7 Human Emotions of Pain and Pleasure by Anthony Robbins

"Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning you give it. If you don't like the way you're feeling, change the meaning." – Anthony Robbins


What are emotions? Emotions are nothing but feelings or a state of mind where your conscious focus generated a certain mental and physical state. The way we feel is arguably the most important thing in life. No matter what we want whether it be more money, better relationships, more time or a better body, it all comes down to emotions. Huh? Yes! See it is not a better body or more money you are really after but rather the feelings you associate to having more money or a better body. Emotions form the core of our lives and more specifically the 7 human emotions that drive our behaviour.

All the emotions we experience are not only rooted in our own minds, but they are even "created" by us. Some people think that the emotions they experience are entirely out of their control and that emotions are spontaneous reactions to the events of our lives. If we are going to take control of our emotions, especially the 7 human emotions, then we need to understand that avoiding, denying or ignoring emotions will harm you more than actually dealing with them.

There are those that believe that there are 7 human emotions that drive all human behaviour. In reality there are only two human emotions that drive us. These two emotions are Pain and Pleasure. Everything we do in our lives we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our need to gain pleasure. These two categories of emotions contain all of either the positive or the negative of the 7 human emotions. Jeremy Bentham said it best: "Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure...they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it"

The positive spectrum of the 7 human emotions will drive us to pleasure and that is why we pursue them. The negative spectrum of the 7 human emotions will drive us towards pain and that is why we will do anything to avoid it. It is also important to notice that we will do more to avoid painful emotions than we will do to gain pleasurable emotions as this is instinctive to our nature as human beings.

The 7 human emotions of Pain are:

1. Fear
2. Hatred
3. Anger
4. Greed
5. Jealousy
6. Revenge
7. Superstition

These are the emotions we are all trying to avoid as the experience of them will inevitable be a painful emotion.

The 7 human emotions of pleasure are:
1. Love
2. Sex
3. Hope
4. Faith
5. Sympathy
6. Optimism
7. Loyalty


"The secret of success is learning to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that you are in control of your life. If you don't life controls you" - Anthony Robbins.


All emotions serve a purpose and a very important purpose as such. We all want to experience the positive side of the 7 human emotions and often we seek for it in the wrong places. Drugs, alcohol, smoking ex. are all devises we use to get out of pain and into pleasure. They are things we do to instantaneously suppress the negative emotions we may experience. The truth is that suppressing or ignoring an emotion will only amplify it until you deal with it. If we heed and utilize the signals that emotions give us we can change the quality of our lives and experience of life immediately.