I’m sure we all have bad habits we would love to be able to break from.
These could be something as simple as biting your nails, which anyone will tell you as a hard one to quit doing. The same goes for other habits that are more detrimental to your health, like smoking nicotine cigarettes or eating out at fast food restaurants way too often.
There are a number of ways you can try and make yourself quit doing these things.
For smokers there are arm patches and gum marketed specifically for anyone trying to kick the habit. And if you search on Pinterest, you can probably find thousands upon thousands of suggestions on how to quit biting your nails, like dipping your fingers in lemon juice or wearing latex gloves so your digits aren’t even available for biting.
But that’s not to say these remedies will work for everyone.
Eating fast food is a bit of a hard one to kick, especially if your willpower is especially low.
The problem with fast food is that it’s just so convenient. After all, it’s right there in the name. It’s literally fast food . And although we know it’s not good for us, there’s no denying how delicious it is. So deciding to stop indulging in McDonald’s or Subway or whatever your fast food restaurant of choice is can prove to be extremely difficult.
What if there was a way to condition yourself into stopping from indulging in your bad habits?
I’m sure we’ve all heard or learned about Pavlov at some point in our lives. He was that guy who trained his dog to associate being fed with the sound of a bell, so anytime the bell was rung the dog automatically began salivating.
This is a form of teaching that’s been dubbed “conditioning”. Basically, you teach yourself or someone to associate one thing with another, creating a series of responses and actions based on these two components. In Pavlov’s dog’s case, it was the bell and the food. Take away the food, the dog still salivated because it had been conditioned to anticipate a feeding at the sound of the bell.
Without getting too technical, conditioning can work wonders on changing your own habits, or the habits of others.
There’s actually a lot that goes into this concept and I would suggest anyone who’s interested in learning more definitely check out some literature online. But this isn’t a university psychology class so we’re going to keep it simple for these purposes.
To put it broadly, conditioning can fall under two categories: positive or negative. It’s up to you to find out what works best for you.
For those who find negative punishments help stop their behaviors, there’s definitely a bracelet for you.
The Pavlok 2 is a wearable device that will basically administer a light electroshock to help you quit your most annoying habits. Whether it’s nail biting, smoking, or maybe even enjoying too much fast food, you can bet you’ll want to stop after one too many shocks to the wrist.
The bracelet uses aversion therapy to help people kick their worst habits, whatever those might be.
According to their website , the company claims that each band uses “negative stimuli and association to help reaffirm a specific action as undesirable.”
Basically, you’re shocking yourself out of a bad habit, no matter how “good” you might try to convince yourself it is.
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The Pavlok 2 will administer a 350-volt electric shock whenever you step out of line.
That zap of electricity is totally harmless, by the way. Think of it as like the same type of shock you get when you walk across carpet in fuzzy socks and then door a door handle. Not pleasant, but also not unbearable — just enough to make you not want to touch that door handle again.
The watch isn’t just all about breaking bad habits, though.
It can also help you make good habits, like training your body to wake up naturally on its own by using an electroshock alarm clock built into the band. Anyone who hates their oversleeping habits can train themselves into rising with the sun, or at whatever time they want their body ready to greet the day.
The Pavlok 2 even has a function that allows for your friends to control the watch’s shocks for you.
They can download an app and use it to administer your zaps if you ever step out of line in front of them. But I would only suggest offering this information to those friends you truly trust to use it wisely.
After all, with great power comes great responsibility, so just be careful which of your friends you give this power to.
Each charge on the watch allows for 150 electric shocks, so depending on how often you partake in your bad habits, it can last you awhile.
You can order your own watch through Amazon . They currently retail for $199 USD and come with an ebook to better help you learn how to kick those nasty habits of yours. The watch also comes in five different colors: black, pink, blue, white, and gray.
So far the reviews for the Pavlok 2 seem pretty mixed.
Some people have praised it for helping them change their habits, while others have said criticized it for its technical issues.
“I really wanted this thing to work. But, it just doesn’t,” one reviewer wrote. “By ‘work’ though, I mean the shock component, because that’s whole appeal of the device. Otherwise is just an over-sized Fitbit with no display and only an alarm feature.”
However, they did add that as long as the bracelet is working correctly, the shock is “100 percent effective.” So I guess it all depends on the quality of each specific purchase.
