Whatever the individual specific reasons may be, they can all be summed up into one single phrase:
“Because they linked too much pain with success”. I could develop this even further and say they linked too much pain and not enough pleasure, but I know from experience that’s not always true.
Some persons want their definition of success with such a passion it eats them from inside if they don’t have it. Now that person has a lot of pleasure associated with success, but so what? As long as he has a high degree of pain associated to it as well, then he won’t achieve it? You know why?
Because the no.1 function of the brain, the one that overrides any other function is this: “Avoid pain at any cost”. If there’s gonna be pain involved, the result better damn well be worth it, and by worth it I mean it’s value must be at least 15 times over the value of the pain, because baby, pain is worth a lot when you wanna avoid it.
I don’t care if you want success with a passion, you’re still not gonna achieve it if you think “I will die of pain before I get there”. And search deep within yourself and you will find that whenever you failed to do something or whenever someone else failed to do something, you wanted to deny your own death by psychological pain and so you didn’t do it.
I mean sure, it may not have felt like “OMG, I’m gonna die if I do it”, your conscious mind knew full well you’re not gonna die. Sure, maybe it will be a little unpleasant, but you’re not gonna die. Still, trust me, at a deep, unconscious level, you were experiencing the fear of death, of your own immediate and imminent painful death. You were subconsciously experiencing your own personal brand of Hell right then and there. So you tried to avoid it. It’s the perfectly sane, logical normal decision to make. I don’t want to die, therefore I don’t want pain (which leads to death), therefore I don’t want this experience (which leads to pain which leads to death), therefore I get angry to reject the experience itself that would cause me death.
You see, at the topmost level, it may just be a nuisance that you’re consciously experiencing. And you think to yourself consciously “Come on, it’s just a little nasty itch, it’s certainly not gonna kill me”. But what is your subconscious mind experiencing based on the conscious stimulus? What is your reaction Really about?
You think you are reacting to your conscious stimulus, but of course, you are not. You are reacting to the full-blown story you are so deeply emotionally involved in. The stimulus is just the introduction, the first 3 pages. You are reacting in full to the whole 350 page novel your imagination, fantasy and body are constructing.
Join me tomorrow for the second part of this 3-part article where we will learn the innerworkings of how fear works, so you can understand what’s going on inside your head while you are afraid. In the meantime, you can subscribe to the Love in Life Newsletter and get more updates. Link is below. Until tomorrow, as usual I wish you “Smile from your heart”
