You have goals in business, fitness, and life, but distractions keep getting in the way.
The easy, “cheap” pleasures – like scrolling through LinkedIn, checking your email for the 178th time in an hour, or binge-watching Orange is the New Black – feel great in the moment but often leave us feeling unproductive and guilty. More importantly, they keep us from completing the tasks that actually matter.
These distractions are habits, sometimes even addictions, that we’ve developed over time. But while they provide short-term comfort, they often work against us when trying to focus on our priorities.
They result from our natural desire to look for pleasure and avoid pain. But what if the real key to success isn’t in avoiding pain, but in embracing it?
The Power of Doing Hard Things: Lessons from Dopamine Nation This post explores one of the key insights from the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke, an American psychiatrist, author, and professor specializing in addiction medicine.
In today’s world, instant gratification is everywhere—social media, entertainment, fast food, and endless digital notifications. We are bombarded by distractions that pull us away from our goals.
I should have counted how many times I got distracted while writing this article—checking emails, WhatsApp messages, or the latest book release by Gretchen Rubin (I need to get that one!).
I’m not perfect, and like you, I’m navigating a world of distractions while experimenting with productivity strategies and habits that actually support my goals. That’s why I found this book so useful – it explains how our brains process pleasure and pain, their relationship, and how we can use this knowledge to be more productive and build habits that genuinely serve us.
I’m here to help, book a free consultation The Neuroscience of Pleasure and Pain: A Subtle Balance Understanding the connection between pleasure and pain is crucial for long-term success. When we give into quick pleasures, our brain’s self-regulating mechanisms create an automatic response leading to a sense of guilt or dissatisfaction. This is why cheap pleasures keeps us stuck in a loop of temporary satisfaction followed by regret.
Related episode: 43. No More Excuses! How to Start Taking Action Today (Listen here )
Lembke explains that pleasure and pain are processed in the same location of our brain and exist on the same balance scale. When the balance tips too far toward pleasure, an internal mechanism activates to restore the balance. The more pleasure we experience, the greater will be the push to counteract it with pain.
She illustrates this with the analogy of gremlins hopping onto the pain side of the scale to counteract excessive pleasure. A little indulgence brings a few gremlins. A major binge brings an army. And as the saying goes, what goes up, must come down .
Think of binge-watching Netflix, only to feel guilty about skipping your workout or neglecting your business project. Or the pleasure of eating cake, followed by regret for not choosing a healthier option.
This mechanism applies not just to addictive behaviors but to all sources of instant gratification and explains why we feel so bad when we give in to short-term pleasures.
Living in a World of Cheap Pleasures (and the Pain That Follows) We live in an age of abundance – cheap, instant pleasures are available everywhere. In the past, obtaining pleasure required effort. Now all it requires is a quick click, a swipe of a card, and gratification is ours with no effort at all.
As Lembke states, “Science teaches us that every pleasure exacts a price, and the pain that follows is longer lasting and more intense than the pleasure that gave rise to it.”
So, what can we do knowing this?
Pressing on the Pain Side: Why Embracing Discomfort Leads to Lasting Pleasure Here’s the surprising twist: intentionally choosing discomfort—by doing hard things—can actually lead to more lasting pleasure.
Are you up for the challenge of actively seeking discomfort? Get inspired by this conversation: 35. Seek Discomfort and Achieve Your Dreams, even with ADHD (Listen here )
When we take on difficult tasks, whether it’s exercising, working on a challenging project, or making a tough decision, we activate the effort-reward pathway . Unlike instant gratification, which provides fleeting pleasure, hard work triggers dopamine after the effort, leading to a deeper, more fulfilling sense of accomplishment. This was the natural way how our brains were used to obtain dopamine, before pleasures became so easily accessible.
The Power of Doing Hard Things Have you ever handled a tough project or pushed through a workout when you didn’t feel like it? It feels good, the sense of progress, accomplishment or pride – this is what really drives long-term success.
When we do hard things, the dopamine we experience is tied to real achievement, making it far more fulfilling.
Lean into discomfort, and you’ll discover the power doing hard things and its impact on your success. Did you ever go for that run even when you didn’t feel like it? Jump into a cold shower? Finally tackle that daunting task?
Now, imagine making intentional choices to embrace the hard things in life, knowing they will not only bring satisfaction but also help you achieve the goals that matter to you.
Once you start choosing the hard path, it gets easier. However this is a fine balance and we need to find the just right amount of discomfort, because too much pain can lead to compulsive, destructive overconsumption (after all, we can get addicted to anything!).
If you’re after long-term success and progress towards your goals, the answer is not in avoiding discomfort, but training yourself to do the hard things.
The Secret to Sustainable Success The real key to success isn’t avoiding discomfort or chasing easy pleasures. It’s about embracing challenges. By intentionally choosing the harder path—whether in fitness, business, or personal growth—you build resilience, rewire your brain for success, and unlock deeper, more lasting rewards.
So, the next time you’re tempted by an easy distraction or cheap pleasure remember that it’s the hard road that leads to more sustainable pleasure and greater achievement.
Lean into discomfort, and you’ll discover the power doing hard things and its impact on your success.
Disclaimer: in this blog post, I’m sharing one of my key insights from the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke, but keep in mind that this is my interpretation and this is not meant to be a comprehensive book review. While I do my best to stay true to the author’s ideas, there might be some inaccuracies or my own thoughts mixed in. If something interests you, I always recommend checking out the book yourself!
