Once I move into a better house
and get that promotion at work, I will be happy.
Sound familiar? If it does you
are not alone. Despite the privilege of life in the UK and in many other
countries across the world a huge proportion of us report feeling like our life
is missing something. The positive
psychologist David Myers suggests in this book, The American Paradox, that “our
becoming much better off over the last four decades has not been accompanied by
one iota of increased subjective wellbeing”.
This is a puzzle. In the
developed world our lives are much more comfortable, we are better off
financially, we have access to better health care, we can travel to anywhere in
the world and we have the technology to make our lives much easier. And yet we often feel a high level of
dissatisfaction.
Why does this happen?
So much of our life is focused on
trying to reach our goals - getting good exam results, getting in to a good
university, gaining a qualification, buying a house – and so the list
continues. But actually, once we get “there”, wherever “there” is, we are not
necessarily as happy as we thought we would be.
Lauri Santos, Professor of
Psychology at Yale, suggests the problem has got to do with our minds! She proposes
that alongside all the amazing wonderful aspects of our brains there are a
number of “glitches” that make it really difficult for us to be content with
what we have.
The “glitch” we are interested in
for the purposes of this blog is something called hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is essentially our mind’s predilection
to come back to our baseline of happiness regardless of what positive or
negative thing we have experienced. To
put this in to context, say we work really hard to save up for something
special – a new bike, a great pair of boots, a new tent –. We go to the shop to choose the new tent; we
have done extensive research and feel really confident about our choice. We purchase the new tent and experience this
amazing feeling of euphoria; we have been waiting a long time for this
particular tent. We go home, put the tent up in the garden and continue to bask
in the lovely endorphins that the new tent has generated for us. You might even be lucky enough to have this
feeling for a few days or weeks but what happens is that over time we get used
to the new tent and we stop noticing it.
It becomes just another piece of equipment that sits in the garage
alongside all the other tent equipment. And
this happens with almost everything. We
work super hard to get that promotion at work, we put in the extra hours, we go
the extra mile. We eventually get our
dream promotion and again like the new tent we experience this moment of
euphoria but also like the tent once we are 6 months into the job most of us
are no longer jumping out of bed with excitement about our new role. Even the people in our lives are not safe
from the adaptation process. I am sure
most of you can remember the heady excitement of meeting your current partner
for the first time, it can feel almost magical…... but I wonder how many of you
wake up each morning full of excitement when you see the person sleeping next
to you. Sadly, for most of us our brain
has adapted to them and while we get to experience a deeper sense of connection,
they no longer elicit the same exciting response regardless of how fabulous we
think they are.
So why does this happen, it
happens because our minds adapt to almost everything and it is because of this
adaptation that we can’t don’t hold on to those really good feelings. I
remember the first blog I published on my website; I was so excited I kept
checking my website to see if it was still there. Now I publish a new blog and although I feel
a nice sense of achievement, I no longer feel an intense level of
excitement. This is because my brain has
adapted and because of this adaptation my brain is now looking around for the
next best thing.
When we get dissatisfied or bored
with the stuff we have, our instinct is often to get more stuff. A newer car, a
better job, a better house….and this creates the hedonic treadmill. We adapt to the newer car, the better job, the
bigger house and we want an even bigger car, an even better house…. you get the
picture. We start living on the hedonic treadmill,
trying to outrun our brains adaptation.
So, what can we do about this
brain “glitch”?
Unfortunately, we are not able to
fix the glitch but we can manage it a little bit better. Lauri Santos has come
up with some lovely practical ways of doing this.
1. Invest
in experiences that are difficult to adapt too
When we invest
in a physical object like a car or a new pair of shoes they generally hang
around for a long time. And it this “hanging
around” that allows our brain to move from excitement into adaption. Experiences on the other hand are much more
fleeting, spending a week in the sun, getting a 30 minutes massage, having a
swim in the ocean – they are just not around for long enough for our brains to
adapt to them.
2. Practice
gratitude for what you have
As most of you
will know gratitude is associated with higher levels of wellbeing. Our brains
have what psychologists call a negativity bias -this means that our brains are
really good at noticing and remembering the tough stuff – the presentation that
didn’t go so well, the person who was rude in the supermarket – but not so good
at noticing and remembering the positive things – the lovely woman who held the
door open for us or the delicious sandwich we had for lunch. Practising gratitude helps us to redress this
balance. The research around this is powerful – by just
jotting down three things you are grateful for each day for 21 days you not
only start to report higher levels of happiness but you also start to change
the wiring in your brain. And this
change in wiring will make it much more likely that you will continue to spot
the good things in the future. These don’t have to be big things; it can be
the lovely cup of coffee you had this morning or the parking space you found
when you were running late. All of these
things happen every day but generally we don’t pay them any attention,
partially because our brain is not so good at noticing them but also because
our brain has gotten used to them.
3. Imagine
losing everything
This probably sounds
strange but another way to hot wire our gratitude and dodge the adaptation
glitch is to imagine you have lost what’s important to you. This might be your partner, the job that you
absolutely love or the lovely garden that came with your house. By taking the time to imagine it all gone you
experience a new appreciation for its presence.
4. Take
a break
Alternatively,
you can take a break from the things you love doing, eating chocolate, going
out for dinner, buying new clothes. Remember when we do something all the time
the brain adapts, by taking a break you interrupt this process and increase
your level of appreciation. One fun
study even showed more enjoyment for your favourite TV show when it was
interrupted by commercial breaks!
Finally
Part of the reason
that we stop experiencing positive feeling is because we literally stop paying
attention. By stopping and noticing what
it is that we value we are taking the first small step off the hedonic
treadmill and into our already abundant life, which is just waiting to be
rediscovered.
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