Latest / Pathological Positivity / Choose Your Pain – Episode #708
Transcript
- This is Live on Purpose Radio, episode 708, choose your pain. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life. In this episode, why do we keep doing things that don't serve us, and we avoid doing those things we know would improve our lives? Let's get into that because the surprising role that pleasure and pain plays in every decision that we make helps to empower us to change that dynamic and actually start doing the things that we promised ourself we would do. Let's dive in. So one of the most common laments that I have heard in my office over now three decades of clinical experience, why do I do what I do when I know what I know? Think about it. We always have a gap between what we tell ourselves we're going to do and what we actually do. And we've got really great reasons for setting the goals or making the promises that we do. So why do we fall short of those, or why do we continue to do those things that we promised ourselves we would stop doing? Can you relate to this? I think you probably can because this is a universal condition for humans. Here's what we've found through research and clinical experience and even just being on the planet as a humans. If... See if you connect with this. Pleasure and pain. And my first question to you would be, what is more powerful in motivating human behavior? These are both motivators, pleasure and pain. Which one is more powerful to change human behavior? Now if you're like me and you kind of are because here you are listening to the podcast, You're hoping that it's pleasure that we will do things to improve our life. No. It's pain. Pain is... It's not even really close, actually. Pain is by far the more powerful of the two motivators for human behavior, for actually changing what we do. This is because our brain's primary job is to keep us safe and secondarily to prove us right. But in that keep us safe mode, it's always safer to assume risk. Now that doesn't mean that the thing is more risky. It's just safer to assume risk and be wrong than to assume safety and be wrong. So our brain is wired this way. We will do more to avoid pain than we will to seek pleasure. Now I'm not saying that pleasure isn't important. It absolutely is. But they're on different scales, actually. The pleasure and the pain. And it's good when we can get both of them to work for us. In my book, can I talk about how pleasure pulls and pain pushes? And either way, we're going the same direction. And if we can use both to our advantage, that would be a good thing. So go with me for a minute to a visual model. I'm just gonna build this for you in a way that you can picture it in a traditional quadrant model. So you've got a square and you divide it with two lines, a vertical and a horizontal, and now you got four little squares inside. Those are the quadrants. Now on the columns, think of this as pleasure and pain. So maybe you got pleasure over there on the left and pain over there on the right. Now on the rows, we're going to put change on the top and no change on the bottom. So you have two options. Anytime you promise yourself you're going to do something, either you're going to change what you've been doing or not. Can you think of any other options? If you modify it, you've changed it. Okay. So we've got change or not change. Either way, you get pleasure and pain. So this quadrant model will help us to fill out our own motivation, and I invite you to think about what it is. I'm going to use a common common example for becoming healthier through appropriate exercise. Okay? Now that might be yours. You might have something different, but this is our story with these particular details. So you get to add whatever it is that you've promised yourself you would do. Did you promise you'd stop smoking? Did you promise you'd start calling your parents more often? Did you promise yourself that you would reconnect with that old friend? Whatever it is. K? Or start that business. Change or not change. Those are your only two options. You will have pleasure and pain. Both options. Okay. So let's start filling out the quadrant system. Let's start with change. Alright? And and so in that upper left hand quadrant, the change is going to bring some pleasure into your life. Now in this box, you can list all of the great reasons that you've told yourself you're going to do this. So using the the exercise example. K. Let's say that you've decided I'm going to start exercising. Yes. You've got a lot of good reasons for that. Increased health. Right? Cardiovascular health, fitness, energy levels. All of these things are the pleasure you get when you make that change and begin to exercise consistently. K. So you fill out that first box with all the great reasons that you're gonna do this, the pleasure that comes into your life. You got it? Now let's move over to the pain side. The pain of making that change. And there is some, isn't there? These are all the reasons that you haven't done it or that you resist it or that you push away from it because it is painful. For example, you gotta get up earlier to go to the gym. It takes effort. You have to buy a new workout outfit. It it costs some money to do this and time and energy. The... This is the pain of making the change. Here's another word you can put in there because, this captures a lot of it. It's hard. Okay. Right? You with me now? It's not too hard. It's doable, but we'll come back to that. It's hard and there is real pain for making that change. So that's how you're going to fill out that upper right hand box. Now I hope you're doing this at least mentally. So the pleasure of making that change, all the good reasons you promise yourself you're gonna do it, what's gonna come into your life when you make that change, the pain of making that change, this is the cost, the difficulty, the effort, the the the soreness. If you go exercise, guess what? You're gonna be sore. You're gonna use muscles you haven't used in a while. Okay. Now let's drop down to the bottom line. This is not changing. What is the pleasure... We're starting on the the lower left hand quadrant here. What is the pleasure that you get from not changing? Now if your brain tries to jump in and say, well, there isn't any pleasure. Yes, there is. There is pleasure in not changing. For example, avoidance gives you some pleasure. Now I'm not saying it's really awesome pleasure. I'm saying that your brain is wired to avoid pain and if you can avoid the pain that gives you a little bit of pleasure. Okay. Indulgence, perhaps being able to stay in bed instead of getting up and going to the gym. That's pleasurable. Right? Sitting on the couch is always easier. In fact, there's a keyword for you. Just put this in big letters in that bottom left hand quadrant. Easy. And we get addicted to easy. There's an amazing book by Michael Easter called The Comfort Crisis, Crisis. And he talks about this, how we design and engineer our lives to allow us to remain comfortable. In fact, that's another word that you might put in that pleasure quadrant for not changing. It's comfortable. Alright. Now let's move over to the pain of not changing. Interestingly, this is going to be a lot of the opposites of the upper left hand quadrant, the pleasure of change. If you think of the opposites of those, that goes into the pain of not changing. So for example, instead of energy and health, you're going to have a depletion of energy for fatigue. Your health deteriorates. You might be overweight. You might have additional disease that comes into your body because of its lack of fitness. You might find it difficult to engage in activities. One of my clients was talking about his son who asked him to go hike a mountain with him, and he said, I'm sorry. I can't do that. Right? He was about a hundred and fifty pounds overweight. His knees wouldn't have taken it. His heart would have failed. So is there pain of not changing? Yes. And and a big part of the pain is you don't get the pleasure of making the change. But there's other things that come in too. I mentioned smoking earlier. Every time you open a package of cigarettes, you may ignore it, but there is a surgeon general's warning printed on there. This is gonna kill you. And you're like, yeah. I know. Right? I know this isn't good for me. This is the pain of not changing. Okay. Now going back to where we started, which one is more powerful pleasure or pain in changing human behavior? It's pain. Let's get clear about this. Your brain is designed to keep you safe. It wants you to avoid pain And so your brain will always do more to avoid pain than it will to seek pleasure. Even though they're both important, pain trumps pleasure. Got it? Because of this, as long as the pain of change... Listen carefully. As long as the pain of change looks greater to you than the pain of not changing, you won't change. You'll find yourself spinning out in the same patterns that you've repeated for years because your brain is preventing you from going to something that appears to be more painful. Now I said appears. Why? Because it's all about perception and not just perception. I'm going to give you one of the secrets, the psychological secrets that will help to bust this thing wide open for you. But notice that as long as your perception of the pain is greater for change than it is for not changing, you won't change. Now here's the secret. This changes the game right here. When does the pain or the pleasure arrive? So going back to our four quadrants, let's just make a little mental note or even write it on there in big letters if you want to. When do you get... Let's start in the upper left. When do you get the pleasure of making the change? And I mean the bulk of it because you'll experience a little surge of how I did it right up front. And that is pleasure and you get that immediately. But the bulk of it, when do you get the health? When do you get the cardiovascular improvement? When do you get the reduction in the excess weight that you've been carrying around? You don't get that today. It's later. And in the quadrant that I built, I I did one of these visually for myself and I took I took a big red, highlighter and I wrote later across it. That's when you get it. When do you get the pain of change? Now we're over on the upper right. When do you get the pain of change? Now. You pay at the door. You... There's a, an entry fee. Okay. And very literally, if you're going to the gym, you have to buy the membership upfront. When do you get the soreness today? When do you get the fitness later? You with me put a big and I put a big green now on that one. Just to visually remind me of when it's going to show up. You get the pleasure of change later. Most of it. I mean, you get the pain of change now upfront. Okay. Now go to the bottom. What about not changing? When do you get the pleasure of not changing? When do you get the indulgence and the avoidance and the comfort and the ease? Ease. Now you get that right now. When do you get the pain of change or not changing? I mean, most of it Later. Now you'll beat yourself up now for not exercising, but when does it kill you? Early. Oh, that's later. One of my clients was really promising himself that he'd stop smoking. I mentioned that as one of the examples. He knew it was gonna kill him, but not today. Right? We kick it down the road. Now why is this important? Because your brain will always perceive now pain to be greater than later pain. Just run that through your head again. Your brain will always perceive now pain to be greater than later pain even if it's not. If... Because you look at your quadrants, the pain of change, oh, it's gonna be hard. Right? But because that's now, you think that that's greater than dying early. You can kick it down the road. This is a deception. The pain of not changing is probably... Look at your quadrants. It's probably a bigger deal than the pain of change. But because of the temporal arrival of that pain, we are deceived into thinking or perceiving that, no, it's too hard. And that's why we don't change. The pain of change feels greater to us and it's a deception. And look at the pleasure part. The reasons for making that promise to you... Keeping that promise to yourself, huge, significant, monumental compared to the pleasure of not changing. Oh, it's easy. It's comfortable. How wimpy does that look when you put them up against each other? Now I have manipulated this with some of my clients. I tell this story in my book about a young mom, and it was exercise. We were talking about it. She was depressed. I told her, you need to be exercising. Do you know exercise beats antidepressant medication in all the clinical trials. And and so I said this to you, you need to be exercising. And she looked at me and you can probably picture her. So, I mean, she's depressed. She's overwhelmed. She's got three little kids. Her husband's a workaholic and she never sees him. And she said, I know. Kind of in this defeated way. Now how confident was I that she was going to exercise? Not. How confident was she more importantly that she was gonna go exercise? No. She told herself that for years. So we did a little experiment. This is a thought experiment. You can do it too if you want. I said, get out your checkbook. This is back in the days when we used to actually use paper checks. Get out your checkbook. Write me a check for a thousand dollars. Now this is a young family that represented her entire monthly grocery budget for her family. A thousand dollars. K? It's a lot for her. And she was getting nervous at this point. I said, don't worry about it. It's completely voluntary. You get to choose if you're gonna do this, but just... Let's go through the exercise. Now write me a check. It's gotta be made out to me. It's gotta be properly endorsed. $1,000. You got it? Now if you choose to do this, you're gonna make a promise to yourself. And what is that promise? And we had talked about it, and she said, well, I need to exercise at least three times a week for thirty minutes. Okay. She'd already thought it through. She'd already considered that. She'd made this promise to herself. She just wasn't keeping it. K. So that's your promise. Three times a week for thirty minutes, good cardiovascular exercise. I knew that this would help her depression. I knew it. And and I said, okay. Now that's a promise to yourself, not to me. In just a moment, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to give me that check against your promise. Now here's how it works. If you choose to give me that check, I will put it in a safe place, and I showed her in my, locked filing cabinet there, a drawer and a folder that I would put it in. I will hold this check for you for three weeks. We're gonna set up another appointment. You're gonna come back. You're going to report on whether you kept your promise to yourself or not. And I've told a lot of my clients, look, when you make a commitment, either you keep your commitment or you develop a story about it. And there's only those two options. I'm not saying the story is not true. I'm just saying either you keep your commitment or you don't. If you've kept your commitment, I will return that check to you, and you can do with it whatever you choose. If you have not kept your promise to yourself, and it's the honor system. You... This is about you. I will cash your check and use it for my own purposes, not toward your account. Are we clear about that? And she needed to know that I would. I promised her. Okay. Now, I watched her change in that moment and think about what's happening psychologically, and I'll come right back to that. She got a smile on her face as she reached out and handed me that check. What changed? See, usually when we make a promise to ourselves, we leave the back door open just in case we need to slip through it. Right? We leave ourselves a little leeway. We locked that door with a thousand little locks. And because she didn't have a backdoor, here's what happens in the pleasure and pain. What we did is took the pain of not changing, which was already real. You don't even have to do this experiment if you'll get real about your pain and choose your pain, it's going to happen and you can choose the now pain of making the change, or you can choose the later pain that is sure to come. If you don't Choose. You're going to have pain. Choose your pain. What we did in this experiment was we elevated, we magnified, we increased her pain of not changing to the tune of a thousand dollars and we moved it up to now. K. It's not down the road. This is like three weeks. You're going to either get your check back or lose it. My daughter shared with me a definition of commitment that I kinda liked, and I need to to get to the exact wording of it. But it it was something like this. Commitment is when we do what we promised ourselves we would do even after the mood passes that we were in when we made the promise. See, we have all the great reasons for doing it. What we need to do is get clear about our why and and realize that we're going to have pain and we choose our pain. This client came back three weeks later and no surprises. She kept her promise and that depression was lifting. She was feeling good about her self. She was starting to feel some of the effects of the exercise, but the biggest effect was how she felt about herself having kept her promise to herself. When we understand human motivation in terms of pleasure and pain and we get clear about our pain and we choose our pain, we will start keeping our promises to ourselves. Can you use this? Do you see where this applies in your life? I hope that you have found exactly what you came for today. And I invite you also to share this with others. We've heard it. It's time to apply it. Let's go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.