#gratification

[couriernewvegas]

i think its also bc most ppl doing these hcs in alternative/“progressive” fanspaces are either straight women or transmasc and gay/perhaps bi men and so dont personally relate at all to the concept of lesbianism or transfemininity so its immediately impossible because u cant put urself in the shoes of said character anymore

[thewandererh]

Exhibit A: Procrastination, Gratification, and Initiative

and what it means regarding dopamining, and living life to the fullest.

i am not a professional! this is my interpretation of feelings i (and most likely many others) have experienced.

the meaning in life

is defined by what you do

and how you move through

- me. just now ✌️☺️🤳📸

think of a time you had things to do. everyone has a time like that. in that time, you know you have things to do—but you’re distracted by something. perhaps by doomscrolling, or planning something with friends to avoid homework, or needing to tell someone something vital. they are hard situations…but why?

your body evaluates that you’d feel better once you’ve completed the goal you have to do. whether it be by going outside, finishing that assignment, or talking to that someone. however, doing it would have you leave the established comfort you’re enveloped in now. you don’t want to change your situation because you’re comfortable, so you continue to recline. maybe you try to ignore the thought by busying yourself further, but it never works.

you are now conscious that you are wasting your time. everything becomes stressful. just one more video. just one more game. just one more minute. you’ve connected with your body, listened to its needs, but put them off. declining the offer for the sake of reclining with just one more video, game, or minute. the constant dopamine surge of your comfortable situation makes it hard to leave, and you try to reinforce that. you know you’ll be happier with the task done, but you try to make up for that ‘lost gratification’ in your current situation. you could be happier, but you don’t want to make a change that would alter your situation. so you bury yourself deeper with meaningless work all to try and find meaning.

this is procrastination.

it’s a spiral of meaningless longevity that can last for hours. and once one is conscious of it, it turns your moments of forced dopamine into a bad time filled with only regret and misery.

“you could be doing something more fulfulling.” says your body. your body knows your needs better than you do sometimes, so why not listen to it?

we humans fear change. we humans like when we know where we are in life, and knowing that it’s comfortable. knowing that it’s safe. who knows what could happen while you do that task? you’ll have to sit up, actually move again, and paramountly, actually stress about something. you’ve have to use energy you don’t think you have, or could reserve for something else. you can watch or play some more with that energy instead, so why not?

change has to happen. especially when it’s for the better.

your body is telling the truth when it says you’ll be happier after you finish that task.

while you try to finish that task, you’ll be doing something different. this is understandably scary! but you’re listening to yourself instead of suppressing your wishes and bottling your feelings.

this time-wasting activity you’re so caught up in is so addictive because it involves instant dopamine. your brain wants more, so you keep giving energy into an activity that, as a bonus, helps you forget the world and your problems alongside it.

the task you need to do is a transitional period to dopamine. it’s an effortful wait that feels unbearable at first glance because you’re so enveloped in the dopamine-generating-machine (dopamining??). but this dopamine is so much more fulfilling that anything you can gather while scrounging deeper into that activity you’re desperate to keep going.

this is gratification.

gratification comes as personal celebration after you’ve completed something. it comes with the dopamine generation, yes, but it’s so much powerful when you’ve worked for it (so it’ll be used as a term in that work-for-it sense). gratification is your body being relieved of pressure and burden because of the effort you’ve put in to better your situation. you feel safer now, less anxious, and more free. you have one less to-do on your list, and that deserves to be celebrated. more will always come, but why not stop for a moment?

this task has stressed you out to the point of desperately avoiding it with meaningless activities. but it’s done now. it’s completed, and it’s all thanks to you. the effort you put into this task could have been any level of difficult, but you did it. whether the task be big or small, you did it. if you had to do it in parts, that’s ok. taking a break between work lets you refocus your thoughts and reflect on what you’ve done, which also summons gratification. you’re working! you’re in the zone! maybe the confetti can wait until after it’s completley done, but you deserve a snack and a brain break (or so).

you feel so great doing something so much better for your stress levels. you’re living life fuller than you did before. before you were suffering by your own hand…but why?

it didn’t have to be like this.

procrastination is caused by being rewarded for not getting things done. dopamining at it’s peak. it’s self-induced, because only you control it. and you have the capacity for changing your situation. here’s how:

this is initiative.

taking initiative is being proactive about your situation. you take opportunities as they come to better your situation; you notice when you’re uncomfortable, reflect, and make a change. sometimes keeping in touch with your body is hard because of the face-paced nature of dopamining and procrastination, but your body will never stop reaching out. this is why when you take a break, you realize how hungry or etc you are. take a moment after a video, game match, or something of the like finishes. breathe. take a moment to remember and reevaluate yourself. how long has it been? what do you need to get done? why would you rather avoid it? and even, how can you make it easier?

taking initiative is listening to yourself when you start to feel uncomfortable. track the feeling, and understand where it’s coming from instead of pushing it away. assess your situation. what is easy, and what would make you happier? think twice—dopamining is a habit that’s hard to break.

taking initiative is taking a deep breath, getting up, and looking at your task. examining the difficulty and breaking it up into parts if necessary. maybe you need music/ambience if it’s monotonous, but try not to make that too distracting. get a snack and water (etc) if you feel fatigued or discomforted. examine the big picture in steps, and reward yourself when you’re finished.

breaking out of a dopamining session means a lot. you remember your body and ergo what you need. it might take some time to develop the habit of checking in on yourself, but it is possible. you are not lazy. you are not a time-waster. you can live life to the fullest when you chase the proper gratification.

when you break out of dopamining, even just a session of it, potential opens up. even before you finish your task, you recognize what you can do. you could go on a walk, draw, write, read, organize, explore some music, do some more chores if you’re in the zone, and so much more. and then when you finish that task that feels so daunting, the gratification feels earned. it feels different. it feels personal. you just did something that mattered more. and steps like that build persistence, self-awareness, and proactivity. steps like that make life fuller.

_…-~^*^~-…_ _…-~^*^~-…_ _…-~^*^~-…_

helpful articles that make points i don’t + stand strong at the possibility i make a mistake in this post!

[addictivecontradiction]

Piercing, 2018

[random-xpressions]

What an age of instant gratification. There used to be times when letters and postmen existed. It used to take weeks before one would get a response, eagerly waiting for the postman, to see if there's any letter from their loved one. And here we are today, if someone doesn't see a blue tick, they get frustrated. Don't know if I should laugh or cry at this height of human impatience!

Random Xpressions

[itsbarbiebiiittchhhhh]

another english word i love is “Gratifying”. It reminds me of chocolate whipped cream.

[albertayebisackey]

Friday 29th September 2023 - “The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.” - James Dean

[miraculousmemory]

Ooh this shit be hittin’ different

[realityhop]

"As the otaku spread online, the last thing they wanted was to replicate the world from which they were escaping: a complex hierarchy of identity and status.  American forum users, of course, were doing just that, creating usernames and cultivating reputations in their online communities.  For most American bulletin boards, in order to post you had to sign up for an account and create a name.  In the Nameless World things were different.  Users could leave the name field blank, and all that appeared for each user’s identity was the default term “nanashii” (“nameless”).  This allowed otaku to discard not only the hierarchy, but the sad fact of themselves, and roam not simply without their bodies but without their souls in a ghostly Saturnalia where all laws, prohibitions, and even human identity dematerialized into a catalog of interests, desires, and self-gratification."

— Dale Beran, It Came From Something Awful

"The original Saturnalia was a Roman mid-winter festival held in the middle of December, starting on the 17th in the modern calendar (or the 25th in the Roman one).  It lasted for seven days and was a period when excess was encouraged: the shops were closed, gambling was permitted, presents were exchanged, slaves were given licence to speak their minds and join in the fun, and generally joy was unconfined."

— WorldWideWords.org, Saturnalia article (2005)

"The Apollonian takes its name from Apollo, the god of light, dream, and prophecy, while the Dionysian takes its name from Dionysus, the god of intoxication.  Apollo is associated with visible form, rational knowledge, and moderation, Dionysus with formless flux, mysticism, and excess.  The world of Apollo is made up of distinct moral individuals, while Dionysus presides over the dissolution of individual identity into a universal spiritual community uniting human beings with nature. [...] While Socratic Alexandrian culture represents the overwhelming influence of the Apollonian attention to knowledge, form and limits, the tragic Brahmanic culture is the result of a too profound immersion in the Dionysian insight into the meaninglessness of individual existence in the face of the ongoing creation and destruction of life."

— Douglas Smith (2000) on The Birth of Tragedy

"As forms of play, festivals are self-representations of life.  They are characterized by an excess, an expression of an overflowing life that does not aim at a goal." — The Disappearance of Rituals (2019) "A form of rule in which human beings did nothing but play would be perfect domination." — Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld (2021)

— Byung-Chul Han

[howifeltabouthim]

. . . expecting some gratification which not only never comes, but which never even begins to come.

Anthony Trollope, from Can You Forgive Her?

[adventurechristianity]

Just You Wait

Wait for the Lord;    be strong, and let your heart take courage;    wait for the Lord!Psalm 27:14 I’ll admit it. I’m addicted to instant gratification. I like fast food, short lines, and one-day Amazon delivery. I have a hard and fast rule–if the hold music goes through its little song and starts to repeat–I hang up. Waiting is not my thing. Reference.com tells me that Americans spend 27…

[tapan4evr]

True me.. Tap-1812..

The more confident you are, the quieter you become, then you choose privacy over people in most scenarios. Confident people are not attention seekers. Contrarily, the insecure ones are the loudest, drawing most attention to themselves. Immature people thrive off external attention & gratification.But confidence is has it’s own elegance. Elegance thrives off self-respect & honour. Confidence…

[whisperintrees]

Instant gratitude is the antidote to constant gratification.

[addictivecontradiction]

Amulet, 2020

[rochestertoastmasters]

Need some immediate gratification? We’ve got you covered for fun! Be our guest & email rochestertoastmasters@gmail.com for a link

[fieriframes]

[Gratification of their animal passions.]

[realityhop]

...

"The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is your “high order” or “executive function” conscious part of the brain.  Each of us has our own personal Jiminy Cricket, like the character from Pinocchio, which keeps us from indulging in bad behavior and keeps our baser desires in check.  In an uncontrollable stressful situation, the amygdala–HPA axis commands the release of neurotransmitters including dopamine.  These flood the PFC, silencing Jiminy, which disinhibits you from doing some wild and crazy things.  When your PFC is under fire by cortisol, your rational decision-making ability is toast.  You can’t differentiate between immediate or delayed gratification.  So, instead of your Jiminy telling you to “Zen” when someone steals your parking space, you are much more likely to react on impulse and extract your short-lived justice, just as Kathy Bates’s character in the film Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) did (Towanda!). […] Throughout adolescence and early adulthood, the cognitive connections between actions and consequences are muddled, as the maturation of the prefrontal cortex (the Jiminy Cricket) is not complete until approximately twenty-five years of age."

— Robert Lustig, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains (2017)

"Social-emotional learning focuses on knowing how to name and manage our emotions, delay gratification, and show grit and temerity in reaching our goals, as well as on knowing how to repair conflict and how to reach out for help where needed.  No matter how great our self-understanding, we need practice and awareness to effectively express and manage our emotions, empathize, engage in self-care, listen well, communicate effectively, and repair relationship problems.  Without this, it can be all too easy to use our birth chart’s archetypal blueprint as a justification for bad behavior (“I didn’t mean to yell at you, but I can’t help it with three planets in Aries!”) rather than as a guide for skillful interactions and service to the world.  It’s too easy to retreat into ourselves rather than connect with others in a meaningful way.  And once we start to build a working knowledge of astrology, it’s tempting to use others’ charts to make assumptions about what they are and are not capable of or whether it’s worth our effort to connect with them deeply. Most self-help books focus on getting you what you want, making your fortune, realizing your potential, chasing your dreams, being a rugged individualist who does it your way.  In a world where most people are used to having it their way — the music they like, the newsfeed that supports their beliefs, the clothes that express the self — polishing one’s personal identity and chasing personal achievement are held as the highest aims.  Yet, the idea that we thrive most when we take responsibility for and rely upon only ourselves has become a huge source of sadness and disconnection."

— Jennifer Freed, Use Your Planets Wisely: Master Your Ultimate Cosmic Potential with Psychological Astrology (2020)

"In the course of developing emotional responsibility, most of us experience three stages: (1) “emotional slavery”—believing ourselves responsible for the feelings of others, (2) “the obnoxious stage”—in which we refuse to admit to caring what anyone else feels or needs, and (3) “emotional liberation”—in which we accept full responsibility for our own feelings but not the feelings of others, while being aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others."

— Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (1999)

Learn the skill of delaying your response when faced with someone who is intentionally trying to provoke you. Refuse to let others dictate your mood. Take charge of your emotions. You decide when, how, and whether you want to to react. You control yourself, no one else does.