaged with their parents are not motivated to gratify them.

While a trigger cues an action, motivation defines the level of desire to take that action.

Impact of Stress on Glucose: One of my highest glucose spikes ever was after an argument with my brother (my coauthor!). We hear examples of this all the time from Levels members: stress alone can raise glucose levels, regardless of your diet. The reason is that a key stress hormone, cortisol, signals our liver to break down stored glucose and release it into the bloodstream to fuel the muscles, anticipating a threat that we’ll need energy to physically move away from. In the modern world, however, the “threats”—like arguments, emails, honking, and the alerts on our phones—that cue our stress pathways rarely require our muscles to be active. As such, that mobilized glucose sits in our bloodstream, causing more harm than good. CGM can be a powerful tool in teaching us how stress impacts our metabolic health and motivates us to address acute stress in healthy ways, like deep breathing.

From mind control to programming Foa and Kozak (1986) note that pathological fear structures, including unrealistic elements that may become associated with states of absorption and heightened arousal often attendant with extreme stress, are extremely resistant to modification. Hence, the power of all statements made during and immediately after abusive episodes while the victim is in an altered state will be enhanced by the absence of an operative critical consciousness (Conway, 1994), and by the indelible connection with intolerable terror or dread. Psychologically sophisticated abusers who have mastered the methods of mind control know how to induce psychobiological state changes, how to elaborate and encapsulate them, how to provide the cues to trigger them, how to tap into and alter the victim's motivational and belief systems, and how to layer amnesias within a personality. In this way a polyfragmented dissociative individual can appear to lead the life of a normal hardworking citizen, yet can function undetected (by himself or by others) as a mind-controlled operative and remain available for service to individual perpetrators or groups.

Psychologically sophisticated abusers who have mastered the methods of mind control know how to induce psychobiological state changes, how to elaborate and encapsulate them, how to provide the cues to trigger them, how to tap into and alter the victim's motivational and belief systems, and how to layer amnesias within a personality. In this way a polyfragmented dissociative individual can appear to lead the life of a normal hardworking citizen, yet can function undetected (by himself or by others) as a mind-controlled operative and remain available for service to individual perpetrators or groups.

In summary, habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don’t want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit.

HOW TO CREATE A GOOD HABIT The 1st Law: Make It Obvious 1.1: Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them. 1.2: Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” 1.3: Use habit stacking: “After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” 1.4: Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible. The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive 2.1: Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. 2.2: Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. 2.3: Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. The 3rd Law: Make It Easy 3.1: Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits. 3.2: Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier. 3.3: Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact. 3.4: Use the Two-Minute Rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less. 3.5: Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior. The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying HOW TO BREAK A BAD HABIT Inversion of the 1st Law: Make It Invisible 1.5: Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment. Inversion of the 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive 2.4: Reframe your mind-set. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits. Inversion of the 3rd Law: Make It Difficult 3.6: Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits. 3.7: Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you. Inversion of the 4th Law: Make It Unsatisfying

Vision is our most powerful sense for picking up on cues; surround your immediate environment with positive choices. 3.​Context is also important; associate specific tasks with a certain room or area of your home. 4.​It’s easier to create a new habit in a new environment, where you are not as distracted by established cues as in your normal environment. Questions to Guide the Reader 1.​How and why is motivation less important than your environment for creating a new habit? 2.​How can you change your environment if your goal is to read more? 3.​If you always go to a coffee shop after work and get a cup of  coffee and a donut, how can you make an adjustment that still allows you to have your

When you observe a cue, but do not desire to change your state, you are content with the current situation. Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure (which is joy or satisfaction), but about the lack of desire. It arrives when you have no urge to feel differently. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state. However, happiness is fleeting because a new desire always comes along. As Caed Budris says, “Happiness is the space between one desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.” Likewise, suffering is the space between craving a change in state and getting it. It is the idea of pleasure that we chase. We seek the image of pleasure that we generate in our minds. At the time of action, we do not know what it will be like to attain that image (or even if it will satisfy us). The feeling of satisfaction only comes afterward. This is what the Austrian neurologist Victor Frankl meant when he said that happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. Desire is pursued. Pleasure ensues from action. Peace occurs when you don’t turn your observations into problems. The first step in any behavior is observation. You notice a cue, a bit of information, an event. If you do not desire to act on what you observe, then you are at peace. Craving is about wanting to fix everything. Observation without craving is the realization that you do not need to fix anything. Your desires are not running rampant. You do not crave a change in state. Your mind does not generate a problem for you to solve. You’re simply observing and existing. With a big enough why you can overcome any how. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and poet, famously wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” This phrase harbors an important truth about human behavior. If your motivation and desire are great enough (that is, why you are acting), you’ll take action even when it is quite difficult. Great craving can power great action—even when friction is high. Being curious is better than being smart. Being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action. Being smart will never deliver results on its own because it doesn’t get you to act. It is desire, not intelligence, that prompts behavior. As Naval Ravikant says, “The trick to doing anything is first cultivating a desire for it.

habit: a cue, or something that triggers us to perform a routine, so that we may receive a reward. For example: You smell cigarette smoke (the cue), you reach for a cigarette and light it up (the routine), and you get a nicotine buzz (the reward). Duhigg asserts that we don’t really break habits; rather we change out the routine from existing habit loops. In other words, when we are trying to extinguish a habit, the cue remains and the reward remains, we just change out the middle part. In the case of cigarette smoking, you still have the same cues (stress, the smell of smoke, seeing people inhale). The difference is what you do with those cues. Maybe you go for a run, or make a pot of coffee, or do some breathing exercises instead. Whatever it is, the new, healthier routine needs to provide a similar reward so you are motivated to replicate it in the future.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have done a lot of research on habits. They have broken down the process of habit formation into three key steps which they call the habit loop. These three parts are . . . 1) Cue, which is the trigger that starts the habit 2) Routine, which is the habit itself 3) Reward, which is the benefit you get from doing the habit

When it comes to cues there are four main types – location, time, the actions of others and the action that you took immediately prior to starting the habit. Let’s take a quick look at each of them.

You have the power to be the master of your physical destiny Eliminate negative self-talk Use visualization to enforce your positive mindset Create SMART goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound Learn to love exercise by forgetting the past, pacing yourself, ditching excuses and overcoming insecurities Build the exercise habit with cues, routines and rewards Use the FITT Principle to create your ideal workout program Work through all three energy systems to achieve total fitness Vary your training heart rate zone for total cardiovascular fitness

Right after the conditioned cue, brain dopamine firing decreases not just to baseline levels, but below baseline levels. This transient dopamine mini-deficit state is what motivates us to seek out our reward. Dopamine levels below baseline drive craving.

TAKEAWAYS FOR TEACHING YOUR DOG Provide a long pause. When you see your dog noticing your modeling or noticing the buttons, turn your routine interactions into language-facilitating opportunities. The greatest cue we can provide is a long, silent pause to give the AAC user a chance to process what is happening and try exploring her words. When you see your dog communicate through a gesture or vocalization, stay quiet for at least ten to fifteen seconds. At the end of fifteen seconds, if your dog looks like she might be walking toward her buttons or is looking at them, continue staying quiet. If you have not seen an indication that she might try saying a word, add a naturalistic cue. Your dog may need cues for a little while before using words independently. Keep providing a long pause, pointing at the button, asking a general question such as “What do you want?” or standing near the button to support your dog’s emerging vocabulary. Even after you’ve heard your dog’s first words, your dog will likely need support before using words independently and regularly. Model words in different contexts to support generalization. Your dog will learn to use words in different ways if she sees and hears you using words in multiple ways. Remember that your dog is intrinsically motivated to communicate. Resist the desire to offer a treat for saying a word (unless the word is treat). This will keep your dog from learning the actual meaning of the word. Stick to providing the appropriate response to your dog’s word. Think about other communication functions besides requesting. Your dog might be trying to label an object or activity in her environment or talk about what is happening.

Habit formation, in The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg talks about three components necessary to form a habit. A cue, or something that triggers us to perform a routine so that we may receive a reward. For example, you smell cigarette smoke, the cue, you reach for a cigarette, and light it up, the routine, and you get a nicotine buzz, the reward. Duhigg asserts that we don't really break habits, rather we change out the routine from existing habit loops. In other words, when we are trying to extinguish a habit, the cue remains, and the reward remains, we just change out the middle part. In the case of cigarette smoking, you still have the same cues, the stress, the smell, the smoke, seeing people inhale. The difference is what you do with those cues. Maybe you go for a run or make a pot of coffee or do some breathing exercises instead. Whatever it is, the new healthier routine needs to provide a similar reward, so you're motivated to replicate it in the future. If it doesn't get you off it won't work.

The epidemiological evidence for sexual dimorphism in humans is extensive. Sexual dimorphism in body composition is already evident in infancy: males tend to be heavier than females at birth and have longer bodies and larger head circumferences. By early adulthood, sexual dimorphism in fat distribution is highly evident. These are the evolutionary roots of male sensitivity to visual cues of female physical attractiveness and also of women's motivation to display, preserve and improve their physical attractiveness and thus increase their perceived mate value. The extreme end of this adaptation gives rise to the risk of EDs in the modern environment.

If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first three steps, a behavior will not occur. Without all four, a behavior will not be repeated.

Cravings differ from person to person. In theory, any piece of information could trigger a craving, but in practice, people are not motivated by the same cues. For a gambler, the sound of slot machines can be a potent trigger that sparks an intense wave of desire. For someone who rarely gambles, the jingles and chimes of the casino are just background noise. Cues are meaningless until they are interpreted. The thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the observer are what transform a cue into a craving.

Because much of our brain development occurs during adolescence, childhood, and even earlier, the social norms that shape our early life experiences may have particularly large effects on our psychology. For example, a growing body of evidence suggests that we may have evolved to make enduring calibrations to aspects of our physiology, psychology, and motivations based on stress and other environmental cues experienced before age five. As adults, these early calibrations may influence our self-control, risk-taking, stress responses, norm internalizations, and relationships. By shaping our early lives, cultural evolution can manipulate our brains, hormones, decision-making, and even our longevity.40

In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue.

HOW TO CREATE A GOOD HABIT The 1st Law: Make It Obvious 1.1: Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them. 1.2: Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” 1.3: Use habit stacking: “After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” 1.4: Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible. The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive 2.1: Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. 2.2: Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. 2.3: Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. The 3rd Law: Make It Easy The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying HOW TO BREAK A BAD HABIT Inversion of the 1st Law: Make It Invisible 1.5: Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment. Inversion of the 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive 2.4: Reframe your mind-set. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.