How Big is Your Pain? Get What You Want

Desires

All desires come from different sources, but normally they come from deep in us, and they are considered an inquietude, a feeling of missing, a lack, maybe in your case an exciting new experience, but summarily we can translate all those as human feelings as pains.

Pain

PAIN, you should not correlate it literally to the original meaning, pain does not ONLY mean physical pain, e.g.: you hit your thumb on a rock and it hurts, which is equals physical pain, however, we have emotional pains as well, and these pains are as much hurting (if not more) than a regular physical pain. Our current society's “modern” lives exert a lot of pressure on us, demanding actions and behaviors to get “what we want”. To keep up with modern society we tend to want and do things that normally are not 100% aligned with our own values, creating an inner voice and feelings, that say: I need something new, or maybe I need changes.

Fabricated Needs

Nowadays we live a very turbulent life, in the sense that we are bombarded by several social media posts, TV, and regular media, all of them aiming at consuming stuff, which brings us a need to achieve things, that naturally would not be needed without all these external pressures. I was watching yesterday an interview with social scientist and professor Dan Ariely & Tom Bilyeu, where Dan, the author of several books, the latest one Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things, is a compelling idea about how social media is brainwashing us to behave in a certain way.

Brainwashing

We think that people may brainwash us just to buy stuff, but actually, social media, is in the palm of our hands every single day, influencing us in all life aspects, I will talk specifically about one single aspect in this post, that is “chase of comfort”. We have so many new gadgets, nice cars, houses, same-day deliveries, food apps, restaurants (and much more) at our reach every single day, that we tend to think that comfort and easy and simple access to things are granted in our lives. The paradox here is that comfort and easier access to things are against the natural law of reality, without effort and persistent actions towards big goals, we won't reach anything meaningful in life.

Don't Numb Your Pain

Here we are back to pain, pain actually is not a bad thing, without it, we probably would be all dead, can you imagine if we had the ability to put our hands on fire and not feel pain, where would we be today? My perspective about pain is that it is an alert, to be looked over, not ignored or numbed by substances (drugs such AS social media and fast foods) or Stuff (consumables). The best thing is, that pain, will deliberately show itself every single day, which makes it simple access to start looking at it, trying to solve what bothers us. The bigger your pain towards a particular goal or desire, the bigger the chance of making us move.

Pain has Limits

When pain gets to a certain point, we have 2 options, take action or maybe get sick (depression or a random disease). Sometimes we ignore the pain so much that the body stops us and SCREAM AT US through a disease, saying, PLEASE STOP and prioritize it.

Prioritize Yourself

I have seen self-sacrifice behavior, on several occasions, on me, my parents, and a lot of my friends, but I realized that an unnecessary self-sacrifice is not a virtue but an actual flaw, not taking care of ourselves is a big mistake in my view. What is the point of being alive, if we can not work towards solving our pains and desires? If you have had something bothering you for a long time, and nothing, including all the crazy media around you, can not numb this feeling anymore, it is the perfect timing to use willpower to move forward. This is a special moment in life, a deep pain, maybe a precursor of a new interesting life.

Take Advantage of the Pain

Pain is actually a tool, understanding that you can not bear a specific thing is a time of looking to your inner self and making changes, starting NOW, not tomorrow, not next week, no until I solve X,Y,Z, it is now, action is the only solution. Use this momentum to achieve new things in life, check our posts “Proud of Yourself: Strange Ways to Get There” and “How to Make Dreams a Reality”, for new insights and move Today towards to a new and exciting chapter of your life. I wish you all the best of luck!

References:
[1]: Oliveira, Guilherme. “How to Make Dreams a Reality” Lookforlots blog, 10/19/2023, https://www.lookforlots.com/how-to-make-dreams-a-reality-copy

[2]: Oliveira, Guilherme. “Proud of Yourself: Strange Ways to Get There” Lookforlots blog, 10/11/2023, https://lookforlots.com/proud-of-yourself-strange-ways-to-get-there
[3]: “MASS PSYCHOSIS: How An Entire Population Becomes Stupid & How To Get Ahead Of Everyone | Dan Ariely” YouTube uploaded by Tom Bilyeu (Oct 31, 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q0fB-l4IRA.