Your behavior is driven more by emotions, than by logic. What you do is based more on what you feel like doing rather than what you think you should do.



Logically, you know that you should always take action and follow through on the plans that you have set, am I right? But, emotionally you may be held back by feelings lethargy, feelings of fear.

Logically you know you should not smoke because it is expensive and it kills you but emotionally, you still do it because of the emotions of relaxation or sense of control smoking gives you.

More specifically, there are two kinds of emotions that drive us all the time. They are positive emotions and negative emotions. Whatever you are driven to do, you do because you want to move towards positive emotions like happiness, security, power, success and freedom.

At the same time, you are also driven to do things because you are simultaneously moving away from negative emotions of fear, depression, physical pain, loss or insecurity.

Here's an experience I remembered back in school when I was studying about amoebas. Amoebas are single cell organisms. When you put food in front of the amoeba, it starts to move towards it.

When you place heat next to it, it moves away from it. And at the same time if you were to put food on one side and heat on the other side, guess what will happen? The organism will move even faster in the direction of the food and away from the heat. This sounds very obvious.

But what you must realize is that you behave exactly the way amoeba behaves. In fact, all of us do. You have to be aware, "What is the food?" and "What is the heat that drives you constantly?"

Think about all the decisions that people make constantly. Are they really logically driven? Or are they more emotionally driven? I mean, why do people get married? Are you married?

If you are, ask yourself what really drove you emotionally to get married. On one hand people get married because they think getting married would mean moving towards positive emotions like love, happiness, companionship and comfort.

Simultaneously, we also get married because we think it will move us away from certain negative emotions, like loneliness, depression, sometimes even humiliation, rejection, boredom and insecurity.

At the same time, why are there people who swear against marriages, who refuse to get married?

It is because they have attached very different emotions to what getting married means. They stay single because they think staying single would move them towards positive emotions like freedom, happiness and flexibility.

They avoid marriage because they think that by avoiding marriage they are moving away from a fear of loss, loss of freedom, depression or even rejection.

Now, do you think all of us want the same kind of positive emotions and do all of us want to avoid the same painful emotions?

They answer is yes.

All of us want positive emotions like joy, happiness, success, achievement, pleasure. In other words, we value our emotions very differently. At the same time we all want to move away from painful emotions like fear, guilt, depression, physical pain but all of us put very different levels of importance on each of these emotions.

Thus, it is mainly emotions which are the driving force behind the actions we take in our lives.