Hey there, Shankar here. I'm crisscrossing the country for a series of live shows this summer.

I'll be sharing seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain. These ideas have made my

life better. I think they'll do the same for you. Stops on what I'm calling the perceptions tour include

Clearwater and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, Portland and Denver, Minneapolis and Chicago, Austin and Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Phoenix, and more.

To see if I'm coming to a city near you, please visit hiddenbrain.org slash tour.

If you've heard my voice for years, it's going to be fun to come see me in person.

Again, that's hiddenbrain.org slash t-o-U-R.

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Human beings are wired to seek pleasure.

We all want lives filled with joy, comfort and ease. At the same time, many of us are also curious about some forms of discomfort.

We go on scary roller coaster rides, eat food so spicy it makes us cry, And we shriek in terror as we watch horror movies.

Last week on the show, in the first part of a mini-series, we explored the attraction of some

kinds of suffering. We do like pleasure, but we also like meaning, and we like struggle. We want to be moral.

And all of that makes our minds a lot more interesting than if we were simply seek out pleasure.

If you miss that story, you can find it in this podcast feed. It's titled, Ouch, that feels great.

Today on the show, we explore one specific dimension of the pain, pleasure continuum.

Doing hard things is hard, learning to play a musical instrument, caring for a sick child,

trying to run a marathon.

These things involve frustration, pain and disappointment. Unsurprisingly,

if given the choice, many of us say, no thanks. Why that might be a mistake? This week,

on Hidden Brain.

Have you seen those ads for vacations that tell you that all you need to do is show up?

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