Getting Yourself To Take Action- Concept of Pain & Pleasure
Procrastination (or the art of laziness) can be the slow death of achievement but there is actually a secret to why some people are able to take action and achieve things while others are not. This same secret applied in reverse is also a reason why many people indulge in things they know is bad for them. From smoking and drinking to overeating or more harmful forms of gratification.
In its simplest form and quite obviously stated it all has to do with your mental associations. However contrary to popular belief, we actually have a lot more control over this than many would expect; therefore we can actually get ourselves to take action and make any long-lasting changes we want in our lives by taking 15 minutes of our day to make these mental changes.
Broken down to its most basic form, people take action or not for any one of two reasons. The need to gain pleasure or the need to avoid pain. Initially this may sound ludicrous, how would we smoke to avoid pain or gain pleasure?
Consider this, no one person has ever started smoking to enjoy the taste or because they were avoiding some painful procedure. However when someone starts smoking, the pleasure of fitting in is what is most present in the mind of the individual. Later on in life, once addicted; people continue to smoke more to avoid the pain (discomfort), and this is a concept that is more present in the mind of the individual at the time of deciding than the idea of the consequences long term.
This same concept applies to over eating. When someone decides to eat something they shouldn’t, the pleasure of the taste is more real to the person than the after effects. We can even apply this concept to the reason that we do not take action on things we know we should take action on. The inconvenience/ of taking action is what is very real to us as opposed to the pleasure of achieving the result.
So how can we get ourselves to take action?
The process is easier than you might think, but most people will never do it because they feel that this exercise is useless and unimportant. These are many of the people that never achieve their goals.
Sit down and really think about what is important about what you want to do (or what you want to stop doing), if it is exercise over a long term, eating or even smoking. Write down an extensive list of what will happen one year from now, if you excercised every day, or if you ate well. Think of it in the long term, what would your life be like ten years from now if you didnt stop smoking.
Basically you will be creating a very extensive list and forcing your brain to confront these issues and options. Force your brain to come up with as much painful ideas and associate them with not following through- write these down, cut out pictures (these are powerful).
Next associate as much pleasure to achieving this as possible. Again make an extensive list and use pictures.
For example in the case of exercise; your list of painful issues should have at least 20 items. You should have pictures of what you dont want to become, you should have examples of unhealthy and sick people etc.
Your other list should have exactly the opposite, the picture of that perfect body, an image of you living to see your kids have children etc.
You can do the same about starting a Home Business Opportunity. Imagine what your life would be like five years from now if you kept doing exactly the same thing you are doing now? Would you be in the same job, would you be earning the same income, would rent prices in the country have gone up?
What about if you did take that leap of faith and tried an opportunity, what if you took action consistently every day in a small way. How different could your life be?
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