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The destroyer of health, wealth, and progress is lack of self-discipline, and the Nr. 1 enemy of self-discipline is not laziness, not procrastination, but a more complex survival mechanism: entitled hedonism or mental and emotional self-soothing. Indulging in small guilty pleasures as the last resort relief from life’s pains.
The salient ingredient, the glue that makes bad habits stick is our feeling of justified entitlement to that relief as the lesser evil.
Those late nights booze and drugs sprees with the mates that zombify you for the entire weekend, which you kinda want to stop because you know are ruining your health and relationships. But then, there is that black hole of loneliness in you that threatens to swallow you whole when alone at home, or with your partner from whom you’ve grown estranged… And the prospects of living them and the kids are far worse than self-medicating that pain with some guilty pleasures. The maths is there: Coming late at night wasted is better than not coming home at all. Not spending time with the kids during weekends is preferable to only seeing them during certain weekends. That bad habit is the lesser evil. And you need it to survive your reality. That guilty, debasing pleasure is the only pleasure you’ve got that doesn’t depend on you doing or being what others want. It’s yours. You don’t have to do backflips to impress anyone to have it. It accepts you for who you are in your darkest corners of your being. It gives you pleasure without you having to work hard to deserve it. And since pleasure is the feedback energy of being acknowledged for who we are and what we do in that moment, if no one else acknowledged you, that thing does, as do the mates, the girl, the man for than one night stand. You deserve some pleasure, and if that’s the only one you could get, why not?
Justified entitlement to our guilty pleasures when the world has turned its back on us
Life is a hard enterprise for most of us. Harder than it should be because nobody gave us the Human Instruction Manual at our arrival. From childhood to adulthood, we’ve been tried and tested in every conceivable way. That mental and emotional herculean energy required to keep us going despite the failures, the heartbreaks, the shame and humiliations, unfortunately comes in limited supplies. Limited by the feedback from our environment.
If our trials to do better, be better despite repeated setbacks are not acknowledged and justly rewarded, we end up running on deficit of mental and emotional energy (will to fight) until there is nothing left to give, no energy left, not only to fight, but to even care.
Being acknowledged and rewarded for our efforts and contribution is what gives life – social life – meaning, and that is our source of mental and emotional energy as social animals. Without it, we are stripped back to the primitive stages of everyone for themselves.
Delaying making that uncomfortable phone call, staying in bed half an hour longer, eating that cake, drinking one more, refusing to put yourself through even more pain to exercise when you don’t have the mental, emotional and physical energy left to even bother anymore – is not laziness. Is chronic life burnout.
We ran on deficit our entire life, we’ve given, and given, and given, and whatever we put out was not reciprocated. That injustice, that injury requires retribution for life to have balance, for order to prevail over chaos. Either we become raging murderers and looters or turn the anger inwards and soothe the wounds of life’s injustice with whatever pleasures shorten this unjust life.
This is how personality disorders, self-harm, eating disorders, and all addictions start. From lack of caring acknowledgement and reciprocal emotional exchange.
Pain and pleasure are the mother and father of saints and sinners, of angels and demons, of altruism and calamity. There must be balance between the two for chaos to be averted.
Too much pain lowers us into beasts; too much pleasure raises us to superficial hights.
Both extremes disconnect us from reality and others.
When you’ve been on a steady diet of abandonment and pain, the natural order of life requires an equal amount of pleasure to set the balance straight. And since there’s no one around, we must tend to our wounds alone. We must clean the wound, put on the bandage, make the chicken soup, and serve it in bed.
But life carries on merciless of whether you’ve caught up on your dose of care and attention. The only time you have to tend to your unhealed wounds and deficits created by injustice, callousness, betrayal and abuse at the hands of your fellow humans, is when you are ill, when you sleep, when you are unconscious…when you check out of this reality. So you grab these pockets of you time whenever and wherever you can. And if they don’t show up anymore, you create them. You do everything that puts a distance between you and the demands of the world from the depleted you. You either create an illness to give you the time to heal your battered soul by having a valid excuse of not being out there conforming. Or you take whatever substance that makes you unconscious and helps you check out in micro dosing intervals that won’t get noticed.
Self-discipline from this position requires self-inflicted pain, austerity, and stoicism. Or if you’ve been submitted to pain and austerity your whole life, which you’ve stoically survived so far, who in their right mind will subject themselves – willingly this time – to more of that?
And yet, without taming the wounded beast there is no way out of suffering. The only way around is by reframing pain and pleasure, by switching the circuits. Transforming masochism into hedonism.
And here is how it looks.
Procrastination: The dread of facing a demand we are not prepared to face, for which we don’t have the mental and emotional energy to fight if it goes south.
Mind hack/reframe: Instead of cowering in the corner waiting for that dragon to grow too big for me to defeat it, I better crack it while is still an egg.
Remember, is pleasure what we are depleted of and what we are seeking. And if we don’t get it from a fair exchange in our interactions with others, with society, we get it from our refusal to comply with their demands.
If we’ve been neglected and abused by the world, the only pleasure left to us is that of breaking its rules, of resisting to comply.
So our best strategy for getting our needs met is rebellion against anything that takes away from us more than it gives. Against anything that makes us weak.
Now we have something we can work with and agree to.
That bad habit, that bottle or pint, that white powder, that joint, those mates calling for another night spree out – are all requiring you to comply with their demands.
That pleasure is not free, after all. If are not the norms of society – family, work, etc. trying to break your will, are your coping strategies. One way or another, you are a slave.
Will your mates acknowledge and love you for who you are if you declined the invitations to spend quality time with yourself or your partner, or to get that presentation done?
They won’t. They’ll shame you into compliance with their agenda: “C’mon mate, you’re a pussy! Your woman wears the pants, etc.” They depend on your failures and on you feeling the ‘top dog’ in their presence. That fun and bonding is not real because it needs mood altering substances or alcohol to make it feel so. Remove those binding chemicals from the equation, meet them in the broad daylight and talk about what really matters, and you’ll soon discover that it was just a mirage. A sad one at best.
So, where’s the switch?
Is in acknowledging your pain point to begin with instead of running away from it.
All coping mechanisms are avoidance strategies by fear of the consequences.
Putting off writing that paper is not laziness. Is fear that once you’ve done it, it won’t be as good as you thought, or it won’t be acknowledged at its real value. Its value is your value. If that presentation, paper, thesis, book is devalued, you are devalued. That act, whatever that may be, which we put off it’s a part of us. Sometimes, we think is the best part of us. And if the best of us is rejected, what’s there to live for anymore?
Your pain point could be avoiding having that long due conversation with your spouse. Putting all cards on the table. Telling it as it is and working things out. Hearing each other’s pain points and need for their lacking pleasure. And by that I don’t mean the man telling his wife, girlfriend that his pain point is lack of sex forcing you to go drinking and sleeping around.
‘Sex’ is not your birth right just because ‘you are a man and have needs’! That woman’s body is a temple and is not there to be used as and when you see fit. Is there to unite you in body and soul, if you’ve earned that privilege.
Your woman is not a doll for your cheap quick pleasures. She is, or should be for you your queen, your goddess, your healer and most fierce warrior to defend your micro universe. The safe heaven you return to from your daily battles.
And for her to be so, you need to treat her as such if you want her to reciprocate. If you only ‘see’ her when you ‘need sex’, how do you think that makes her feel if not a cheap prostitute who doesn’t even get paid for her ‘service’?!
In all couples counselling and coaching I’ve done, this is the number one male pain point:
“She doesn’t treat me like a man, she doesn’t care about my needs” – i.e., she doesn’t admire me and doesn’t want to have sex as often as I want, or when and how I want it.
When I listen to the women’s pain point, I hear them say the same thing over and over:
“He doesn’t treat me like his woman. He treats me like an object to be taken out of the closet when he needs sex. For the rest, he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t care about any of my daily battles with the kids, at work, with my or his family. He goes out with his mates and comes at whatever hour he likes, wasted, smelling like a pub. He stays in bed the whole weekend while I have to take the kids swimming, dancing, do the shopping, cook, clean, wash, iron, fight with them to do their homework, and when that’s done, I have to be ready for another week of crap at work and more of the same. And then he comes late from work and demands to have sex. Is not that I don’t want sex or that I don’t love him anymore. I just can’t summon the desire for him anymore because he abandoned me alone in this relationship long ago. He let me deal with everything – from kids to personal issues – alone. So he might as well go f*** himself or his mates who are more important than me or our kids.”
If your relationship makes you look for outside pleasures, your pain point may be that you’ve chosen the wrong partner to begin with, based on financial gains, social prospects, or simply for their beauty and great sex at the beginning. Not the best markers on which to build a solid life-long foundation. But until you acknowledge it and have that conversation, no coping mechanisms will provide you with that pleasure you’ve deprived yourself off through your unaware choices.
Back to the switch.
Here comes the vital point which you keep refusing to hear. Your spiritual dimension.
As a simple mortal, victim of your circumstances, you have no chance in hell of balancing your needs in a fair exchange with others. Ever! Because from that brutish animalic point everybody’s there for themselves. The exchange is conditional. I give you this if you give me that. I do this if you do that. So your pleasure will always be at the mercy of your environment. You comply with its demands, you get your fix. You don’t, then you have to find a way to soothe that ongoing pain through whatever quick fixes you can conceive of.
However, if you start taking yourself seriously, if you listen to that maddening voice you are trying to silence with your escapist strategies, you’ll be bound to admit that you are more than your circumstances.
That’s why you feel hurt when you are rejected and evaluated on what you have and do instead of who you are. Your intrinsic value as a life creating energy tasting the flavours of its creation through its identity avatars is claiming its right to be acknowledged.
That’s your true pain point! And as long as you deny its existence, the world will deny yours. Because you are the world! That all creating energy cannot be severed. Whatever you do to it, you do to you.
The law of reciprocity is embedded in the fabric of existence itself. Energy in all its forms, its frequencies are the result of this give and take. Once a signal is emitted, it needs a response for the wave to exist. You put something out, and that something must return to its source with an answer. Emitter-receiver and back again. You emit a signal and wait for the response. You receive a signal and reciprocate with your response to that signal. This is pure science not new-agey stuff.
Your switch comes from acknowledging the basic laws of physics controlling your life.
You switch your pain points into pleasure by acknowledging that in your absolute essence you are both the sender and receiver; the judge, the executor, and the defendant.
Enlightenment, stripped of all the fluff, is nothing but the awakening of this all creating, self-generating energy to the roles it plays – through you and everything surrounding you.
Whether it expressed in all these forms as a pre-existent curiosity of a pre-existent mind and intelligence, or whether it acquired the mind and intelligence along the way, the facts are the same. You, the rock, the plants, the animals and everything in existence are made from the same ‘stuff’ and substance and abide by the same laws of frequencies. The only difference is in the interval between sending and receiving the signal. In the level of awareness.
Rocks vibrate at lower frequencies than humans, but they still vibrate. The higher your vibration, the higher your awareness of this process. Cells are not aware of you, neither are you truly aware of them, not yet. But at least you know of their existence. The brain is not aware of you, neither are you aware of its functions, but you at least know of its existence.
Once you become aware of the existence of something you were unaware of before, your growth expands exponentially.
Because you become curious to know what more is there to be known. Without that curiosity there is no growth. Just stalemate assumptions leading to living in circles until exhaustion. Until depression and burnout.
Once you can contemplate that you are more than a sack of bones, brains and guts sewn into a body of flesh, once you can put aside your assumptions of what life is, your pains and pleasures collapse into whatever wave you choose. You become the jedi. You no longer fear rejection. Not as you did before anyway, because you see the game. They can reject the role, but not the role-player.
The power of self-awareness is realising that you always have a choice. If not in the family you were born and over the behaviour of other role-players, at least in what you think and feel about the whole game.
One of your roles is that of an employee, underpaid and overworked? It’s up to you whether you carry on playing that role or rehearse for another.
Is that fear of getting that paper done worth the energy to fight it and pretend is not there? Is that self-soothing/self-indulging the best pleasure you could get? How about turning it around by getting excited to play your role the best you can with whatever cards you’ve been dealt, unattached to and unafraid of its outcome.
Being self-aware carries with it deliberate action, and conscious deliberate action is what self-discipline is all about, only that you remove the self-inflicted pain from the equation.
Is deliberate choice of how we engage this game from an informed position that puts us in the driver’s seat for the first time.
That’s why the 12 Steps Programme for alcoholics is the most successful approach to beat addiction. When I spoke with a man about my approach after he read my Conversations with Self book, he exclaimed: “That’s what we learn in the 12 Steps Programme!”
Is viewing oneself past the simple mortal role-play what puts the whole thing into a higher perspective. When you look from space, you don’t see your town, you see the whole planet. But from your town you can’t see the whole planet. Same happens with what you call ‘you’.
When you look from the same level with your circumstances, you can’t see the forest from the tree. You then get triggered by fear responses into either attack, defend, submit, or play dead, hoping that the danger won’t see you.
Returning to the ingredient making the switch happen – pleasure – the secret is to have a higher perception, a panoramic view of life which will help you choose deliberately your pleasures. Not only choose, but self-generate them! Then you don’t need sex, alcohol and drugs to mask your pain or to create artificial short-lived pleasures.
From that higher ground you get high on your own supply, as I tell my friends and clients wondering at how I can live alone without a partner, without someone to love me and care for me, to value me, and all the rest. Simple. I self-generate my mental and emotional needs instead of waiting for others to do it for me.
This self-awareness and curiosity of how much more is out there has also made me unbeatable at what I do. My work is no longer a job or a career. Is my life. As such, I work 12-15 hours per day at it, 90 hours week, sometimes with little if any reward other than the increased knowledge and results.
From this level we don’t need external appreciation to meet our identity avatar needs. We do our best with the cards we have, and that’s our reward.
Our pleasure comes from knowing that we’ve deployed all our assets at our disposal for playing this role to the best of our abilities, and from taking a step back to enjoy the show. And it comes in infinite supply as long as we keep showing up from this perspective and engage the other role-players from a high moral ground. Anything short of that is bound to create dependence, fear, and pain.
If you want to reach that level of getting high on your own supply, free from triggers and fears, sign up to my upcoming course.
Nobody will ask you to talk your soul out. No appointments needed. No time off. Free to use it when you need it and feel like it. In your commute, while training, running, doing your household chores, while waiting for your plane, before going to sleep, or when your urges and fears take you over.
Share this article with your partner, see what they say. With your colleagues, boss. Start living from a more authentic place, learn what needs to be learned, and see magic happen.
© Gratiela Rosu – Founder of CWS Method®, Mental health specialist, Transformational Coach, Preventive Mental Health Educator.
