The Growth of Pain

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It seems to me that people differ in how versatile they are to suffering. I think it's almost this anticipatory fear of pain and suffering, right? At one extreme where someone has a great deal of fear about each unit of suffering, they're going to be really restricted in the actions that they can take. The other extreme where they have no fear of the suffering, you could get almost like a pathological response on the other side. So maybe there's like some kind of balance to be struck there.

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To increase our chances of success (in whatever domain and using definition of success), should we focus on boosting our strengths or shoring up our weaknesses? Are we harsher in our critiques of ourselves than in our critiques of others? What should an ideal inner monologue be like? What are some useful taxonomies of pain? Are there times when irrational, magical, emotionally-driven, and/or delusional types of thinking are useful?

Anna Paley is insatiably curious about how best to live our lives. She is a behavioral scientist and marketing professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She received her PhD from New York University, Stern School of Business in 2017. You can reach her at a.paley@tilburguniversity.edu.

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