If I asked you what your goal in life is, what would you answer? Well, the answer would be as diversified as people are.
Many will answer that making money is the primary goal. This is especially true for us in northern America. Some might say success is what they want to achieve, others will focus their goals on relationship related topics like family, love etc. Whatever the answers are, most of them will describe something that is nothing but a means to an end.
Let's take money. If you belief that your goal in life is making lots of money, do you really want to collect pieces of green paper with the faces of dead notables printed on them? I doubt it.
What you really want is what you imagine money could give you. Freedom, fun, independence you name it. We do not strive for money, good relationships, success and so forth but for the feeling that we link to having it.
Does that sound a little bit trivial to you? Maybe it does, at least when I heard the concept first I was kind of annoyed. The thought that all my high ideals where eventually a means to make me feel good seemed too ordinary.
But when I got deeper into the idea, and I quickly did as I am pretty curious, I found the principle not only holds true but is a strong foundation to eventually achieve all those high ideals and goals I dreamed of achieving one day.
So don't be upset by the idea and give it a serious consideration. Think it through and decide by yourself if it makes sense and, even more important, if it helps you achieve the outcome you want to achieve.
Here is the basic theorem. All humans are steered by two mighty forces. Pleasure and pain. At the very bottom every human emotion is either pleasurable or painful. We basically feel good or bad. The range of our feelings might be indefinite but they all are located somewhere in between the two poles called absolute pain and absolute pleasure.
If you are in an emotional state you like, that state is pleasurable. If you are in an emotional state you dislike that state is painful.
How come pain and pleasure are the driving forces in human life? The answer is that all life is determined to grow. Everything we call life, without any exception, has one thing in common, its strive for growth.
Think about it a moment, all life tries to expand. It does so by two ways, growth and reproduction. There is no life form that does not follow the path of growth and reproduction. And, sure enough that basic goal of life is inherent within us too. The day we where born (probably even sooner) we start to learn, encounter, memorize, achieve new skills in short we start growing. Most of us join a relationship - or even more than one- and one of the reasons for doing that is to produce offspring. But, aren't children a way to extend oneself into the future? Sure they are. Life goes on even if you as a person dies, life continues and grows further through your children. It is the ultimate snowball system. life at its very basis is expansion, growth.
Now, what does that has to do with pleasure and pain. Look, the basic function of your brain is to coordinate all your various organs and processes, like breathing, digesting, moving and so forth as well as gathering and evaluating information from outside. Your brain is responsible for your growth. If you don't breath you die which means no more growth. If you don't eat and digest, conveying the energy needed to your body cells, you die which means no more growth. If you do silly movements, like jumping from a cliff, you probably die which means no more growth.
Pain and pleasure are the indicators your brain uses to know if you are on the right track or, if it needs to make course correction to get back on track. And again for your brain, the right track is always survive and growth.
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