Pleasure or Pain

“To complain of the age we live in,

to murmur at the present possessors of power,

to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes for the future,

are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.”

Edmund Burke 1729 – 1797

Most of us, are motivated to move away from pain and towards pleasure. This works on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level.

So – what’s wrong with that?

Nothing at all! We exist today as evidence that the system works – we always survive!

Now, the problem is, survival is part of our problem!

Survival is okay if you are stuck in a reality TV show with fifteen other aspirant millionaires all trying to outlast, outplay and out-scheme you, but where do you go from there?

Now that you are still here, what are you going to do to increase your wellness, your happiness?

Unfortunately most of us have be taught to move just far away from the pain to be tolerable and there we must stay, occasionally exciting ourselves with a material nick-nack, dreaming of where we would like to be, but never quite feeling enough pain to move into that dream.

Uninspired, we soon find ourselves surrounded by like minded pain avoiders with whom we communicate. (Like attracts like remember, so the people in your space are reflecting yourself back to you!) As you might imagine this communication remains limited to ‘victim-speak’ – whinging and whining and moaning and complaining. Instead of using these pain complaints as motivators for change, we perpetuate them. We don’t know any different!

The reason that we are often so out of touch with what we want is because we are not really sure who we are.

In our pain free world we have lost touch with what is real. We survive so well that we don’t often seek answers to potentially painful questions like; Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What do I stand for? What is really important to me? What do I want my life to be about? What do I want to leave behind?

We need to make the evolutionary quantum leap from being merely ‘survival’ oriented to being able to thrive!

This week, list you Pleasure and your Pain and see if you can answer some of those difficult questions!

Take that leap and start to thrive!