Pleasure Vs Pain Focused People 

• Pleasure and pain play a big role in self discipline.
• Are you a pleasure or pain focused person?
• Don’t be afraid to experience pain. It will develop self discipline.

When you break it down to the simplest level, people are actually quite simple to understand. People like to experience pleasure, and so do things which are pleasurable to them. People do not like to experience pain, and so are motivated to avoid pain.

How you respond to these 2 emotions of pleasure and pain, will determine whether you are able to sustain self discipline in your life.

How you perceive each will therefore have a big impact on whether you are able to bypass discomfort, and persevere to the pleasure of completing a task.

Are You A Pleasure Or Pain Focused Person?

Here is a quick test you can do to determine whether you are a pleasure or pain focused person.

Question 1 

If you were in the middle of doing some work, would you spontaneously take time off to spend with a friend? Or would you reschedule time with your friend, so that you could complete at least part of the work before you stop?

Pleasure focused people are easily distracted from less enjoyable activities, in favour of more immediate enjoyment. 

Pain focused people tend to do something because they fear the consequences of not doing it.

Question 2 

Do you eat your favourite foods at dinner first? Or do you eat a little bit of everything, without regard as to what you like best?

Pleasure focused people are the “eat dessert first” type of people, who want immediate gratification.

Pain focused people tend to delay experiencing the things they dislike for as long as possible.

Question 3 

Do you work on a project only when you feel guilty for waiting so long to start it?  Or do you like to get things started as early as possible?

Pain focused people wait to do something until the pain becomes too great to bear. They only do work when the pain of procrastination is worse than the work itself.

Pleasure focused people may also delay starting a project, but may be motivated to get it “over and done with” so they can experience more pleasure later on.

Pain/Pleasure Analysis

If you find you are focused on both pleasure and pain, don’t worry! You are like everyone else. How you deal with pleasure and pain has a big influence on whether you will be able to implement self discipline in your life.

Successful self discipline comes not from avoiding pleasure or constantly feeling pain, but from learning to organise your life so that you can control when you allow yourself to experience each of them.

This is the key to developing self discipline. When you can make pleasure and pain work for you in a way that is beneficial, you will begin to develop and maintain a high level of discipline in your life.

Organising Pleasure And Pain

Here are a few tips you can use to start organising pleasure and pain in your life.

1 - Start doing the things you dislike first, rather than delaying them until the last minute. These should be the things you have delayed because they make you uncomfortable in some way. Or, are just not fun to do.

2 - At breakfast, lunch and dinner, eat the foods you dislike first.

3 - After doing something you dislike or some work you have been putting off, give yourself a reward of some kind.

Learning Not To Postpone Pain

By practicing these exercises on a daily basis you will train yourself to avoid postponing pain in a practical way.

Since one of the main reasons why people lack self discipline is the avoidance of pain, by doing the things you dislike first you will help to increase your pain threshold. In future, you will then be able to do painful activities more easily.

Please note that when I say pain, I am not necessarily referring to physical pain. Pain may include something that you find boring, hard or physically demanding.

Experience The Pain!

If you can expose yourself to experiencing the pain first and then give yourself a reward when it is completed, you will find that your level of discipline and productivity will dramatically increase.

But remember, if you constantly expose yourself to pleasure first by doing what is fun and easy, your pain threshold will decrease.

In turn you will find it more difficult to experience painful activities later, and will either put them off until the last minute, or not do them at all.