Conditioned responses and routines

A conditioned response is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus that has been paired with an eliciting stimulus.

So what you’re probably asking? Well the “what” is that there may be things happening in your life that you’re not happy with. These may be conditioned responses and with a fair amount of effort – sometimes a lot of effort – you may be able to reverse them.

Here’s some examples in my life. The funniest one is that if I pick up a book to read in the morning and start to read, I will begin to yawn. This happens without fail. Maybe you’re thinking it’s becaue I’m tired in the morning. But that’s not it. I’ve been up and working at my morning routine long before I pick up a book. It’s that someone a few a years ago my brain associated yawning with a book. I can read online a nothing happens.

This is the breakdown:
There’s pairing. I started reading a book and I yawned at the same time.

Then there’s association. My brain associated a yawn with opening a book.

The conditioned response develops so that when my brain sees me open a book it thinks it’s time to yawn

Then when I’m walking on a certain route – one where i know the porta potties are as soon as I get to a certain point on that route, my bladder begins to send messages to my brain that “it has to go”. When I’m on another route – leaving under the exact same conditions like how much I drink and when I pee at home, I’m fine at the same distance because the porta potty on that route is not for another mile. It took me a while to realize this one but when I found that I was feeling fine all the way until about 1/2 mile from the potty and all of a sudden I really had to go.
So what does this have to do with routines?

I have been having chronic daily headaches for the past 5-6 weeks and I have associated most of it with my daily morning routine. There’s more to it though because it’s most often there when I wake up.
But i decided to change my morning routine and see what happened. It’s been less than a week so I can’t really tell about the effect on my headaches except that so far they have not occurred when I wake up. But what I have noticed is that I feel a sense of freedom and excitement now that I’ve changed up that routine. I do parts of it in the evening or throughout the day so I haven’t eliminated anything. I’ve just reordered my routine.
Take a look at your days and see if there are things you might be doing “just because”. You started doing them sometime but maybe they have become stagnant. It’s important for the things we do to be stimulating and exciting so analyze your activities and see if there’s any shaking up you can do. And maybe you’ll find some conditioned responses that you weren’t aware of either.