Avoiding emotional pain, no matter what
It’s normal to want to avoid emotional pain and reduce your suffering but avoiding it altogether will prevent you from learning from your experience, healing and growing into a better, happier person.
Wanting to avoid pain by all means will also prevent you from feeling real pleasure, according to Lickerman and ElDifrawi. “Further, pain stimulates growth and is often necessary for us to break through obstacles that are making us unhappy.”
So, don’t run from it, fight it and come out as a winner!
Turning pleasure into a priority over all else
Speaking of pleasure, it might be tempting to focus solely on the pleasures of life, thinking that’s what will make you happy. For a while, maybe it will, but in the long run, you’re only going to sabotage your own happiness.
Why? “While it’s obvious why so many of us believe pleasure, in general, does engender happiness, it’s also obvious that a life devoted to the unbridled pursuit of pleasure is decidedly unhappy,” say Lickerman and ElDifrawi.
