Spirituality and Self Help

In my previous post I wrote about the power of questions and I gave an example, your walking down the street and you see a beautiful woman smiling at you. The first question you will probably ask is why is she smiling at me? If you decided that the reason is because she is attracted to you the second question will be (assuming you are attracted to her) should I ask her out? The answer to this question depends on whether you link pleasure or pain to the process.

Every thing we do we do to avoid pain or gain pleasure. The whole process of procrastination for instance is trying to delay something so you won’t feel pain now.The pain could range from a simple loss of time to actual physical pain.

Another example is overeating, of course overeating is complicated and it results from many factors such as boredom, sadness, depression etc however the choice of food to comfort suggests that the person links pleasure to food. The drug addict (and it doesn’t matter which drugs it can even be chocolate) links huge amounts of pleasure to the consumption.

Moreover people that workout in the gym for instance link more pleasure than pain to the exercise.The pain they feel while they exercise is dwarfed compare to the pleasure they gain from it. In this case the feeling of pleasure can be attributed to feeling more healthy looking better and slimmer etc.

Every time you do something you create a kind of road in your brain with the information of it’s destination to pleasure or pain. when you repeat the action you widen and strengthen the road. That is the reason why it is so hard to change our habits because they are physically wired in us.

Therefore to change almost anything in our life we need to change how we link pain and pleasure.
Lets say for example that you want to stop overeating.

The first thing you can do to change how you link pain and pleasure is understanding whats pleasurable and painful about it. Write down all the benefits and drawbacks.

The second step is linking more pain than pleasure to the process. Ask yourself the following question what will happen if I keep overeating? Write down your answer make sure you don’t neglect anything and feel the pain. close your eyes and imagine what will happen if you keep overeating.

The third step is linking massive amounts of pleasure to the change. Imagine that you no longer overeat. Make a list of all the benefits. Feel what it’s like walk, talk and think as if you have just left your plate with some food on it.

The fourth and final step is finding something to fill the void. Find something else to replace the behavior. You can consult with someone that stopped overeating ask him how he did it.

Related Articles

1. Do What’s Right – Do What’s Hard
2. How To Master Your Emotions To Achieve Peace Of Mind
3. Mastering your beliefs- Empowering yourself
4. How To Achieve Your Desired Outcome