Nir EyalSpeaker on Behavioral Science, NYT Bestselling Author, Former Stanford Lecturer

All Human Motivation is About This #shorts

Name: All Human Motivation is About This #shorts
Uploaded: 2023-05-18T15:00:40+00:00
Duration: 59 s
Channel: Nir Eyal
Description: Nir Eyal argues that all human motivation boils down to avoiding discomfort rather than seeking pleasure. He connects this idea to everyday…

18 May 2023 · 1 min

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Nir Eyal argues that all human motivation boils down to avoiding discomfort rather than seeking pleasure. He connects this idea to everyday self-management domains — time, weight, money, attention — framing them as forms of pain management, and cites Buddhist philosophy and neuroscience as supporting perspectives. The clip emphasizes that feelings (uncomfortable sensations) drive behavior more than external circumstances.

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All human motivation is about one thing, all human motivation, it's not about pain and pleasure. It's all about the avoidance of discomfort. That's it. That's it. Even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations, right? Wanting to feel good, craving, desire, lusting is itself psychologically destabilizing. And if that is true, right, if all human motivation is about a desire to escape discomfort, that must therefore mean that time management is pain management, weight management is pain management, money management is pain management, attention management is pain management. That fundamentally, this is the struggle. And this, by the way, I didn't invent this. This is a very Buddhist philosophy. And of course, neuroscience has now come to the fact that this is in fact, very true, that it's really about managing these uncomfortable sensations. But when we break them down to what they really are and make them less scary, right, we need to stop thinking that it's the media, that it's the crazy things in the news, that it's our boss, that it's our kids, that it's all this crazy things that are happening. Really. It's feelings, guys, it's feelings.