Hey Vika, props for writing this. Putting myself in the open state seems to be my personal fully general argument for doing things I’ve been putting off (e.g. aversive phone calls). I like to think of myself as being open to new experiences, so once I can frame the decision to do the aversive thing as deciding between being open or being closed, well, of course I’ve got to be open :)
Engaging the “openness to experience” identity makes a lot of sense, and being open to potentially negative experiences is certainly a part of that. Have you tried doing things that are too aversive for you to be open towards them, or does this approach work in full generality?
I tried it for a couple of weeks and found that it’s most useful to me in social situations for communicating in “hazardous situations” e.g. talking to a stranger at a party, or holding an unpleasant conversation while still being empathetic.
I didn’t really try it for general hard-things-to-do since I have different mental tools for those.
Hey Vika, props for writing this. Putting myself in the open state seems to be my personal fully general argument for doing things I’ve been putting off (e.g. aversive phone calls). I like to think of myself as being open to new experiences, so once I can frame the decision to do the aversive thing as deciding between being open or being closed, well, of course I’ve got to be open :)
Engaging the “openness to experience” identity makes a lot of sense, and being open to potentially negative experiences is certainly a part of that. Have you tried doing things that are too aversive for you to be open towards them, or does this approach work in full generality?
Hmm, I generalized from the one example of aversive phone calls. Let me try a few different examples and get back to you :)
I tried it for a couple of weeks and found that it’s most useful to me in social situations for communicating in “hazardous situations” e.g. talking to a stranger at a party, or holding an unpleasant conversation while still being empathetic.
I didn’t really try it for general hard-things-to-do since I have different mental tools for those.