Image Credit Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum:

REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (LEYDEN, 1606 - 1669, AMSTERDAM)

CHRIST IN THE STORM ON THE SEA OF GALILEE, 1633

Every single human suffers in their life, it’s part of being a human. We make most of our decisions to avoid suffering. For example we swallow a pain killer to avoid pain and as such we become conditioned to swallow painkillers for the rest of our lives.

In the U.K. the sales value of over the counter pain killer drugs was 658 million* pounds in 2020.

*Source statista.com

Our conditioned response to pain is an expensive habit and a profitable one too. It doesn’t have to be like this, I haven’t swallowed an over the counter drug since 2003 and generally don’t suffer with pain.

But I’m not trying to convince you to stop swallowing pain killers, it’s merely an example of the consequences of our conditioned response to pain and therefore our direction of travel, i.e. “aversion”.

Aversion is I believe our biggest conditioned response in life and therefore it determines our life choices, our fears and our habits.

There are millions of people trained to help people overcome their fears whether in business or in life. They are called coaches.

If we became more conscious of our conditioned responses and our habits and learned how to transform them we wouldn’t need coaches, psychiatrists or pills.