Life's most important lesson

Donald Trump and Mother Teresa are driven by the exact same force. I can hear you saying, " Are you off your rocker. Tony? They couldn't be more different! " It's absolutely true that their values lie at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they're both driven by pain and pleasure. Their lives have been shaped by what they've learned to get pleasure from, and what they've learned will create pain. The most important lesson we learn in life is what creates pain for us and what creates pleasure. This lesson is different for each of us and, therefore, so are our behaviors.

What's driven Donald Trump throughout his life? He's learned to achieve pleasure by having the largest and most expensive yachts, acquiring the most extravagant buildings, making the shrewdest deals—in short, accumulating the biggest and best toys. What did he learn to link pain to? In interviews he has revealed that his ultimate pain in life is being second-best at anything—he equates it with failure. In fact, his greatest drive to achieve comes from his compulsion to avoid this pain. It's a far more powerful motivator than his desire to gain pleasure. Many competitors have taken great joy in the pain that Trump has experienced from the collapse of much of his economic empire. Rather than judge him—or anyone else, including yourself—it might be more valuable to understand what's driving him and to have some compassion for his obvious pain.

By contrast, look at Mother Teresa. Here's a woman who cares so deeply that when she sees other people in pain, she also suffers. Seeing the injustice of the caste system wounded her. She discovered that when she took action to help these people, their pain disappeared, and so did hers. For Mother Teresa, the ultimate meaning of life can be found in one of the most impoverished sections of Calcutta, the City of Joy, which is swollen past the bursting point with millions of starving and diseased refugees. For her, pleasure might mean wading through knee-deep muck, sewage and filth in order to reach a squalid hut and minister to the infants and children within, their tiny bodies ravaged by cholera and dysentery. She is powerfully driven by the sensation that helping others out of their misery helps alleviate her own pain, that in helping them experience life in a better way—giving them pleasure—she will feel pleasure. She learned that putting yourself on the line for others is the highest good; it gives her a sense that her life has true meaning.

While it may be a stretch for most of us to liken the sublime humility of Mother Teresa to the materialism of Donald Trump, it's critical to remember that these two individuals shaped their destinies based upon what they linked pain and pleasure to. Certainly their backgrounds and environments played a role in their choices, but ultimately they made conscious decisions about what to reward or punish themselves for.