Psychology 101: My goals for the new year - Goal # 1: seek and pursue lasting rewards in my daily life …

 

Series: My goals for the year 2022

** By Hector Williams Zorrilla

Goal # 1: seek and pursue for my daily living lasting rewards vs. temporary desires and pleasures

Temporary pleasures and desires create cravings in areas of the brain that are transmitted throughout the body. These cravings installed in the human body can never be fully satisfied because they cause and develop addictions.

Once people become addicted, their cravings take control and direction of their desires, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors with the purpose and goal of increasing pleasure and avoiding pain.

Therefore, a person cannot fulfill his most longed for goals in life by following the paths of temporary cravings, desires, and pleasures. The pleasure of cravings can never be fully satisfied, because by nature it becomes addictive. And once addictions take over, the pursuit of pleasure and desire becomes the only goal the addictive people want to achieve.

The search for lasting rewards takes a different path. Lasting rewards produce non-addictive pleasure.

For example, a lot of money is made by practicing the profession that you love and exercise with passion, but the lasting reward comes from the pursuit of the profession you love, not from the money that the profession produces.

Another example: social life is made to share healthily with family, friends and professional colleagues, not to satisfy temporary desires and pleasures (sexual activities and addictive drinks, etc.).

Any human activity has the potential to become addictive if it finds the right human terrain. Some examples of those human activities that could become addictive are: money, sexuality, drinks with alcohol content, food, some medicines, technologies, among others.

But to ensure the fulfillment of lasting goals in life, studies and research clearly indicate the following.

People who want to achieve lasting and meaningful goals in their lives have to follow the paths of seeking and practicing lasting rewards. These are the ones that ultimately lead the way to lasting and stable states of happiness and personal, family, and social satisfaction.

On the other hand, no path that in its process and its end leads people to addictive behaviors could lead to lasting rewards. These two paths of life are antagonistic and they have inherently different processes and endings in life.

* The author is a psychologist, university professor and writer