What drives you? Pleasure or pain?

Pleasure or pain, what drives you?

At a personal development course many years ago, the facilitator said something that has stayed with me ever since. He suggested that we humans often relate to life through two fundamental driving forces: pleasure or pain. Wanting to or having to.

Not as an absolute truth, but as a perspective. A way of understanding why, in some contexts, we feel energy, meaning, and a desire to grow, while in others we experience resistance, fatigue, and resignation.

The idea was that in much of what we do, there is a dominant driving force. We go to work because it feels meaningful, stimulating, and developmental, or because we have to and see no real alternatives. We remain in relationships that contribute to joy and growth, or because we have become stuck in familiar patterns and are afraid of change. When it comes to the person we share our lives with, perhaps it is enough that 80 percent is pleasure and 20 percent is pain. We exercise for the joy of connecting with our bodies and ourselves, or because we feel that we should.

Even when pleasure is the underlying driving force, there are periods that are heavy. Days when training feels sluggish, periods when work is demanding, or downturns in relationships. The difference, the facilitator argued, is that when pleasure is present at the core, these valleys tend to be temporary. When pain is the dominant driving force, the first or second setback is often enough for us to give up. The fact that gyms across Sweden are full in January and significantly emptier in February says something about this.

An important point in the course was that this driving force is largely learned. Early on, we learn whether life is to be approached with pleasure or pain as the foundation. To illustrate this, the facilitator used two examples of learning, one based on punishment and one based on reward.

In the first example, fleas were placed in a box with a glass ceiling that was gradually lowered. Each time a flea jumped, it hit the ceiling and received a pain signal. After a while, the flea stopped jumping, even when the ceiling was removed. The limitation had been learned.

In the second example, dolphins were trained. A rope was placed in the water, and every time a dolphin swam over the rope, it was rewarded with a fish. The rope was gradually raised until the dolphin eventually jumped over it in the air, on command.

Two completely different ways of learning, which at the same time create very different relationships to effort, development, and movement. If we are rewarded, we tend to be driven more by pleasure. If we are punished, we tend to be driven more by pain.

The same applies to organizations and groups. Cultures develop and are maintained by rewarding certain behaviors and punishing others. Sometimes this happens through formal systems, goals, and follow-up processes. More often, it happens subtly, through comments, looks, silence, appreciation, or the absence of feedback.

Any leader who has tried to drive change in a culture characterized by resistance knows how powerful these mechanisms are. When developmental behaviors are punished, openly or quietly, people quickly learn to adapt. Caution is rewarded, initiative is dampened, and development comes to a halt.

If you want to develop and change, you therefore need to start by identifying which behaviors are actually acceptable and unacceptable in your organization. Not what is written in policy documents or value statements, but what is, in practice, rewarded and punished in everyday life.

This also leads directly to the role of the leader. As a leader, you need to reflect on how you lead. Which behaviors do you acknowledge? How do you respond to initiatives that are not entirely successful? How do you react when someone takes responsibility beyond what is familiar? What mandate do employees have to develop their roles based on their competence? And what drives you?

In well-functioning workplaces, goals, expectations, roles, mandates, values, and demands are sufficiently clear to create space for responsibility and development within defined boundaries. That is where pleasure is given the opportunity to become the driving force.

2026 can be the year when we together create workplaces where leaders and employees are driven to a greater extent by pleasure, willingness, and engagement. Not as a matter of comfort, but as a prerequisite for development, sustainability, and real value creation.

So the question is not whether your culture rewards and punishes, but how.
Which behaviors do you promote, consciously or unconsciously, pleasure or pain?

An even more important question is the one about you. What drives you, and in which contexts? Pleasure or pain? Wanting to or having to?