Using Pain & Pleasure

Our life is a series of pain & pleasure. A child encounters pain & pleasure both, the moment he enters this world. Though a mother knows that she will have to go through excruciating pain before experiencing eternal pleasure of having her baby, yet she looks forward to the occasion. It is because she is not thinking about the pain; she is only concentrating on the joy of having her child. Our life is entirely dependent on the way we use pain & pleasure in our life. We fail because we overreact to our pleasure & pain. We falter in life when we let these emotions rule us. We can't wish them away but we can surely use them to our advantage. 

We should know the way to define pleasure & pain in our life. One of the reasons that people fail in life is that they accept failure quite easily. If you associate your failure to a lot of pain, you would never accept failure. Why do we find it hard to get rid of a bad habit?- simply because we only think about the momentary pleasure it gives. Every time we repeat the activity, we feel good despite the fact that it harms us in the long run. But, we don't feel the pain that it would give us after few years. 

The secret of getting rid of any bad habit is to reverse your emotions about it. Associate a lot of pain with this habit. Think about the ill-effect of the same, every time you repeat the action. Make a picture of the pain & make it large. Feel as if it were happening right now. If you are a smoker & want to do away with this habit, think of its effect every time you take the puff. See the smoke going into your lungs, eating it slowly. Picture yourself coughing badly & unable to walk. You visit a doctor who advises you to give up smoking immediately or face the repercussions. You realize it's now or never.

Similarly, if you associate extreme pleasure to any good habit, you will adopt this habit as an integral part of your life. Do you have trouble getting up early & exercising? Picture yourself a healthy man who gets up with the lark. You go for a long jog daily & feel energetic. You have full control of your body, mind & soul. You are living life to the fullest & enjoying every moment of the same. Life is bliss for you because of your habit of getting up early & exercising.  

Pain & pleasure are nothing but mediums to write the story of your life. It depends on you how you interpret these & use these to your advantage.