Stories about positive reinforcement
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about positive reinforcement from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Seven years to change a violent husbandStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: About twenty years ago a woman thanks the monks for saving her life. For seven years she had come to the centre only to get away from a husband who beat her regularly — every…
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But another way is there was a lady who came here many years ago. I mentioned this story in the "Opening the Door of your Heart". Amazing lady, she came up to me once and said "I wanna thank you for saving our lives for all the talks given over the last several years have changed my life and my husband's life all around. Her story was that her husband was very abusive to her. Domestic abuse; this is about 25 years ago. And in those days, many women would just take in and they wouldn't go to the social services to get help. I don't know if there was that help around at the time anyway. So she told us she came to this centre over here not because she was a Buddhist just as a place she could escape to for a couple of hours. where she knew she won't be hit. Brilliant, she only told me about this at the very end. But she said what she heard here was this wonderful positive forgiveness. Not just forgiveness because that's not enough So the positive part of it was whenever her partner behaved appropriately, kindly, softly then she would just go out to him give him hugs and kisses. Whenever he was abusive, I don't advice this at all She was an amazing lady. She would just take it. She said it took her seven years to turn that man totally around. She never gave any feedback to the abuse. She only gave feedback to the kindness. Little by little by not giving feedback to abuse, it just diminished. By giving positive feedback to the kindness - it grew
- Training dolphins, training husbandsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: From a psychology magazine: a PhD student studying how marine parks train dolphins — throw a fish whenever it jumps an inch higher, never punish — realises the same method works…
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the story of that woman I read in the psychology magazine who was doing a PhD and psychology and her subject was how they train dolphins in these Marine Parks you know to play water poloo to jump through these hoops and she found out that the way they do this is if that dolphin jumps an inch higher you throw the dolphin a fish positive reinforcement if it doesn't jump you don't hit it you don't get angry at the Dolphin you just wait until it jumps 2 in and then it gets another fish so every time it gets incrementally closer to what you want that dolphin to do that's when you throw another fish to the dolphin incremental positive reinforcement now this woman I I really kicked myself for not keeping that article because that this was one wise woman she went to her supervisor at University and got permission to change her thesis because she realized she had this wonderful Insight the very same technique which they used to teach Dolphins at these Marine Parks could be used on her husband so she got permission from her supervisor to change the thesis instead of how to train dolphins how to train husbands it's a brilliant piece of advice and it's practical too how do you do this it's Works them as how you train train wives or how do you train girlfriends or Partners or people in your office whenever they do something wrong they irritate you ignore it don't do anything but when they do something you like which is not irritating that's when you throw them a fish metaphorically that is in other words you give them some sort of positive feedback and of course that actually works and in her article the one part I remember she said one of the most irritating parts of you know her of her relationship with her husband and many of you may be able to relate to this in the morning when they were both getting ready to go to work he could never find his tie and he know wife was know trying to get ready to go to work too and she has to dress up much more than a guy does and she you know darling have you seen my tie can you help me find my tie it's only a small thing like that but you know that every morning that really irritates you you're trying to get ready and here's this stupid guy and he can't even remember where he put his own clothes and she would always get very angry and irritated at him for this and so she tried the throwing the fish method so when he couldn't find his tie where's my tie D could you help me find my tie he would ignore it she would ignore it she wouldn't get irritated she wouldn't complain she would just totally ignore it and go around her task and of course eventually he'd find his tie himself and that's when she would stop what she was doing and give him a big hug and kiss oh well done darling that was throwing the fish and you may laugh but this was very very effective in a couple of months she said he never asked me now he just finds his own stuff and now I'm free in the morning to do what I like to do instead of of helping this guy