When a fat man puts another cream cake in his mouth, he feels like the pain of discipline is greater than the pain of regret. But 2-3 months later, it's the opposite.

That's the danger of the power of NOW.. right now, the pain of regret is a long way off and to some extent, irrelevant. 

The key to all this is Vision, Inspiration and Purpose (VIP) because while you have a vision, and an inspiration and a purpose greater than yourself, the pain of regret is already with you right now, in this moment and it's far higher than the pain of discipline. 

Put it another way. If I have my vision in all seven areas of life and those visions are inspiring, and I have a purpose greater than myself, then forgoing something in the short term causes me some pain but the pleasure is automatically there for the long term. Pleasure and pain, balancing each other, as they must in life.

The shorter a person's vision becomes the more likely this balance will become confused and distorted. Some people, I've met during 2011, had visions that were about 10 minutes from now. They lived hand to mouth literally.

Desperation is simply short vision. If I am desperate then the next 10 minutes is even too long to forgo pleasure, I'll take it and to hell with the consequences. So, you can see that anything that gives us a sense of VIP makes the routines and disciplines of healthy living, easier.

Don't exercise... yeah, that's right, don't exercise.. because exercise by its inference is short term gratification. Instead, train. Yeah, train. Train for a future event. Train for it, by doing exercises, but train for something.

Now, imagine what happens when you train for an event and that event comes and goes, what now? If you continue to train but with no event you drop down to exercises and the pain of discipline becomes harder than the pain of perceived regret. You'll slack off because pain and pleasure dictate your motivations.

This is a common problem for people in relationships. When they first meet they train for the long term event of being together and building a life and family, but, that event comes and then it's just exercise and the pain of regret goes away and discipline becomes harder and with hardness in discipline comes compromise and disrespect in relationships.

So, VIP needs maintenance and you can tell desperate groups, teams and families because they think ten minutes ahead for pleasure versus pain balance rather than twelve months or twelve years.  Last year I did over 1,000 version quest VIP consults with people and when it came to corporate executives most had none, wanted none, and were happy to have none because they had found comfortable jobs that took care of the long term and they just worried about the next ten minutes of pleasure and pain.

So, ultimately spirituality isn't about being nice. That's another topic. Spirituality is VIP ... your long term vision, being in a healthy pleasure-pain balance, being inspired by your gift of today and keeping your ego in perspective by holding a purpose for your life greater than your "Self." Doesn't get much simpler than that... does it?

If you need help with your VIP give me a call, and if your team, family or group doesn't have a VIP you better panic because without VIP short term pleasure overwhelms long term pain and people become self obsessed. Then, I promise, you'll have no idea what they are going to do next, especially when your back is turned.