As we know, life is very tough, but at other times, it’s joy. Unfortunately, many people struggle with the pain that comes along with life. They struggle with accepting that life is going to be hard. Accepting that it may not be what you want at this time.
You see this is why so many people have the problems that they face in their life. They resist half of their life having pain, which in turn creates their suffering.
There are times that we want to dive headfirst into nice guy syndrome because our wife has had her own dramas at work. For the past week she has been coming home, frustrated, irritated, angry, and even once in tears. And because we feel uncomfortable with our wife’s pain, we want to run right out and try to fix it. This in turn causes her to get irritated with us. Which causes our discomfort to grow even more.
The key to not having a constant state of pain and being able to enjoy life more completely, and have a more fulfilling experience in life is to implement the 50-50 principle.
What is the 50/50 principle?
The 50-50 principle is simple. 50% of life is going to be pleasure. The other 50% of life is going to be pain. Now, a lot of people shrink at the thought of half of your life is going to be painful, so what is meant when talking about pain?
Pain is anything of discomfort. Pain is an emotion that we want to avoid. An awkward experience can also be seen as pain. This is because many of our fear emotions are theoretically set close to the part of our brain that also processes pain. So it is claimed that with bad, unpleasant experiences, we associate bad experiences as a painful occurrence.
What’s interesting about the 50-50 principle is how many people actually push back against the principle. They want 80% of life to be pleasant, while 20% is pain. Which shows how much we want to resist uncomfortable emotions in our life.
Life isn’t fair
“Well that doesn’t seem fair” and you’re right it’s not. Why? Because life isn’t fair. We’ve heard that our whole life that nothing in life is fair, yet we shrug and shy away from uncomfortable emotions. We avoid these emotions like the plague. When addressing those uncomfortable emotions allows our lives to become better.
When you are faced with the discomfort of uncertainty, you’re more willing to not try to start that new business. If you’re faced with the unknown of the girl you’re dating, you’re less likely to get married. That discomfort and uncertainty is pain.
So life isn’t fair not because we don’t have the same opportunities, but because we don’t think of pain the same way. People who are more willing to take risks are more likely to view pain as just a sensation that can be dealt with. While the cautious neurotic type of person will view embarrassment as close to death.
Yet one thing that we are all going to have is that half of our day is going to be painful and unpleasant. While the other half will allow us to be smiling and be enjoyable.
You will have pleasure.
Yes, you will have pleasure in your life with the 50-50 principle. As a matter of fact, half of your life is going to be pleasurable. Now this pleasure will wax and wane in different intensities throughout the day because of the thoughts that we have. You will have bearing levels of pleasure depending on your thoughts about the circumstances of your day.
Your pleasure will actually vary not just day-to-day but hour to hour and minute to minute. It is estimated that we have 60,000 thoughts a day and without those 60,000 thoughts we would not have the pleasurable emotions that we crave.
The needed pain in your life
As humans avoid pain almost at all costs. Now, as I mentioned before, pain is nothing more than an unpleasant emotion. And emotion is created by our thoughts. So with that line of thinking, your level of pain is gonna be relative to the thoughts that you have of a particular circumstance.
But one thing about pain that we humans don’t understand is that we really need pain in our life. Which sounds wrong in so many different ways. Why do we need to have pain in our life?
Look at people who have it all. Now there are those who have gone through lots of pain to achieve their success, and they are happy, fulfilled people. But look at people who won the lottery or have inherited large fortunes, and sadly many of these people are in fact, miserable. Why is that? Because they actually do not have a marker to determine what is pleasurable and what is painful. This is what happens when you don’t have pain in your life. This is what happens when you don’t struggle for something you want. The pain of failure, the pain of embarrassment, the pain of almost getting it and failing short, giving up and trying it again is why pain is so important.
Pain is almost like the sugar for your life. Have it straight by itself, it’s not really all that wonderful, but you mix it in with your life and all the other pleasant experiences that you have and suddenly those pleasant experiences become even sweeter. You cannot have the highest levels of emotions without the deep dark valleys of the pain.
No, you can’t be happy all the time.
Many people will come to me and say “Well, I just wanna be happy”. Well then allow yourself to be happy. But also allow yourself to be sad. Allow yourself to be embarrassed. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable and anxious and even scared. Allow yourself to cry, allow yourself to have any other motion that you avoid. Don’t resist the bad stuff, hoping that you get more good stuff out of it. You won’t be able to experience the joys of happiness because you’re too busy, avoiding the pain of the circumstance.
The pain is needed in your life.
When you deny the negative emotions in your life, you’re actually denying the good feeling emotions at the same time. If you want to feel happy, you have to feel sad so that you can mark the level of joy against the pain that you had before. Yes, pain in your life sucks but when you look at it as a necessity to have a wonderful life, I’d be happy to go through any painful experience that I need to go through.
Remember this, discomfort is the currency you use to pay for the life you want.
Allow the pain
When we avoid discomfort and pain, this is where many of the broken coping mechanisms show up in our life. This is where addiction will creep in. This is where indulgent actions start to happen, like overeating or binge watching Netflix. We often associate food with pleasure when in reality, it is nothing more than fuel. And this is the reason why so many of us men wind up being overweight. This is because we avoid the pain and discomfort that we need to experience to have the life that we want. So instead of resisting the pain, resisting the anxiety, resisting the unknown, what if you allowed it to happen and you just experienced the anxiety of uncertainty for what it is, a vibration that is felt throughout your body.
The pleasure will follow.
The interesting part that so many of us don’t realize is that when we allow the pain to just happen. We don’t have to welcome pain into our life, but we have to allow it when it happens. We have more fulfillment. We have more enjoyment out of life. Simply because we chose to allow it, except for Painful circumstances as they show up. When you allow the embarrassment to happen, that embarrassment eventually turns into laughter. When we allow for the anxiety to happen, we find out that we have more friends in common. When we allow the sadness to follow, we end up having closer friends around us. When we allow the pain that we are resisting, we have more pleasure come in its place.
Now, with all things, there are the extremes that we have to keep in mind. And if you’re struggling with emotional depression, and such, you may need to have help with a therapist to teach you how to accept the painful past in your life. And I always encourage a therapist to seek one out. If you are struggling to get past an obstacle in your life, that is keeping you from your goals. If you’re wanting to get past the thoughts that are keeping you from having a great relationship, then reach out and see what it’s like to be coached by me.
