Every time your partner sighs, your sports team blows a lead, or someone cuts you off in traffic, you react like it’s clockwork. Sound familiar? Congrats, you might be Pavlov’s emotional support human. But hey—recognizing the bell is the first step to not drooling on cue.
Pavlov’s dog is a familiar and famous experiment where Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate when he played a sound. We humans are much like Pavlov’s dog. We may not be part of a scientific experiment, but certain stimuli cause us to react in predictable ways. The stimuli may be from a partner, a sports team, a traffic event as small as someone cutting in front of us. If we’re not aware of the link between our behavior and stimuli we are as conditioned as Pavlov’s dog. When we become aware of the link between the stimuli and our behavior we have an opportunity to change. Do you want to be a human version of Pavlov’s dog or do you want to be free? Something to think about.
