Too Much Pleasure Is Why You Aren’t Achieving Your Goals.

The secret to success is learning how to use pain and pleasure, instead of having pain and pleasure use you. — Anthony Robbins.

We all have goals, dreams, and aspirations. Oftentimes, we fail to hit them not because we don’t know what to do, but because most times, we get derailed. I can’t tell you how many things I have planned to do but ended up not doing it. Funny as it sounds, it is this one thing that’s hindering you from achieving productivity. After all, productivity in short word is the proper use of your time to get a meaningful result.

The decision you choose to make will depend on how you interpret pain and pleasure in your life. And how you interpret pain and pleasure depends on your past experience of pain and pleasure.

Top artists in their field have been able to make proper use of pain and pleasure principle in their life. I can only imagine the amount of concentrated practice Tiger Woods, Elon Musk and the greats must have put to get to where they are.

How you use your time is important, however, in achieving your goals, only using your time properly can’t cut it. Its either you go all in or you out. And this brings me to one of the greatest impediment we face in this modern era of ours.

Pleasurable distraction

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” Viktor Frankl

As humans, we love pleasurable activities because of the dopamine effect it has on us. But what happens when we bask in excess of pleasurable activities, we get derailed from our goal.

It’s human nature to gravitate towards pleasure and seek to avoid pain. In other words, you will make most of your decisions based on acquiring pleasure while at the same time trying to avoid pain. This works well at times, however, at other times, it will actually work against the goals and objectives you are trying to achieve.

Anthony Moore once said you can’t do something poorly 52 times. I doubt if we get to that number before we give up and go back to our pleasurable activities.

What art are you learning?

What goal are you pursuing?

What area of your life are you seeking to improve?

I’m willing to bet there are no pleasurable activities in any of your answer listed in the above question.

Pleasure is a terrible teacher because the most significant lessons we learn in life are rarely received during times of pleasure. Instead, they are born out of pain. I am not contending that we should seek pain in our lives. But I am contending a life lived chiefly for the pursuit of pleasure, will usually seek it in all the wrong places says Joshua Becker author of The More of Less.

When we try to numb ourselves with pleasurable activities, we tend to do less of our work. The time you use to numb yourself with alcohol can be used for practice. The time you spend binge-watching Netflix all day can be used for improving an area of your life. The time spent on scrolling endless feeds on social media can be used for deep work.

When we are bored, we escape it with pleasurable activities.

When we are angry, we rant on social media playing the victim.

When we are sad, we look for pleasurable activities to lift us out.

When we are tired of working, we choke our brain on pleasurable activities.

How much pleasurable distraction you are willing to give up determines how far you go in life.

Not that seeking out pleasurable activities is bad. Rather, we must be careful about how much time we spend doing those activities. I had a friend back then in my university days, he’s always about the pleasurable life. He hardly squeezes out time to do what is important to him. The result was that he’s dismissed from school due to poor grade. And in the wise words of Epictetus that says if one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

Create time for what’s important.

How many times have you tried something that failed and then give up on it to go back to your pleasurable activities? The problem isn’t giving up rather, we give up to go back to our pleasurable activities. Mark Manson was right when he said when we pursue a life full of pleasure and simple satisfaction, we are treating ourselves as a means to our pleasurable ends.

If pleasurable activities are more in your day than important activities, its time to rethink your priority. My friend once called me and asked me how I get to know a lot of things, my answer, I read a lot. The next thing he said was I don’t always have the time to read. One thing I have come to realize over time is that to do what is important, you have to make time for it.

Your actions tell people what you are all about. You cant be seeking improvement in your life when all you do is pleasurable activities.

To achieve your goals, dreams, aspirations or even be the person you want to be. First, tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, then do what you have to do. For in nearly every pursuit we see this to be the case. Those in athletic pursuit first choose the sport they want and then do the work. Epictetus.

How do you project to see yourself in the coming months or years if you know it, then get to work. But I can tell your answer isn’t in pleasurable activities. So cut down on the pleasure and get to work.