The topic for today’s Personal Power lesson was “The Controlling Force that Directs Your Life”.  What Tony talks about in today’s lesson is the two fundamental desires that drive human behavior – Pleasure and Pain.  I know it sounds overly simplistic but at the very basic level everything we do is driven by our desire to either avoid pain or to gain pleasure.

This concept isn’t really rocket science, but it totally makes sense.  The reason Tony really dives into these two forces is because they are the two controlling forces behind desire and motivation.  In it’s simplest form, if you want to get yourself to take some kind of action, all you need to do is associate pleasure with performing the action and pain with not taking the action.

Now, at first this sounds really simple and dumb but it totally makes sense.  If our biological bodies and brains have been conditioned and trained to seek pleasure and avoid pain at the very core levels since the beginning of time, then how do we expect to achieve anything long-term if we don’t align ourselves with these two forces.

For example, if you associate massive pain with going to the gym and working out, and you associate pleasure with skipping the workout and staying home to sit on the couch and relax, it’s going to be very difficult for you keep going to the gym just because you set some kind of New Year’s resolution to start exercising.  I mean, long term there is no way you’re going to be able to stick to it.

The only way to get around this problem is to learn how to condition your brain to link pleasure to the behavior you want to take and repeat and to link pain to not taking that behavior.  It’s just like going to work in the morning.  If you show up late, and your boss rips your face off for being late, you will begin to link massive pain to coming in late and you will most likely show up on time.  Likewise, if you receive recognition for performing a certain way at work, you are more likely to perform that way again because inside your brain you link pleasure to it.

See, when you look at people who are always going to the gym and working out, you think that they have will power that you don’t have.  That’s not really true.  When you talk to these people they actually ENJOY going to the gym.  They link pleasure to it.  Either that, or they link massive pain to not going.  For some the pain of not going could be linked to the fact that they made a promise to someone to go to the gym.  For others, it may be a medical condition that forced them to put their health ahead of anything else.  For others yet, maybe they are trying to look good because they are trying to avoid the pain of being alone and feeling unattractive.

The cool thing about our brains is that while it is virtually impossible to fight this constant need for us to seek pleasure and avoid pain long term, it is possible to change our associations of what equals pleasure and what equals pain.  See, our brains actually don’t seek “pleasure” and avoid “pain”, they seek what they ASSOCIATE with pleasure and avoid what they ASSOCIATE with pain.

One man can associate pleasure with going to the bar and talking to beautiful women, while another will associate massive pain with even attempting to do such a thing.  Some might say that the first man is simply more courageous than the second, but that’s not necessarily true.  Even though the first guy can have no problem picking up women at a bar, he could have a massive fear of snakes or spiders or even algebra because in his brain he links massive pain to those things.  The second guy in this example could be an algebra expert with a pet snake and pet spider at home.  It’s all based on what we associate pain and pleasure with.

Unfortunately, 99% of what we associate pleasure and pain to is subconsciously conditioned into us by the time we are adults, and most people never even realize that they act in accordance to that conditioning.  They think that their conscious thinking mind is in control and that they make decisions and take actions based on rational thinking.  That simply isn’t true.

For example, I have studied nutrition extensively.  Rationally, I know that drinking pop and eating chocolate is not good for me.  It doesn’t fuel my body, it just clogs it up with crap.  However, I still eat those things for now.  If we acted rationally, we would all eat healthy and exercise regularly and we’d all stay away from credit card debt and overindulging in things like alcohol or chocolate.

The great thing about this is that even though 99% of what we associate pleasure and pain to is already pre-conditioned into our subconscious minds, we always have full control over re-programming our conditioning.  It is possible to associate massive pleasure to eating healthy if we choose to do so.  It is possible to associate massive pleasure to working out three times a week.  It is also possible to change what we associate pain to.

Pleasure or Pain?

One of the things that Tony talks about in this lesson as well is a realization he made that I have since confirmed in my life numerous times.  The realization is simply this:

“Most people will do MUCH more to avoid pain, than to gain pleasure. “

Even though we’d like to think that we are mostly driven by the carrot, the reality is that most people are much more driven by avoiding the stick (pain) than chasing the carrot (pleasure).  Most people wouldn’t do nearly as much to try to earn an extra $25,000 this year, than to prevent someone from stealing $25,000 they already had in their house.  Some people would literally kill someone if they tried to steal something worth $25,000 from them, but the same person might be too lazy to make an extra couple of cold-calls per day at his work to try to earn an extra $25,000 this year.

If you want to find a way to leave the job you hate, and start making money doing something you love, what you need to do is to link massive pain to not leaving your job.  Right now, you’re probably linking pain to leaving your job (how will I pay my bills? what about my friends at work? what if my wife leaves me? our finances will crumble! what if we lose the house? etc.) and linking pleasure to pursuing what you love, however for most of us our desire to avoid pain is MUCH greater than the desire to gain pleasure so we don’t act.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t the first time I’ve taken this program so most of this stuff I already know.  However, looking back at my life over the last few years I realize now that anytime I’ve tried to get myself to change certain behaviors such as eating healthy, working out more often, etc.  I always tried to link pleasure to doing what I wanted to do, but I never took the time to also plug into the power of avoiding pain to help me out.

I’m a positive guy so I always like to focus on the positives, but Tony is right – we also have to connect with the “pain” side of the equation to really light a fire under our butts.

As part of the homework for today I identified a few areas of my life that I want to improve and I spent some time connecting with the pleasure I associate with doing those things, and also with the pain I will have to suffer if I don’t do those things.

I learned a lot by going through these exercises.

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