There are two reasons we human do anything.

Either to move toward pleasure, or to move away from pain.

Anything you want or don’t want can be broken down into those components.

However, it’s usually not so simple.

Take the ubiquitous goal of weight loss.

Most people would LOVE to be skinnier.

Otherwise the “lose weight” section on Amazon wouldn’t have zillions of best sellers.

But this simple and common idea involves a TON of confusing “good things” and “bad things.”

Eating feels good.

But having to strain to button your pants doesn’t feel good.

So we want make it easier to put on our pants.

In order to achieve that “good” we need to reduce another “good,” namely the pleasure we get from eating.

Problem is that eating pleasure happens right NOW.

While the pleasure of loose fitting pants is WAY out into the future.

And we’re supposed to “live in the moment,” right?

So it’s “good thing” to eat ice cream, NOW.

But then later the next morning, when we have to lie on the floor to zip up our pants, we are still “living in the moment.”

Only that particular “living in the moment” of squirming around trying to zip up our pants is a different “living in the moment” than when we ate a quart of ice cream the night before.

How the heck are we supposed to know what to do?

Even when we DO know what to do, how the heck we do it?

I doubt you’d find anybody that thinks eating a quart of ice cream is more than a “guilty pleasure.”

Yet somehow, that ice cream magically gets from the grocery store to our freezer.

And despite our promises to ourselves in the grocery store, it’s hard to ONLY eat a small bowl.

In case you hadn’t noticed, another theme in all of these confusing ideas is the idea of TIME.

When we choose to eat or not eat the ice cream, we are comparing NOW vs. the FUTURE.

When we buy the ice cream in the store, we are comparing NOW vs. THE FUTURE.

For most people, NOW wins over the FUTURE every time.

But you can “go meta.”

Most people try to battle on a surface level.

They focus on the content of the NOW vs. the content of the FUTURE.

Buying the ice cream (and promising to only eat a little bit) or NOT buying the ice cream.

Every time we choose, it’s always a matter of pleasure NOW vs. pleasure in the FUTURE.

The good news is you can ignore the content.

Meaning you can slowly build up your FUTURE thinking muscle, so that starts to win over the NOW.

It’s easier than you think.

Learn How:

Seven Disciplines