The Mind’s Motivating Forces: Pain and Pleasure

Welcome to the Enrichment show by Aruta. We're really excited to kick off our show. So first a little bit about Aruta. At Aruta, our focus is on personal and professional development. We train leaders and by the way, everybody has the ability to be a leader. The best leaders develop the mindsets necessary to manage their intrinsic resources. Your intrinsic resources are your time, your energy, your discipline and your focus. We strive to raise the standards for individuals and businesses so they can be the best versions of themselves. We're a hub for vast amounts of knowledge in the form of strategies from experts all over the world. The key to results is not only knowledge and strategies, but the application of that knowledge that usually requires accountability strategies which we also specialize in. We combine both innovative and time tested principles to inspire and challenge you to raise your standards to personally and professionally. Some of the services that we provide are life coaching, business consulting, executive coaching, health coaching, group coaching, webinars, ebooks, software and apps, and various other services. My life's work and root objectives come down to answering two simple questions. Number one, why don't we do what's in our best interests all the time? We don't. We know we don't yet. We still don't. We don't do what's in our best interest all the time. And then the second question is, how do we do what's in our best interests all the time? Very simple questions to understand. And I hope you realize that if we can figure out the answer and apply it in our life, your fulfillment happiness levels will soar. So let's get curious and let's get after it. So let's review our previous show which was about how the mind works. First we learned that the mind is extremely powerful. It has an unlimited memory capacity, it performs all of our bodily functions like digestion, it beats our hearts, it heals us, it comes up with miraculous ideas like flying the light bulb, etc. Etc. We can go on and on about the infinite powers of the mind. Suffice to say, it is powerful. Now, the mind is a tool for us to use to achieve our goals. We can choose to use our mind or else it will use us. So we need to understand its purpose, its mission in order to learn how to use this powerful tool. The mission or the purpose of the mind is survival. Survival of the species and ourselves. We need enormous amounts of energy to accomplish this mission of survival. So if we're to survive, we need to both conserve our energy and also renew our energy. Now, we renew our energy in many ways, but Some of the top sources are inspiration, sleep, nutrition and exercise. There are many others, but those are my favorites. We conserve now our energy through two programs that automate repetitive actions. Those are instincts and habits, two types of mental habits now are the mindsets of beliefs and cognitive biases. We must remain aware of both as they impact the quality of our decisions and thus the quality of our lives. We're really excited about this week's show. We plan to discuss our internal GPS system that motivates us to stay on course for survival. That's our mission, right? Which in the current environment really means happiness or fulfillment. This system motivates us through two primary desires. Number one is avoidance of pain, and number two is seeking pleasure. Then we'll discuss the bugs in this guidance system, this GPS system that can allow hackers to lead us astray inadvertently, and what to do to prevent this from happening and how to get back on course if it does happen. We'll also discuss how we can hack our own system to achieve our goals. We'll discuss the importance of the principle of the necessity to adapt to change. Really important. Now, the great architect that designed our minds knew that in order to ensure that we remain fully focused on the mission of survival, our destination, if you will, we needed some sort of guidance system. This guidance system would tell us if we were on the right course or if we were off course for our purpose of survival. Now, for survival, while this was and is literally true, we can also substitute in for survival happiness or a fulfilling life that. So our current environment allows for that. As we're going to see, it used to just be about surviving. And that is literally what our programming still set for. Now, this guidance system, the mind is constantly asking, is what we're doing or seeking bringing us closer to survival or closer to death? This GPS system would need a feedback signaling mechanism that told us if we were going off course towards death, if you will, or. Or if we're going in the right direction towards survival, happiness, right, fulfillment. This dual feedback system or signaling system are the signals of pain and pleasure. We are literally programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Now, pain means that you're off course or veering off course. The message when you feel pain is get back on course quickly. Otherwise you'll continue to feel pain and perhaps even more pain and more intensely. Because. Because you need to get the message that whatever you're doing is not taking you down the best path for survival. Get back on course. Now, pleasure means you're either on course or at least heading in the Right direction for the purpose of survival. That's our mission. The message here is to keep doing what you're doing. Good job, you're surviving. That's the message of pleasure. There are two types of pain and pleasure guidance systems. There are physiological signals, meaning physical pain and pleasure signals. And then there are psychological signals, meaning mental pain and pleasure signals. An example of a physiological pain signal is what happens when you put your hand on a burning hot stove, right? It's hot and you feel the pain. The signal is to remove it as soon as possible. What would happen if you left your hand there? It would burn a hole in your hand and you would bleed out. This would not be good for survival. So this pain signal is very clear, these physical pain signals, very clear. Now, an example of a physiological pleasure signal is the taste of food. We feel nourished. This is obviously good for survival, provided of course, we ate something that is healthy for us. So examples of psychological pain and pleasure signals are emotions. Emotions themselves are just signals of whether we're on the right path or not for the purpose again of survival. Now we have negative motions that tell us we're on the wrong path. For instance, fear tells us that something is about to harm us and we need to prepare to fight or run flight right to get us back on the right path. Now we have positive motions that tell us we're on the right path in terms of our survival. For example, we get a new job. We're happy because we now provide food for our family, amongst other necessities for our survival. For our purposes, since we're discussing the mind, we going to focus more on the psychological, which are emotions and feelings for the short term and moods for the long term. These physical signals are much easier and tangible to figure out anyway. The physical signals are. You get to actually experience them through the senses so they're more real. Emotions, feelings and moods are a bit more challenging to figure out. But who doesn't love a challenge? So this is interesting. Our guidance system operates by drugging us. It drugs our body to motivate us to do what's in our best interest in terms of survival. We're literally being drugged by our own body with substances that cause us to feel pleasure when we're on the right path and substances that cause us to feel pain when we're on the wrong path. These drugs are called neurotransmitters if they're from the nervous system and hormones if they're from the endocrine system. For our purpose, it doesn't really matter. Which system they are from. These neurotransmitters and hormones are infused into our system to motivate us to stay on the optimal path to survival. Fulfillment, happiness. Same thing, remember? But it does it by creating the emotion of desire in two different ways. Number one, seeking of the goal, right? We're going after the goal, right? So when we're on the right path towards the goal and making good progress towards the treasure, we're rewarded with consistent doses of the mood enhancing neurotransmitter called serotonin. It's infused into our systems all along the way around the right path. This is more of a long term gratification feeling and this can be sustained for longer periods of time. This is good since it contributes to the feeling of long term fulfillment, otherwise known as being in a good mood. This is the state of mind that's experienced. We're making progress towards our most important goals. Hunters in the old days would feel this all along the hunt. I felt this while preparing for this show, right? So the other way that we're motivated, maybe there's two ways. The other way that we're motivated is, is that we're rewarded for the actual attainment of the goal. We get the goal, right? When we've achieved our goal, we get a generous dose of a different pleasurable neurotransmitter drug called dopamine. This ecstatic emotion from dopamine is a reward for the accomplishment of some big challenge. This is more like a short term gratification feeling represented by really strong emotions and feelings. It's important to note that these short term gratification experiences are aren't meant to happen too frequently, lest we burn ourselves out. An example of this is when we taste and swallow a great meal. We're motivated by the dopamine because it makes us feel good, really good, and we'll keep it PG here. But I'm sure you think of other pleasurable rewards when huge amounts of dopamine are flooded into your system. Now you know why this makes you feel happy, really happy. So this systematic mode of feedback designed to motivate us to behave according to what's in our best interest survival, is an incredible work of architecture that has been and will forever be the highest form possible. Now that said, as with all plans, if unnatural forces enter the picture, the plan can go awry and we can veer off the path even while thinking we're still on it. In other words, the guidance system can provide us with incorrect signals and therefore we can no longer blindly trust it. To give us the right coordinates. We can feel pleasure even while we're veering off the path, for instance, eating a sugary processed food. Or we can feel pain even if we're on the right path. For example, having fear when you're public speaking, even though it's about a topic of great public interest and it's good for us. How can this have happened? Right. We'll explore four different ways that the system can inadvertently take us off course. Note that there will be some overlap here, but there are enough distinctions to break these out into the following four bugs, as I call them. The first one is the delta, meaning the change of our environment is significantly outpaced by the delta of our mental programming, our instincts, in other words, the evolution of our brains. The next bug is the danger posed by our instinctual inclination for instant gratification as the primary go to motivation, as opposed to adapting fast enough to our new environment, which is suited for delayed gratification or long term fulfillment. The next one is. The next bug is our desire to seek pleasure, which is our built in program. Program guidance system has been hacked by those who use it to manipulate our desires for their profits, not for our best interests. In other words, they're choosing to sacrifice our best interests of survival for their best interests, which are profits. So the fourth bug is our desire to avoid pain, which is our other built in program guidance system, and that's also been hacked with pain relief medications, resulting in many serious consequences such as addiction and failure to find the cause of the pain in the first place because we numb it too quickly. We'll go into some detail now on each of these bugs in the software that we've allowed to be hacked. So the first problem with our guidance system is that our environment has changed faster than our programmed instincts have. This is what evolution is. I love the quote by Charles Darwin, who's well known as the expert in the field of evolution. It is not the strongest that survive, or even the most intelligent, but the ones that are most responsive to change in their environment. I added the change in their environment piece because that's obviously what he meant. Now, these old instinctual programs, if they're allowed to run untethered and unconsciously, can lead us to poor decision making and therefore, at a minimum, to a lesser fulfilled life and likely a premature death. As we'll see, we must adapt or literally die. We need to shine a light on these bugs in our programming so we can adapt. Okay, so we are programmed for survival, which is great. We need to be aware of how that programming applies to the environment we currently find ourselves in. Our minds are running these survival programs that don't make sense for most of us in the current environment. For instance, we're programmed for food shortages, Even though that's not really the case anymore, at least for most most of us. We're still programmed for. And to be clear, that means having the desire to eat copious amounts of sugar, really sugar, whenever we can find it. We're programmed this way to get as many calories as we can, to get as heavy as we can, because we were in danger of becoming extinct many times during our evolutionary path due to a lack of food. This all changed when we gained control of our food supply due to the agricultural revolution and in 8500 BC. So starvation for the greater population is no longer the case. But the motivational system for our brain's programming still has not evolved to adapt yet to this change in environment. So we must be conscious of it and override these urges for now. Right. We need to create new wiring. We're also programmed to feel a lot of fear almost constantly. And for good reason. Why? Predators. We were constantly being stalked and eaten a lot over the course of human history, but not anymore. We were dinner. It's estimated that over 6% of our ancient ancestors were actually eaten by big predators. But our wiring still is in place for that. And that's why our sympathetic nervous system, our fight or flight response, continually goes off. We're constantly feeling fear even when there's no real physical danger. Fear F E A R False evidence appearing real right here. Again, the only thing we can do is be conscious of this wiring and override these urges. For now, we need to create new wiring. The second bug in the system is related to the first. For the last billions of years of the evolution of life, Our brains were programmed for an immediate reward, or in other words, an instant gratification environment, as they should have been since that was the environment up until a very short time ago. Relatively speaking, the immediate return environment began when life began 400 billion years ago, and the immediate return environment started ending only about 500 years ago. That's like 0.0001%, probably even more O's. Even though our brains have evolved over time, they're still about the same size they were even 200,000 years ago, when we're still in an immediate return reward environment. In this immediate return reward environment, the choices we made provided an almost instantaneous reward. For example, you searched for food and ate it right on the Spot as soon as you found it. Yum. Or carnivore chased you and you got away. Celebrate or you search for a companion and you get the picture. Love the one you're with. Now, a really important part of the story here is that when we face stress in an immediate return environment, it usually went away quickly. That was the immediate return. We were chased and you're the God away or not. Either way, it would happen quickly. The stress wouldn't linger. It's bad when the stress lingers. We'll talk about that when we discuss our new environment. Now fast forward to our current delayed return or delayed gratification, or as I like to call it, long term fulfillment environment. Only relatively recently in the last 500 years or so, have we moved to a predominantly delayed return environment. And as we've moved along that more recent timeline, this, the changes have increased exponentially. Think of how different the world looks now than it did just at the turn of the century. IPhones weren't even out at the turn of the century for almost another decade. I think it was 2007, 2008. So why is this important? Well, what happens when we don't get the reward immediately? Yet our brains are programmed to get it immediately. I'll tell you what happens. Stress. That's what happens. Remember that stress isn't always a bad thing. It's meant to serve a purpose. Yes, for survival. When we perceive some sort of threat, the hormone cortisol is released to provide you with valuable energy to use in an emergency fight or flight. But it must be used right away. We're not meant to stay stressed for long periods of time. If it's not used, your heart levels stay high, you get high blood pressure. It's a very long bad, bad list. So remember our example in the old environment, a wild animal gets chased, right? Goes into fight or flight mode, runs away, and then it's safe and the stress hormones dissipate. Immediately it starts grazing again like nothing ever happened in the new delayed gratification environment. What happens? We work hard, but you don't get your bonus, sometimes for a year. If you don't have the right mindset. This can be a long time for high levels of cortisol to be coursing through your blood, doing its damage. Now what else happens when we don't get the immediate reward we're looking for? We seek other ways to get immediate gratification, even if it's not healthy for us. We binge eat unhealthy things. We might drink alcohol. That's Also a long and healthy list for our minds and our bodies. So we need to adapt. So here are a couple of potential solutions and we'll discuss some more when we speak about emotions. Reprogram your brain, Right? Reprogram your brain to be satisfied with delayed gratifications. Be conscious or mindful that the reward will come later if we do that and if we do what we should be doing today. Now, another way to hack this is to set smaller goals that are less delayed. So you feel the short term gratification, right? Yes. Hack your brain. The key is to get your brain the feedback back that it desires to let it know that you're moving in the right direction. Don't stress out. Give it some serotonin for God's sake. Right? Stress can't live when you have a healthy dose of serious serotonin coursing through your brain. So now onto the third bug in the system. I call this one the pleasure hack. If you knew that somebody was addicted to a drug, would you entice them with that drug to get them to buy something that was profitable for you but deadly for them? Hopefully not. But that's exactly what's happening in the processed food industry today. That's their job. That's also exactly why obesity has surpassed tobacco and the the number one killer. Both are preventable, which literally means we're choosing to die instead of foregoing our habits. These particular habits, of course, we're being manipulated by profit motivated companies to make these deadly choices. That's their job. They're in business to sell their products. Nothing wrong with that's their mandate. They're in business to sell their products. They're not in business to keep you healthy. Right. So companies started to understand that the best way to market and sell their products or was to understand human behavioral psychology. That's what we're talking about here. If they understood what motivated people, that is right, the desire to avoid pain and the desire to seek pleasure, they could hack this motivational system to get you to buy their products. In essence, buying their products equaled survival to you, right? When in fact the opposite is true. These companies understood that for survival we're programmed to and have a strong desire to, to eat the most calorie rich, dense foods we could get our hands on. That's high sugar foods, Right. Why do we have this programming? Because one of the greatest threats, not only for our personal survival, but for survival of the species, was starvation. And it still is for many people around the world, but I suspect for most people who are watching this? That's not the case. The human race almost became extinct a number of times because we didn't have enough food. Therefore, we're programmed to, in other words, have the desire to eat foods that are calorie dense, which usually means high in sugar. That's actually fine in our old environment where the sugary foods meant fruits, right? Which is a natural sugar and healthy for you, especially if you're moving around a lot. It wasn't the white refined sugar that the great Architect had in mind when he put when. When he or she programmed us, right? So as the processed food manufacturers know all too well, the brain unfortunately can't tell the difference between these two types of sugar. So it's attracted to and literally, literally addicted to sugar. How does this addiction work? Well, as a reminder, we're motivated in the pursuit of sugar because that pursuit itself releases serotonin, which puts us in a good mood, right? It's literally a drug. And the eating of the sugar, the reward, if you will, releases dopamine, our motivational system's way of saying good job, which also puts us in a really good mood. Right? These neurotransmitter doses, remember, are the real underlying natural addictions. Eating and overeating, this type of sugar leads to obesity. We are literally killing ourselves by not being conscious enough of this manipulation such that we allow these hackers to do their work. Now, another way that our survival mechanism has been used against us is, has been the manipulation of the motivation to avoid pain. Now this motivation on its own is of course well designed and well intended and has operated perfectly in the old environment, but in the past 50 or so years has been manipulated for profit and now actually works against our survival in a couple of different ways. Number one, painkillers are the easiest and coincidentally likely the most profitable treatment for any ailment that, that is pain associated with it. These can either be prescription or over the counter, or even from the local drug dealer. These drugs literally block the neurotransmitter pain signal that our internal guidance system is trying to send to put us back on the path to health. Right? Survival. You're off the path. Get back on the path right now. One consequence, and there are many others, is of course, the great opioid epidemic. It's cost literally hundreds of thousands of lives over the course of just the last few years. In addition to addiction and overdose, there's a huge list of side effects and longer term damage caused by the use of these pain killing drugs, not just opioids. An Additional complication of our desire to avoid pain is treating the pain, not the cause. In other words, instead of figuring out what the cause of the pain is and removing the cause, we block the pain signal through various drugs and never figure out the cause until it's too late. We may never even know it. So we may not feel the pain, but whatever it is that was causing us ill health is still present. This is the same as what an enemy does to a guidance system. It hacks the guidance system by jamming it. You go off course and then death. It's always best to find the cause and deal with that than to hack the system and blind us to the cause. I found that the cause of most ill health resulting in pain in is usually due to poor nutrition. I'm not a doctor or nutritionist, but that's just my personal experience. When we block the pain, we no longer have an incentive to seek the cause that has been, and in many instances is literally killing us. Usually slowly, slowly, so we don't even notice the compound effects. Sometimes we even know the cause of our pain. But if we can take a painkiller to avoid the consequence of that pain, then we will continue the behavior that has been harming us, and eventually we'll suffer a more serious consequence. Easy example for that. Somebody has a few drinks of an alcoholic beverage every night. The next morning, what do they have? Oh, they've got a headache, a little hangover. They take some form of painkiller, your painkiller of choice, right? To alleviate the pain. Meanwhile, over time, they develop cirrhosis of the liver or other bad things. And now it's too late. They die. Had they not taken the painkiller and forced to suffer through the headache all day, they likely would have changed their behavior and stopped drinking so much and avoided the deadly disease. Very often the pain is a message from your body telling you to stop doing that. You're hurting me. Don't cover it up. Deal with the cause, please. That's what we call prevention. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of anybody cure. Right, Ben? That's from Ben Franklin. So let's turn this around. Is it possible that we can hack our own minds to use the power of desires to avoid pain and seek pleasure to achieve our goals? Well, I can hear your virtual answers out there all screaming yes, right? That's correct. So let's take a look at each. How can we use pain? I call this setting yourself up for success. If you wanted to do something really bad for some time now, but. But Just can't seem to get it done. One tactic that I like to offer up to my clients is to make a public declaration. Nothing like public humiliation for some pain. For example, if you've wanted to run a marathon but can't seem to do it, make a public declaration to everybody that you know that you'll be running in the marathon this year. What's the motivating force behind this declaration? Yes, public humiliation. If you don't do it at, everybody will know you don't mean what you say. These episodes, by the way, are an example of my making a public declaration to do regular seminars. I've been doing seminars for years, but they weren't being done on a regular basis. Now I've made a public declaration that they will be done weekly. Okay, so how do we use pleasure now as a motivating force? I really like this one. Whenever I want to do something that is difficult, that I frankly don't want to do, right? I always ask, how can I enjoy the process? After I say, how can I do this? Right? So, for instance, I want to exercise each day. So I ask myself the question, how can I exercise each day? And then add and enjoy the process? Always add this part and enjoy the process. Now, how can I do X and enjoy the process? Your brain is an amazing tool. Ask it a question, it'll give you an answer. If you don't like the answer, I ask a better question. So when I asked this of myself years ago, the answer that I came up with was music. I wanted to exercise, and I said, how can I exercise and enjoy the process? Now I love my exercise routine, right? I love it. I crank out the music and I work out literally for hours. I love it. Now I'm literally addicted to exercise. This little hack literally changed my life. If you want to get something badly enough, agree to reward yourself for it. Reward yourself for something that will motivate you, something that you wouldn't normally do for yourself, right? For instance, if I write a chapter in my book, maybe I'll reward myself with going to my favorite retreat for a weekend. Okay, now let's summarize where we're at. We understand that our mind is programmed for survival. In the current environment, we can substitute the word survival for fulfillment or even happiness, right? To keep us on the right path for survival, we have developed an internal guidance system. That guidance system utilizes a dual motivational system to keep us on track. The dual motivational system is the desire to avoid pain and the desire to seek pleasure. This delivery system is Done in two ways. One, physiological, which is physical pain and pleasure, and two, psychological, mental pain and pleasure. Now, the guidance system operates by using messengers to send signals in the form of chemicals that are really drugs that make us feel good when we're on the right path and feel bad when we're off path, off course. These drugs are neurotransmitters and hormones. We are naturally addicted to these drugs and for good reason. They are created to serve our best interests. Survival. Now, primarily as a result of our environment changing faster than our survival instincts, our instincts can no longer be trusted. They can't be trusted to provide us with the right guidance for our survival. We've got to be mindful of them. So I've identified four bugs in the system that we need to be aware of. And they are. Our environment has changed faster than our instincts have adapted. This is more of a global bug, as there are many consequences that the other three are derived from. Our current environment is suited more for deferred or longer term gratification. Whereas the environment that has been programmed instinctually into our DNA is for immediate gratification or immediate reward. This has led to manipulation by others to use our instinctual desires for their own purposes at our expense. We can also sabotage ourselves inadvertently with these desires. And finally, we can hack our own system to achieve our top goals. Now remember, knowledge does not apply itself. You must make the application. So if you want to make a real commitment to achieving your goals, don't. There is no better way, in my opinion, than to hire a coach. While coaches can provide different tips and distinctions on your views, by far the best value of a coach is accountability. I currently have a bunch of coaches that I use for different areas of my life, including two life coaches. Remember that the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. I learned that a long time ago and frankly, that's why I started this business. Remember that investments are more than money. Time is an even more precious resource. I invest my time teaching these programs because the best way to learn is to teach. So whether or not you do it with us or somebody else, get a coach at a minimum. Find an accountability buddy. Now for some homework. Homework? Yes, homework. Yes. Remember, knowledge does not apply itself. You must make the application. So we're going to take you through an exercise to see if you've been hacked. Open your fridge or cupboard. Write down the five healthiest items and five least healthy items. Look at the sugar contents in them. Right, right. The name of the product, how much sugar is in there right now? The reason we're doing this is you want to reflect on why did you buy this? Were you hacked? Did you buy it to avoid pain or to gain pleasure? The next exercise is use the motivational forces of pain and pleasure to achieve your goals. Right? Hack yourself, right? What changes? So first ask, what changes must I make to improve my life? What are your goals? Right? What are these goals that you haven't been able to get to? What pain will it cost me if I do not change? If I do not achieve these goals? Feel how painful it will be if you don't act in your best interest, right? Feel it. Use hack your system, right? We don't want. We don't avoid pain, right? What pleasure will I gain if I take action? Right now, you want to be moving towards pleasure. You want to feel the pleasure. So this helps you understand the benefits of achieving your goal. By the way, you can find templates for these homework assignments at our website, aruta.com now. I'm really excited about next week's show. It's about emotions. If you think about it, our emotions, which turn into feelings and moods, are basically responsible for the quality of our lives, right? If we're in a good mood, chances are the quality of our lives are peaking, right? In other words, the quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of your emotions. So we're going to discuss both positive and negative emotions. We'll discuss how to instill more positive emotions into your life. We'll also discuss how to turn negative emotions into positive emotions. As with all of our episodes, we're going to strive to understand the motivations and purposes behind the mind first. Because once we do that, it's much easier. Easier to apply the strategies that are necessary to improve our lives and become the best versions of ourselves. As a reminder, feel free to download our new ebook, Finding the Opportunity in Crisis. It's free. Go to aruta.com download it. Hey. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us@aruto.com and remember to make some thoughtful comments to contribute to the greater good of others. Do your homework. We'll see you next week. Thank you for tuning in. Really appreciate it.