Which Pain Would You Rather Have?

I was talking to a student last week and he was marvelling at all the different things I'm doing for my coaching business and also for my health, and my dedication, consistency, and discipline around those things. I think why that struck him is that it's so rare. The majority of people aren't willing to show up and consistently do the things that will create the results they want in their lives.

As I was reflecting on that conversation, I remembered a huge insight into human behaviour and psychology that I've gotten from studying coaching and marketing over the last few years. It's this:

We humans only have two motivations: gain pleasure or avoid pain.

Gain pleasure or avoid pain. That's it.

All human behaviour boils down to these two fundamental motivations. We move towards something in order to gain pleasure, or we move away from something in order to avoid pain.

If we want a relationship, we might be trying to gain the pleasure of companionship or connection or love or sex. Or we might be trying to avoid the pain of loneliness or the pain of feeling unloved or ignored by getting validation from someone.

With food, especially if it's more calorie-dense or highly processed or sugary, we might be trying to gain pleasure from the taste or texture or the sugar rush, or even the caffeine high from coffee. Or we might be trying to avoid the pain of being present to our “negative” emotions like sadness, depression, and loneliness. A lot of us have an emotional connection to eating. We often refer to certain kinds of food as comfort food, which gives you a hint as to the role it plays in our lives.

You could look at drug and alcohol addiction through this lens. A lot of addicts have experienced some immense trauma and they’re trying to avoid or escape that pain by taking drugs or alcohol.

If you've got a dream or goal that's important to you, like becoming a successful musician and making a sustainable full-time living from your music, but you're not taking action to move yourself closer to that goal, which of those two motivations is driving you? You're trying to avoid pain, right?

If taking that action would give you pleasure by creating the results you want, the only logical reason why would you avoid that pleasure is that you fear a greater pain. That greater pain is taking action. You could call it laziness or procrastination. But really it's a mindset issue. You believe that the pain of doing the work is greater than the pleasure you would get from the results of that work.

You can't avoid pain completely. You're going to have some pain either way. You have to pick your pain. You can either have the “pain” of discipline, putting in the work, being committed to seeing it through and making mistakes along the way. Or you can not do the work but have the pain of never achieving your dream. You'll experience some pain by being disciplined and doing the work, but at the end of it, you'll also have a huge reward.

Trying to avoid pain in the present only creates more pain in the future. If you avoid the pain of exercising, you're only going to have to deal with the bigger pain of obesity, or a chronic disease like diabetes, or a heart attack. If you avoid dealing with a painful issue in your relationship, that's only going to fester and eventually, you'll have to deal with the bigger pain of your relationship ending.

If you avoid the pain of being disciplined and consistently showing up every day and taking action that moves you towards your dreams and goals, you'll only have to deal with the bigger pain of a life of regret, the torment of unfulfilled dreams, the anguish of not realising your potential or your purpose.

At some point, the pain of staying where you are will exceed the pain that you're afraid of from doing the work, and then you'll take action. The discomfort has to become immense before you're willing to do what's necessary to go beyond mediocrity, settling, compromising, and apathy.

I want you to reflect on that this week. Whatever pain you might experience from taking action and potentially making some mistakes along your journey will be temporary. The pain of unfulfilled dreams will last the rest of your life. Which pain would you rather have?