Page 38 - Hard Goals

Heartfelt 29

This seems simple enough. But here’s the twist: Shoves and
Tugs are not fl ip sides of the same coin. Just because people are
feeling serious Tugs toward their goals does not mean they don’t
have any Shoves. And before you spend all day trying to fi gure
out how to get more Tugs into your goals, you’ve got to at least
acknowledge (and ideally mitigate) the Shoves.
Let me begin with an analogy that’s a little “out there,” but
it might help clarify this issue. Much like Shoves and Tugs are
not opposites of each other, so too pain and pleasure are not
opposites of each other. The fl ip side of pleasure isn’t pain; it’s
just the absence of pleasure. Similarly, the antithesis of pain isn’t
pleasure; it’s just the absence of pain. If somebody is hitting my
foot with a hammer, that’s pain. And when he or she stops,
that’s not pleasure, that’s just no more pain. If I’m getting the
world’s greatest backrub, that’s pleasure. When it stops, that’s
not pain, that’s just no more pleasure.
Here’s the lesson: If I’m getting a great backrub, it does not
preclude somebody from starting to hit my foot with a hammer.
And if that happens, the pain in my foot will totally detract
from the pleasure I’m getting from the backrub. Here’s a corol-
lary lesson: If you walk past me one day and see that my foot is
being hit with a hammer, you cannot fi x the pain in my foot by
giving me a backrub. The only way to stop the pain in my foot
is to stop the hammer from hitting my foot.
I warned you that this is a weird analogy, but here’s why it’s
relevant. Every day as people pursue their goals, their feet are
being hit by hammers (Shoves). This quite effectively destroys
any intrinsic attachment these folks might feel toward their
goals. Worse yet, many people haven’t consciously analyzed
their Shoves and Tugs, so when they hit those Shoves they’re