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EXCERPT

Chapter 3

It’s a slap in the face August morning. The kind that wakes you up in a hurry. Cold air, punching wind, constantly blurring eyes. Your hands so cold you find yourself wondering if you woke up in the wrong month. There’s been no rain, but you’d never guess this from the surroundings. Great gobs of dew bend grasses low to the ground, and water flows in rivers from tree branches to the back of your neck. Out on the lake wisps of steam rise up to form fog dancers, ghostly, silent, moving rhythmically to the beat of wind-thumped waves crashing against the shore. An hour of walking along the northern cleft of the river, followed by a long climb through the high fields, has left me standing foot-wet and winded, so I pause for a moment to enjoy the fog and the wind and the waves. I’m anxious though, and as my breath returns, I find myself looking for the building I know is huddled amidst the trees.

There it is! The clouds have broken momentarily, and the sunbeams ripple lightly across the semi-exposed walls, turning logs a golden ochre, the windows bright, silver and mysteriously opaque. Looking at it thus, strangely coloured by the sun when all else is grey, I see the cabin as if I’d come upon it for the first time. All the varied pleasures that go hand in hand with the place swell up and leave me feeling as if this is where I’m supposed to be. The tiredness and the cold melt away. There’s a renewed spring to my step. Determination courses through my veins. I’m recharged, motivated and ready for anything.

And it’s nothing but a dream! Can you believe it? A collection of thoughts somehow has the emotional power to get me moving and keep me moving. These thoughts of what I might someday achieve work together to form a giant hand which pushes me inexorably forward.

You need a dream like this. Why? Plain and simply put, you’ll endure anything if you believe it will provide greater benefits for you in the long run.

You see, even if you work toward a life that’s fun, that’s jam-packed with experiences you enjoy, you’re still going to have some unpleasant experiences. Building joyful moments into your daily routine will allow you to counter some of these less pleasing events. A motivating dream will also help.

Think about it...You act for only two reasons: To avoid pain and to gain pleasure. This seems to be a fundamental survival trait, one so instinctive I suspect it’s hard-wired right into our nervous system, a primitive force regulating the choices people make.

What does the pain/pleasure principle mean in everyday terms? If pain and pleasure govern your behaviour patterns, then everything you do must come down to one simple choice. This one choice, repeated minute after minute all the days of your life, can be illustrated with a simple question: Do I move toward this experience or away from it?

How can you conclude otherwise? Everything you do can be reduced to a choice between embracing or avoiding real and imagined experiences, and it has to happen like this because of the way we’re built. We have that instinctive need I mentioned - that survival trait - which moves us away from pain or danger and toward pleasure or safety. Sure, it’s quite possible for us to engage in painful or dangerous behaviours, but only if we’ve managed to somehow convince ourselves that these behaviours will lead to less pain or more pleasure in the long run. We can talk ourselves into doing anything if we can see something rewarding in it. And there you have all the justification you’ll ever need for taking the time to get clear on what you want and why you want it; there’s the reason for having a motivating dream like the one I shared with you.

We can get ourselves to do anything - provided we can envision the reward.