Pleasure and fear are at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. When pleasure is active, survival seems guaranteed and life is sweet. When fear kicks in, we sense the danger of extinction and feel stressed and tense.

In everyday life, we’re continually doing things, often simultaneously, that may provoke us to react with different levels of these two emotions. At any given moment we can find ourselves at certain points on this spectrum, between pleasure and fear. The brain strives to get us as close as possible to the pleasure end, by making us feel like we are scoring points every time we move in that direction. It does this because it is working to increase our chances of survival.

Imagine that you are looking at a cup of tea on my desk. I’m engrossed in my writing and, as I haven’t taken a sip for a while, my current survival score is reducing. Distracted, my hand reaches out for the cup of tea and, even though I was not aware of it at all, my score starts to improve, as I am increasing my chances of pleasure and survival when I take a drink. My brain perceives that my survival score has improved, so it activates the motivation area of my brain to persuade me to continue along this path. As my hand gets closer to the cup, the score increases again. When I drink, the emotion of pleasure is at its peak. The motivation to grab the cup of tea and bring it to my mouth was not something that I was consciously aware of. It was the score my brain gave me, without me being aware of it, that created this motivation to drink.

Most of our daily activities are performed without us being fully aware of them. Neuroscientist Chris Frith describes an experiment in his book Making up the Mind3 that was carried out in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge that proves this clearly. A certain professor, unbeknown to him, was a guinea pig for the experiment. He would stand centre stage during lectures and never step left or right. One day, he was asked to delay his arrival by ten minutes so that members of staff at the university could see to some administrative matters. The organizers of the experiment used this time before the professor arrived to brief the students attending the lecture. Those sitting on the left-hand side of the hall were asked to nod their heads and return the professor’s gaze whenever he turned his attention to them. Some of the students sitting on the right-hand side of the hall were told to yawn instead when the professor looked their way, while others were instructed to look at their watches when he looked at them.

The professor duly arrived and the lecture got underway without him suspecting anything. At the end, the experimenters saw that he was way over on the left side of the stage. When asked if he felt anything was strange, he replied, “Absolutely not.” When he was told what had happened, he responded, “No way, I wasn’t aware of that.”What had happened? Similar to my experience with the cup of tea, it was the subcortex alone that managed the professor’s behaviour. The high score on the pleasure scale that the brain awarded in response to the positive reactions of the students sitting to the left of the stage motivated the professor to move toward them. However, he did this without being aware that he was reacting in this way. That’s because the conscious mind – the cortex – was not involved in the decision to move in that direction. The evolutionary process has not changed the way the brain operates since the time of our earliest ancestors, because the pursuit of pleasure without conscious awareness dominates even in creatures that do not have a cortex. However, unlike them, the ability to think allows us, the owners of a developed cortex, to motivate ourselves with awareness. If I promise my students that the one who scores highest in the end-of-term exam will win a prize, their overall grades will be much higher than usual. The awareness of the pleasure inherent in winning a prize will stimulate the part of the brain responsible for motivation and the students will study harder. Salary increases and bonuses at work have the same effect, with employees knuckling down to their tasks when aware that additional income will lead to increased pleasure.

The understanding that increased motivation stemming from meaningful creativity results in better levels of performance by employees has gained a lot of traction. Employees who attach meaning to their work feel they belong and are valued. This feeling activates the promotion of long-term survival in the cortex (in contrast to the reaction in the subcortex, which is only concerned with immediate survival). These employees will not only be efficient but also creative, show initiative and enjoy a contented life. Many companies have applied these findings by giving employees autonomy and meaningful challenges. The results have a positive effect on the balance sheets and speak for themselves.

I once had the opportunity to talk with a police sergeant who patrols a high-crime area. When he told me about his low salary, the long hours he worked and the inherent dangers involved in his job, I couldn’t help but ask him if he had considered leaving policing for the private security business. “There’s no way I’m leaving the police,” he replied, without thinking twice. “Imagine what will happen here if we all leave one day. One thing’s certain, there’d be plenty of work for my friends in the force, the paramedics and the undertakers.”

Here is proof of the power of meaning to motivate people. In the sergeant’s mind, his work is connected with the long-term survival of the local people, and this motivates him and plays a key role in his decision to stay in the police force.

Another aspect of meaning can be learned from observing creatures that do not have a cortex. Motivation for these animals is based solely on the pursuit of pleasure and the need to escape from threats, and this is reflected in their behaviour. An instructive example is fish that prey on some of the fry they spawn. This sounds terrible to us but, for them, eating the fry spikes the fishes’ subcortical pleasure score, and enough offspring survive to ensure the survival of the species. This does not happen among creatures that have a cortex. They are. motivated by a feeling of purpose to care for offspring until they are no longer helpless. Their offspring are not simply organic matter to be eaten, but their own kith and kin to be nurtured and cared for. The same is true of us humans. 

In addition, we have language, which allows us to articulate the meaningfulness we feel and try to explain the logic of it. For example, new parents caring for their baby day and night will find it tiring, but also be motivated to do it because they know how important it is for their baby to be fed, changed and engaged with for its physical and mental development. Their motivation is not only to keep their baby alive but also their love and sense of purpose, which strengthen their resolve in those difficult times with a new baby. Despite the sleep deprivation, they can still enjoy good health and feelings of wellbeing.

Brain research has proved that people who find meaning in their lives and actions develop a sort of mental immunity that protects them from negative stimuli in everyday life.4

Negative stimuli can take the form of insults, misunderstandings, quarrels and the like. If all these benefits were not enough, a life lived with meaning increases our chances of attaining happiness. Happiness is an elusive concept that can be interpreted in different ways. Philosopher Aristotle understood more than 2,000 years ago that happiness stems from a combination of purpose and pleasure. For example, when my partner told me that our daughter had said “Daddy” for the first time, this news activated the emotion of pleasure in me and, because the deep meaning I attribute to my daughter already exists, a combination was created between the two and the feeling of happiness burst forth. Even such joy is short-lived because the brain quickly adapts to the feeling of happiness and it fades away but there will be other such experiences to come.

Some tips for keeping pleasure and fear in balance

The motivation triangle 

As far as the brain is concerned, purpose is expressed as activity in the frontal area of the cortex. To be motivated by the purpose of a particular goal, we must first activate the relevant area of the cortex. One method that you can use to do this is based on scientific research and is what I shall call a motivation triangle.5

The goal
This is the first element of the motivation triangle, which here can be not snacking after 9pm. To make this goal easier to achieve, we could limit ourselves to keeping to it on weekdays initially. If we use our power of concentration and imagine in detail how those five evenings will look, this will make it clear to the brain that this idea is important to us and so it needs to apply it.

Autonomy 

The second element of the motivation triangle, autonomy, means that we act with complete independence and exclusively control the implementation of the decisions we make. Acknowledging this will strengthen our motivation to stick to our goal. After the first five evenings of managing not to snack after 9pm, this will boost our confidence that we can master this skill.

Skill

This is the final element of the motivation triangle. Successfully completing the first round of five evenings will give us the determination needed for a second cycle of five evenings. The more we repeat this practice, the more we will strengthen the connection in the brain of the idea of not snacking in the evening to the area in the brain relating to purpose. What initially was a challenge will become easier. If we should succumb to occasional temptation, there is no need to panic – it happens. We simply have to stick to the plan again and when the deep meaning of the goal has been created, the brain will implement the idea automatically, without the need for us to trick it into doing so.

This method can work successfully in all areas of life. One of its greatest proponents was Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist, psychotherapist and neurologist from Vienna who survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. In his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl asserts that the people who survived the camps were those who developed deep activity in the neural networks associated with meaning. Detailed planning of how they would live their lives after liberation strengthened their motivation to survive far beyond simply the natural desire to stay alive. What kept Frankl alive was his desire to rewrite and publish his book, which was lost at Auschwitz.