Blog: How to create lasting change

“A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.” Seneca

What keeps you from approaching that girl (guy) sitting on the table nearby? What keeps you from starting that diet you need so badly? What keeps you from finally pursuing your dream and starting that new business? What keeps you from all of those things although you know that these actions will most certainly benefit you? It is the short term pain you associate with it, which is more important to you than the potential pleasure you could get from that action in the long run. Indeed, we as humans prefer a short term consequence over a long term one since we are 1) not certain about the long term consequence and 2) it is simple too far away for our mind to value it as much as necessary.

Another thing is that we fear loss and failure more than we value gains (this concept is also known as loss aversion which is based on the work of Kahneman and Tversky). In fact, if you would approach that girl (guy) from the other table you could be rejected. If you would start the diet you would put yourself trough massive pain, only to gain some weight back eventually. If you would start your new company you could fail and actually have lost your present job.

Often an interesting question comes up in this context: Why is it that I fail to change although I already experience pain (pleasure) connected to the action I should stop (start)? Th answer: You have not experienced enough pain (pleasure) yet! You have not reached that emotional threshold. Usually, it does not come to the point where there is so much pain (pleasure) that you change. You have to actively use that concept of pain and pleasure to condition yourself.

The most important lessons in life are the ones where we learn what creates pain and pleasure for us. These lessons are clearly different for each human being, and so are our behaviors. Just take the example of Donald Trump and Mother Teresa. Trump eventually connects most of his pleasures to material things and money while he associates being second-best as a failure. It may be appropriate to hypothesize that his drive to action is rather defined by avoiding the pain to be second-best than the pleasure to have luxurious things. On the contrary, we have Mother Teresa. A woman with so much compassion that every time when she sees someone suffering, she suffers also. Seeing the injustice of the caste system made her feel immense pain. She eventually knew that if she could make life better for others around her she could relief herself from the pain of seeing other people suffering. Giving them pleasure would give her pleasure. While it might be a little stretch to link the materialism of Trump to the humility of Mother Teresa, you can clearly see that 1) their environments played a huge role what these people link pain and pleasure to and 2) that both made a conscious decision about what to punish and reward themselves for, therefore acting the way they do.

What you link pain and pleasure to finally shapes the outcome of your life — Tony Robbins

Let me give you a personal example of how this works for me: I generally link a lot of pleasure to learning and growing which made me read a lot of books and engage in the self development field. As a matter of fact this is probably the single reason why I started this blog. I realized that discovering strategies and ideas that help me to live more consciously and be in a better state is eventually the most precious thing in my life. Sharing these insights with other people and helping them to improve their lives, gives me so much pleasure that I dedicate a lot of my spare time to write these lines here. If you are a social worker, isn´t it true that you started the job because it would make you feel good? Just ask any social worker and they will tell you that they find massive pleasure in helping others. And this is the core of any other job in our society. Even the business guys have a driving force behind working long hours and running from meeting to meeting. The pleasure from the significance (reputation) and power (e.g. money) they get is stronger than the pain from not having time for their loved ones or engage in other social activities.

What can we learn from of all of this? It is simple: if we link massive pain to any behavior or automatic pattern we will avoid indulging in it at all cost. We can use this understanding to change virtually everything in our lives, from the pattern of procrastination to drug use to how we act towards other people.

In his book “Awaken the Giant within” Tony Robbins explains that pain and pleasure are instinctive actions not intellectual calculations. We can know that something is bad for us but as long as we do not feel it we will not change at all. We are not driven so much by what we intellectually know but rather by what we learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous system. The whole process of rewiring yourself therefore is based on neuro-associations — the associations we have established in our nervous systems — that determine what we will do. We want to believe that it is our intellect that guides us trough life but in most cases it is our emotions.

Most people can only override their nervous system and solve a problem for a limited amount of time (e.g. remember the smoking example in the previous post? the guy stopped smoking for 4 years and then started again). This is because we usually do only eliminate the effect of our problem (e.g. smoking itself) not the cause (it might be the reward of feeling relaxed or maybe even the socializing with other smokers that make you smoke again). Hence, the problem will eventually resurface. To create lasting change we must link pain to old behavior and link pleasure to the replacing new one. And then we have to condition ourselves until it becomes a consistent habit. Stopping to smoke and overriding the pattern by pure willpower never lasts, simply because we still link pain to not smoking. In fact, if we would flip this and link pain to smoking and connect pleasure to not doing it we could consistently see a change in behavior.

Here are some examples: Link pleasure to the idea that our lungs will gradually get better and that you will feel more energetic. Link pleasure to the idea that you will reduce the risk of lung cancer and therefore be able to see your grandchildren growing up until you are 80 or something. Link pleasure to the fact that you are able to refuse a cigarette when other people offering you one (in the sense this could make you feel in control of your life or you feel more powerful than the other people around you who are not able to give it up). If you ask a smoker how they stopped smoking, many of them will be able to name you the exact moment when it happened: the moment when they truly changed what smoking meant to them.

Another game changer is that we change more easily if we do it for others. Think about yourself — there are some things in life you would never do for yourself but you do it for others. There is a great anecdote highlighting this fact: A relative of mine tried to quit smoking for years but he just could not do it. However, one day when his little girl (she was about 5 to 6 years old) approached him with tears in her eyes and told him that she was worried about her dad dying soon, he started crying and never touched a cigarette again. This was his moment when he truly changed what smoking meant to him.

Change is never a matter of ability — it is always a matter of motivation. Lasting change is connected to discomfort — it is never easy and takes time.

Cheers, Nick

(find below a guided exercise as described in Tony Robbins book Awaken the Giant within — it is really good and worked well for me)