Find Happiness - By Bringing the Pain

Good day,

I would like to talk today about something I read recently concerning happiness, or better still, the lack of it. Normally when we think of pursuing happiness it’s within the context of striving for something positive in life, such as a goal, an ideal, a behavior, or something tangible that we want. How about the opposite end of the spectrum? Can we make our lives happier by moving away from the things we despise?

Since that is the topic of my article, the answer is a resounding “YES”. You see, all of us are motivated by either a desire to gain pleasure or avoid pain in our lives. Yes, it boils down to those two things when you really take away the other noise in our lives. We often don’t see it that way in the short term, or on a conscious level, but that’s the truth. So instead of blindly going through life trying to do what we “logically” think we should be doing, maybe it’s time we figure out what emotional triggers are really behind our behaviors. Because we don’t usually act in a logical way, but in response to some emotion.
Scary, but true.

Maybe you know what you are supposed to do, something you have set your mind on really getting done. But you just can’t “force” yourself to do it. The reason most likely is that you associate more pain to taking this action than to not taking it! Need an example? Sure, how about when you are on a diet. You say to yourself “I can stop eating chocolate ice cream any time I want”. Of course you associate eating chocolate ice cream with pleasure, so that’s not gonna stop you, now is it? Or maybe when you say make a new goal of going to the gym three times a week, no matter what. Well, the pleasure of sitting at home watching TV is much greater than going to the gym, for most people anyway.

So how do we condition ourselves to either stop doing something we no longer want to do, or condition ourselves to take action that we know we should be doing? It’s simple – you must tie extreme pain (on an emotional level) to not doing something you wish to do. Make sure that you reinforce the emotion that you will feel great pain if you don’t go to the gym (or whatever it is you want), and at the same time think of ways to start associating pleasure to the action you want to take. Going to the gym will make you feel great when your done, the feeling of accomplishment, think of yourself fitting into those new clothes, or how great you will look once you lose that extra 10 pounds. Make a list, it will help. Yes, it takes some practice, but once you get good at this emotional association of “pain versus pleasure”, you will see just how powerful it can be.
I personally have a list of things that cause me pain when I wish to accomplish something, as well as a list of goals I want to achieve. You know what? The list of painful things can be much more powerful! See for yourself how pain can truly be your best driving force on the road to happiness.

To your continued success and happiness!