There are a couple of things that I’d like to clarify regarding our emotional desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It’s not the actual pain or pleasure that drives us but our estimate of it. For example, our desire to avoid pain is really our fear of taking any action that we feel may lead to pain. Likewise, it’s not the actual pleasure that motivates us to take action, but our belief that a certain action will lead to a pleasurable experience.
Have you ever noticed that the anticipation of pain that we think my result from a certain action is generally much worse than the actual experience? Here’s an example, if you’ve ever done any public speaking it’s usually the 10 or 15 minutes before you get on stage that creates the greatest anxiety. You may experience an increased heart rate, a rise in body temperature and a nauseous feeling in your stomach. All this is caused by your estimation of what the experience will be like, not by the actual experience.
Speaking from my own personal experiences and those of other public speakers that I know, everyone agrees that, the anxiety that comes before hand generally vanishes as soon as they began speaking. Anxiety of course, is a form of fear.
Fear always fits into one or more of these three main categories.
- A desire for approval
- A desire for control, or
- A desire to feel secure
If you examine any fear, whether it’s the fear of rejection, fear of failure, or fear of loss, you’ll find that it fits into one or more of these three categories.
Take the example of our public speaker. Once he gets on stage and focuses on his topic, he can settle down and enjoy the experience. But during the 10 to 15 minutes before he gets on stage, he is not thinking about his topic, instead he is focused on himself. He is wondering if he’ll have the approval of his audience, if he’ll have control of his voice and body language, and the anxiety is making him feel insecure.
The solution is to focus on the outcome, the feeling of satisfaction and approval that will come from a job well done. By visualizing a pleasurable outcome there is a complete shift the focus. Excitement replaces anxiety and the expectation of pleasure replaces fear. Moving toward a pleasurable outcome is a pleasurable experience so it is one we can look forward to.
Now we see that one way to avoid pain and move toward pleasure is simply to change our focus. In our example, a short-term focus created pain in the form of fear and anxiety, while a long-term focus turned the whole experience into a pleasurable one.
When you become the master of your focus you can decide whether an experience will be painful or pleasurable.
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