If I told you that I had discovered a system for discovering your core desires that's quicker and more efficient than any other method I've come across, would you be interested in knowing what it was?
What if I also told you it's one of the easiest ways to motivate yourself to push through your barriers and challenges that stop you from fulfilling those desires? Would you be interested then?
What if I told you it was 100% free?
You'd probably ask what the catch was. And fair enough too, because this system is one you're probably already very familiar with. What is it?
It's called PAIN.
Yep, good old pain.
Pain is the secret to getting in touch with your core drives and desires AND is the most powerful source of motivation to help you push through your challenges and fulfill those desires.
Here's how it works:
If I had a bag of manure and I told you you weren't allowed to eat it, would you feel pain?
I doubt it.
If I had a bag of manure and a gun and I told you that you had to eat the manure or I would shoot you, would it be any different?
I'm guessing you'd feel all kinds of things- anger, disgust, fury, pride, fear...
Why is it different? Because you care deeply about preserving your own life and you also care deeply about not being made to eat manure. You care about being free, about having dignity, about being in control of your own life, and I'm attempting to take away those things.
The negative response that you feel tells you that something is going on that you care deeply about. If you didn't have any emotional response, you'd know that it probably didn't matter too much to you.
There's lots of things you probably don't have any emotional reaction to at all. If I told you I tore a hole in my jeans today, would you care? I doubt it. But would you be so nonchalant if I told you I put a hole in your windshield?
Probably not.
Why? Because you care about your car.
The same goes when you get rejected by women, when you get passed over for a raise at work, when people mock you behind your back and so on. These things inspire strong emotional responses because you care about them.
The stronger the emotional response, the deeper and more intense the desire that these situations threaten.
That's why pain is the easiest way to work out what is important to you, because it is the strongest emotional response we tend to have when our deepest desires are under threat.
By recognising that pain is a signpost to understanding our desires, we can very quickly learn what is most important to us- the pain that we feel when we don't get what we want helps to illuminate the feelings we DO want to experience in our lives- love, power, respect, achievement, safety etc.
When you realise that pain is a signpost, you can begin to use it as motivation to begin creating the kind of life you want.
Now normally when we experience pain in our lives it etches itself deeply into our memories as something to avoid in future. You don't voluntarily touch a hot stove twice. For many, this creates issues in relationships, family life, career and other areas that cause difficulty.
There is an exception to the hot stove situation though. If you feel that your current situation is more painful or more threatening than the alternative, slightly less painful situation, you're going to go for the less painful option.
If you're trapped in a burning building and the only way out is to jump from a 2nd storey window, you're probably going to jump, maybe break a limb and survive rather than staying inside and cooking. If you do nothing, you'll die- better to do something potentially painful and live.
But if you're already outside the burning building and you remember you left your phone in the upstairs bedroom which is already starting to burn, you're probably not going to go rushing in to get it.
In that situation, there is a much higher risk of pain by taking action than by doing nothing, so you're more likely to do nothing.
The same goes for your ambitions and desires.
If you're currently stewing in a world of pain because you're single and lonely, or you're stuck in a job you hate or you have unresolved conflict in your family and you've watched loved ones and opportunities slip away and you think that taking some kind of action will be LESS painful than the situation you're in now, then DO SOMETHING about it!
But if you're floating along in life living below your potential, spending all your time playing videogames or drinking or just hanging out with buddies not achieving your desires, then making a change is going to be more difficult because the external motivation of pain is not there. It's easier to cruise along in mediocrity than it is to face a challenge. Exposing yourself to pain (or facing the pain that you're trying to block out) will give you motivation to start living a more fulfilling life.
Here are 6 steps to get started:
1. Write a list of all the things in your life that are causing you emotional pain.
2. Ask "Why does this cause me pain? Why is this important to me? What desire is beneath this pain?"
3. Then ask "what does this tell me about what I value in life?"
4. Then ask "what does this tell me about the kind of life I want to live?"
5. Then ask "What does this tell me about the kind of Man I want to be?"
6. Then ask "What kind of actions do I need to take to create that kind of life and become that kind of Man?"
That will give you the foundation to begin moving toward the life you desire.
Share your answers below.
**Obviously this needs to be done carefully with the support of caring people around you. This is general advice for mentally stable people with support networks around them. If you ever feel that the pain is too much to handle or that you don't have the personal power to deal with that pain or take action in your life then this advice is definitely not for you and you need to talk to a professional about dealing with that.**
http://www.attractioninstitute.org
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