The Push You Need

Behavioral experts teach that we are motivated both by pain and by pleasure. We can change behaviors and attitudes as we utilize the Principle of Pain and Pleasure.

Here is how it works: One of the most successful American football coaches was Vince Lombardi. But he was not an easy coach to play for. One player, Henry Jordan, chuckled about Lombardi, “He treats us all the same – like dogs.” He went on to say, “I play for the love of the game, the love of the money and the fear of Lombardi.”

When he plays for the love of the game and the love of the money, he is motivated by pleasure. He thinks of the enjoyment he will get when he is on the field and his financial success as a professional player. He may even think of the personal recognition he receives as a professional player and the feelings of self-respect he experiences as he continues to succeed. The pleasure of these thoughts motivates him to play well.

When he thinks of Lombardi’s ire if he does less than his best, he is motivated by pain. Fear is emotional pain – as real as any physical pain. He may think also of the pain of losing his position to another player or even of the embarrassment of a fumbled ball. People will go to great lengths to avoid pain, in whatever form they find it.

All of these “pain thoughts,” as well as his “pleasure thoughts,” help him to rise to his best level of performance. This is the Principle of Pain and Pleasure.

What do you need motivation to do? Is it something related to your job or school? A project? A time-consuming task you’ve been putting off?  Do you need motivation to do something personal, such as quitting a crippling habit? Or do you need more encouragement to work on a huge lifestyle change?

Utilize the Principle of Pain and Pleasure. Think of the pain you will eventually feel (or even feel now) as you fail to follow your heart’s lead. Be creative. Close your eyes and visualize how that pain is oppressing you. Try to see in gory detail how the pain of failing at what you want to accomplish is going to hurt. Spend a little time just feeling that pain.

Then think of the pleasure you will experience as you do or become whatever it is you want for yourself. Visualize yourself as free and happy as you can imagine being. Try to see in your mind’s eye how your eventual success will elevate your life to whole new levels. Spend time feeling that pleasure.

This simple technique will help  you will find the push you need to give birth to your beautiful new life.

-- Steve Goodier 

Image: FreeImages.com/Fernando AUDIBERT

Your Secret Power

A certain man was on a diet to lose weight. He even changed routes to work in order to avoid a particular bakery, which displayed scrumptious looking pastries in its window. But one day he arrived at the office carrying a beautiful, large coffee cake. His colleagues teased him about slipping off the diet. 

In reply, he smiled and said, “Today I accidentally drove by the bakery and looked in the window and saw a host of goodies. Now, I felt it was no accident, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have one of these delicious coffee cakes, let me find a parking space in front of the bakery.’ And sure enough, the eighth time around the block, there it was!”

Addictions come in many shapes. They come in the shape of pills, powder and liquid. They come in the shape of video games. They may even come in the shape of food. Some are irritations. Some can ruin a life.

And that’s where willpower comes in. It may not be the whole answer, but nothing will change without it.

Sometimes willpower looks more like “won’t power.” It’s finding the inner power to say, “I won’t continue in this behavior or attitude.” 

And sometimes willpower looks more like “want power.” When I want a new me more than I want the person I am today, it’s easier to find the power to make it happen.

There’s something else about willpower, too. You can’t use it up. In fact, every time it’s used it grows stronger. It’s like a muscle growing stronger and stronger with exercise until what was once difficult is now simple.

Whether you call it willpower, won’t power or want power, it’s the secret power to a better life.

-- Steve Goodier

Led Around By Your “Gotta Haves”

Two women who had just met at a health spa were talking about their lifestyles and how they hope to stay healthy. One asked the other to detail her daily routine.

“I eat moderately,” she replied, “I exercise moderately, I drink moderately, and I live moderately.”

“Is there anything else you do?” her new friend asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I lie extensively.”

A Hindu proverb says, “Even nectar is poison if taken in excess.” I believe in moderation. But moderation takes a certain amount of self discipline. It’s about saying no from time to time. But how does it feel to never say no? To be out of control? Success and even happiness are simply not possible without some inner discipline.

One hospital patient aptly described the problem. When visiting with a chaplain, this patient, who was being treated for venereal disease, said, “Reverend, my trouble is I’ve been led around by my ‘gotta haves’ all my life.”

Without learning how to say no to ourselves at the appropriate times, it’s like we’re led around by our “gotta haves” all our lives. Whatever we think we gotta have this moment is what we go after. We gotta have more pleasure or less discomfort or this experience or that new thing or another glass or more of this or a bigger and better something else.... You fill in the blanks.

On the other hand, some of the happiest people I know feel in control of themselves most of the time. If they overdo, their excessiveness does not become a lifestyle. If they deviate from the goals they’ve set, they soon get back on course. They know how to have fun without being led around by their gotta haves.

I like the words of Bernard Baruch. “In the last analysis,” he said, “our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.” The point is -- control is going to come from somewhere. If not from ourselves, then from somebody else. 

Discipline is deciding not to be led around by our gotta haves. It is the task of a lifetime, an indispensable prerequisite to success, and the only way to be truly free.

-- Steve Goodier

Don’t Read This

Flickr image by Richard Giles

Don’t read this!

I see you didn’t heed my warning. Let me try again. My advice is...DON’T READ THIS.

Are you still here? It’s not that I want you to forever stop reading these messages, but reading about how to lead a whole and fulfilling life and doing it are not the same. To do it, you might have to do something else that is increasingly difficult for many of us...walk away from your media.

I just read of a young mother who lost her cell phone and was forced to stay off of Facebook and away from texting friends for a few days. She said she actually found herself doing something she hadn’t done in a couple of years  -- interacting with her family. She felt as if she got her life back and was worried that she’d slip into the same old patterns with her new phone.

Katherine Jackson, mother of the late pop star Michael Jackson, explained this about her son: "It all really started when Michael was three or four years old. The TV broke and the kids started dancing and singing to entertain themselves. I convinced their father they were good, and after he listened to them, he agreed with me." The TV broke and, well, you know the rest of the story.

A woman lost her phone and something surprising happened. The TV broke and something historic happened. So now, if you’re still reading this (and you obviously are), let me ask a question: if you were to walk away from your media for the rest of the day, what amazing thing might happen to you?

Do you remember the story of a woman driving through the countryside who saw an astonishing sight? It was of a man standing on a ladder against an apple tree with a goat in his arms. The animal calmly ate apples from the tree while the man patiently held it up.

The curious woman stopped the car. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Feeding my goat, of course."

"Doesn't it take an awfully long time that way?"

"Heck," he said. "What's time to a goat?"

Good question: what’s time to a goat? But you’re not a goat. And chances are there is likely an electronic device at hand stealing more of your time than you can afford to lose.

If your television, computer or mobile device broke, what might get fixed? Or, put another way, if you turned OFF the media for a while, what might get turned ON?

And one more question -- this is the big one. Are you ready to find out?

-- Steve Goodier

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Much Obliged

Like most parents, I taught my children to say "thank you" frequently and hoped that giving thanks might become a life habit. After all, silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. But I think that what I hoped to teach them was not simply to say thanks, but to feel it. I believe that thankful people are happy people.

Writer Fulton Oursler used to tell of an old woman who took care of him when he was a child -- a woman who not only expressed her thanks, but felt it. Anna was a former American slave who, after emancipation, was hired by a family for many years.

He remembered her sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded and her eyes gazing upward as she prayed, “Much obliged, Lord, for my vittles.” He asked her what vittles were and she replied that they were food and drink. He told her that she would get food and drink whether or not she gave thanks, and Anna said, “Yes, we’ll get our vittles, but it makes ‘em taste better when we’re thankful.”

She told him that an old preacher taught her, as a little girl, to always look for things to be grateful for. So, as soon as she awoke each morning, she asked herself, “What is the first thing I can be grateful for today?” Sometimes the smell of early-morning coffee perking in the kitchen found its way to her room. On those mornings, the aroma prompted her to say, “Much obliged, Lord, for the coffee. And much obliged, too, for the smell of it!”

Young Fulton grew up and left home. One day he received a message that Anna was dying. He returned home and found her in bed with her hands folded over her white sheets, just as he had seen them folded in prayer over her white apron at the kitchen table so many times before.

He wondered what she could give thanks for at a time like this. As if reading his mind, she opened her eyes and gazed at the loving faces around her bed. Then, shutting her eyes again, she said quietly, “Much obliged, Lord, for such fine friends.”

Oursler was deeply influenced by Anna’s uncanny ability to always find some reason to be "much obliged." This wise woman taught him a secret that many people have never learned: she taught him how to be happy.

-- Steve Goodier

Image:flickr.com/Gurpreet

Toll Road to Success

An airline passenger struck up a conversation with a stranger who was sniffling, apparently due to a recent head cold.

"Look at me!" the healthy one boasted. "Never a day's sickness in my life, and all due to simple food. Why, from the age of twenty to that of forty I lived an absolutely simple, regular life -- no pampering, no late hours, no extravagances. Every day, in fact, I was in bed regularly at nine o'clock and up again at five in the morning. I ate a plain meal at noon and, after that, exercised for an hour, then..."

"Excuse me," interrupted the sniffling stranger in the next seat, "but what were you in for?"

That regimented life does sound too much like a prison sentence. Some people can go overboard with a rigid routine. I once went on a near-starvation diet just to drop a few pounds. In two weeks I lost five pounds and the will to live.

Self discipline is important to happiness, but a rigid routine may not be the answer.

Mark Twain gave some advice about discipline. "Do one thing every day you don't want to do," he suggested. I think I can do that. One thing I’ve been putting off. One thing I always said I “ought” to do, but never made the effort.

I believe that doing something important that we don’t want to do every day is a price we pay for success. Call it discipline. Call it duty. Call it paying your dues, for that may be what it really is.

And the other part is this: leave some time to do something you WANT to do, too. Paying your dues gets you where you want to go. Then having fun along the way makes the journey worthwhile.

For me, the “road to success” has been more like a toll road. If I pay that small, daily fee, I can go most anywhere I want. And when I leave enough time for fun, I enjoy the ride.

-- Steve Goodier

image:flickr.com/Jimmy Emerson, DVM

Keep on Swinging

They say that opportunity only knocks once. But temptation seems to pound on my door forever. Even opening up and letting it in doesn’t seem to make it go away. More temptations come along and the beating goes on.

Those temptations that cause me the most problems are those that pull me away from being my best self. So I can relate to the Swiss woman who was served dinner on a domestic American flight. She opened up her dessert – a delicious looking piece of chocolate cake – and immediately sprinkled a generous layer of salt and pepper over it. A shocked flight attendant exclaimed, “Oh! It’s not necessary to do that!”

“But it is,” the woman replied, smiling. “It keeps me from eating it.”

She found a way to drive temptation away from her doorstep, at least for a while.

The most persistent temptations in my life are distractions that keep me from doing what is in my best interest.

I forgo some much-needed exercise because I “just don’t feel like it” today. Have you ever felt like that?

You may want to quit that reading group, that difficult class or those music lessons. It’s easy to become distracted and get discouraged.

Or maybe we say we just “can’t find the time” to spend with those closest to us, such as family. We may want to do these things; it’s just that sometimes we need a nudge.

Something baseball great Hank Aaron once said can help out here. “My motto was to keep swinging,” he said. “Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging.”

Sometimes we just need to keep swinging. And if we tell ourselves that all we need to do today is to take one more swing, that may be enough. We can always take one more swing. And who knows…today we might hit a home run.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: Flickr.com/Linh Nguyen

Turtle's Can't Fly

A determined little turtle once climbed a tree. He somehow made it to the first branch. Then he jumped into the air waving his front legs and crashed to the ground.

After a while he slowly climbed the tree again. And again he jumped. This time he flapped all four of his limbs, but still plummeted to the hard ground.

The persistent turtle tried again and again with the same results. A couple of birds perched on a branch nearby watched his futile efforts. One of them turned to her mate and said, "Dear, don’t you think it's time to tell him he's adopted?"

There are simply some things we cannot do. Turtles can’t fly.

Comedian Bob Hope once thought of pursuing a career in boxing. Later in life he quipped about it: “I ruined my hands in the ring” he said. “The referee kept stepping on them.”

Fighting is something he could not do well. But he became a great comedian.

Lots of people have ability and talent. And most people have an idea about what they think they can do. So why do some excel but many do not?

The famous American caricaturist Al Hirschfield explained it like this: “I believe everybody is creative and everybody is talented,” he said. “I just don't think that everybody is disciplined. I think that’s a rare commodity.”

The secret seems to be discipline. Whatever ability we are born with is not enough. Even raw talent requires discipline to be nurtured and developed. But enough hard work and discipline can turn the most meager skill or ability into a great strength.

A man jumped into a taxi cab in New York and asked the driver, "How do I get to Yankee stadium?"

The cabbie replied, "Practice! Practice! Practice!"

He’s right. And although discipline and practice may never get a turtle to actually fly, it will probably get you and me just about wherever we want to go.

-- Steve Goodier


Image: flickr.com/Rob