I've been a lurker here for a while now, but thanks to Beeminder I'm finally posting!

In an effort to increase my luminosity I decided to start positively rewarding any thoughts about my internal state with a smile. For a few days it seemed to be working wonderfully. I would think about my resolution, smile and feel good about it very often. After a few days I started responding to this smile by trying to gauge my emotions.

Turns out this was a bad idea. The whole reason I'm doing this is that I find this type of purposeful introspection difficult and frustrating. So I turned the positive reinforcer into a negative one. As a result, I haven't been nearly as introspective the last couple days. I'm switching back to simply rewarding self-aware thoughts, no more trying to provoke them.