We all take action either due to pain, pleasure, or inspiration. In my case, it was a pain that started my growth journey.
“I want to live with a purpose and do something meaningful in my life. “This thought haunted me for three years, and I didn’t take any deliberate action for my growth path. Doing nothing, (or aimless things), was a nagging pain to me. A hollowness existed. I missed something. I was like a kick-ass horse without a bridle, whose tail was lit by an everlasting cracker. I didn’t create this pain. It just walked into me and kicked off my growth journey.
Early this year, I read the book “Awaken the Giant Within,” by Tony Robbins. It helped me to learn, “How can we control our life by managing our pain and pleasure vicious cycle?” Tony wrote:
“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”
Tony explained in his book that we can consciously associate the pain, (or pleasure), with our work, and use it for our success. I find this technique is useful to motivate me, and a way to kill procrastination.
How to Kill Procrastination
If your goal is to climb a mountain and you know the why and how of it; and what will be the path,” you will be confident. If you know someone has done it before, you will be even more hopeful, which will drive you further.
This level of clarity is useful, but not enough to keep you moving in your day-to-day actions. So ask yourself these two questions:
1. How can not doing something bring you more “pain” than doing it?
In my case, I wasn’t taking any step to grow myself, and my pain got severe over time, which forced me to take action. However, if there is no pain and you are in a comfort zone, you can induce it. For instance:
- How ugly will I appear in the next two years if I don’t exercise daily?
- How badly will competitors swipe the market share if I don’t adapt to a new business model?
- How will I pay the EMI for a newly bought land-rover defender if I don’t upgrade my skills or change my job?
This technique will work if the pain of no action is more than the pain of action.
You can make it effective with the power of visualization. Like when you “vividly see yourself as fatso” or see something scary. Excessive pain may also trigger fear and that might kill your desire, so use it prudently.
2. How can doing something bring you more “pleasure” than not doing it?
After the painful kickoff, I aimed to work on a few projects, and one of them was to explore non-fictional writing. Initially, I was checking the responses to my published articles every hour.
How engaging was my article?
How many readers liked it?
It wasn’t much different from people addicted to social media. But I wanted to quit this endless cycle to check.
I discovered an activity, (in one of my journal sessions), that made me happier. I created a visual report for my published articles, and looked forward to reading those who performed better. By analyzing article reading data and comparing between them, I gained more pleasure than watching several hits. This cycle of feedback gave me joy, visible progress, and hope to reach my goal.
A few other examples to understand it better.
- What if I use my Netflix watching time to lose my fat, train my muscles, and look leaner?
- What if I use a new business model and have a monopoly on the market?
- What if I do a part-time MBA and get promoted to be an area sales manager in my company?
Find out what you can relate to with pleasure and visualize it. “Look at the lean and fit version of you, sweating on the beats with the routine at the gym.” This will pull you like a magnet and help you get rid of less pleasurable tasks.
Closing Thoughts
The secret is to use pain and pleasure to help you, not harm you. First, figure out the tasks that you can associate with. Second, reflect on them. If they are harmful, add pain so you can run away from them. If it’s helpful, add pleasure to get attracted.
Tony’s technique is exceptional. It pushes you to tune your behavior so you can take prompt action. And that helps in killing procrastination.
Do you know what’s your pain and pleasure while driving your goals? And what are you associating with?`