How do we know what we need?
MEETING YOUR NEEDS FEELS GOOD!
Meeting your needs is critical to survival.
To help you survive, your brain and body feel good (pleasure) when your needs are met, and bad (pain) when they aren’t.
These good and bad feelings are what we call reward and punishment.
Everything alive is built to seek reward and avoid punishment.
Your brain registers behaviors resulting in pleasure as reward. Rewarded behaviors are reinforced (you do them more over time).
Your brain registers behaviors resulting in pain as punishment, and you learn to do these behaviors less over time.
This process of changing behavior through seeking reward and avoiding punishment is called learning.
Reflection Question
What behaviors or actions do you do a lot? What reward do you get from these behaviors?
What behaviors or actions do you find yourself avoiding? What punishment do you get from these behaviors?