What carries more motivational weight for you, pain or pleasure?
Years ago, I attend a Tony Robbins training weekend, and one of the things he taught was that the two main driving factors for everyone are either pain or pleasure. You are either moving away from the pain or moving toward the pleasure. Yesterday we talked about the Why and How. Let’s apply that specifically to the Pain and Pleasure principles within the context of procrastination.
The secret to success is learning how to use pain and pleasure, instead of having pain and pleasure use you. ~ Anthony Robbins
The Pleasure is frequently derived from the avoidance of the pain of performing a certain task. For example, if you don’t get up and take out that garbage now, you won’t miss anything on that TV show. Not balancing your budget gives you the pleasure of not realizing how much you don’t have this week to spend, coupled with the instant gratification of that purchase you are about to make with the funds you don’t know you don’t have in the bank! And of course, we all know that the pleasure of indulging in too much dessert can easily trump the pain of saying “no”! Who can discount the incredible pleasure of saying no to getting up an hour earlier to work out at the gym when those covers are just sooooo cozy, soft and warm and the bed seems especially soft that morning?
This takes us right into the Pain – oh no… you’re not going to ask me to get out of bed an hour earlier so I can exercise and prep a healthy breakfast, not when I can snuggle down and sleep another 60 minutes? The pleasurable taste of that brownie slam-dunk supersedes the pain of pushing it away for your long-term goal of cutting down the sugar in your diet for a long-term healthier eating lifestyle. The pain of turning off the lights and going to bed now hurts more than staying up watching that movie or reading that book.
We must learn how to assign considerable pleasure to what is right for our long term goals… and loading up substantial pain to what seems/feels right in the immediate moment.
Call to Action (again???) Yes! Remember yesterday we had you write down a list of three things you’ve procrastinated on, then figure out the How and Why? Today go back to that list. For each of the three items you didn’t accomplish, list out the pleasure associated with not doing them in a timely fashion like the examples we just mentioned. Then, write down the pain of the failure to achieve those tasks/goals. What did you lose? What regrets are associated with not doing what you had wanted to do? I know, this is a toughie, but it’s important for you to understand where you assign and receive your procrastination pain and pleasure so you can take it to a breakthrough… which we will talk about on tomorrow’s blog post.
Hang in there – do the assignments and purpose to come back tomorrow to finish this out…
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