The brain must register that something doesn’t work. It’s not enough to think something does not work—it must be felt. We have all had the experience of knowing something isn’t working but continuing to repeat the same action over and over. For example, many of us as parents have said to a child: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times …” If, instead, we allowed our own sense of futility to sink in, we would not persist in parenting behaviors that we know don’t work and will not work, no matter how many times we repeat them.
