Shaping

I bet you are curious. As you all know I am a dog trainer and I have been reading a new book on dog behavior. This trainer uses shaping to train her dogs and says this can be used to train just about any animal. She use to train animals at sea aquariums in Hawaii. Any way back to shaping... this technique is used in our everyday lives also. Shaping is changing the behavior by giving positive rewards for behavior that is desired. Isn't that what we are doing with losing weight. Our positive reward is wearing smaller size clothes, and she reinforced the idea of putting on paper our accomplishments. That way when we are weak we can review how far we have come. For myself I know that if I don't keep a daily diary I am not very successful with my weight loss. Even if you are not into dog training this book is a great study on behavior training (Don't Shoot the dog! by Karen Pryor.). As you read this book you realize that we are being shaped daily by all kinds of influences. Many of them you are not even aware of!

These simply techniques can also help us become better Christians. Such as reading our Bibles daily, and praying for others. The read through the Bible in a year is shaping our behavior. Or how about those that keep a prayer log when they pray for others needs. We keep a chart to mark off our daily readings or in a prayer log you date the prayer and when answered by God you put the answer date. Our positive rewards are reading through the Bible and seeing when God answers prayer. We learn more about our Savior and grow as Christians to be more like Him. That kind of behavior change I am all for!

What makes this book good for me now is that I am struggling with losing the weight. I have been at it since September and to keep motivated is hard. So any way that you can reward yourself for doing the right thing is good. I try to look for things that I would normally not do which makes it special and when I reach even a small goal I treat myself. Who would have thought dog training would fall right in line with training our daily lives. I love my dogs!

I am praying for you. And I know you can be successful. Let's do it together! Until next time I will be talking to less of you.

Your Sister In Christ,
Lynne