I was flipping through Morgan Housel’s new book The Psychology of Money and an anecdote caught my eye.
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.”
There’s an important lesson in there which might seem obvious but does not come intuitively to us.
As humans, we are wired to be perenially dissatisfied. No matter what or how much we accomplish and accumulate, our minds get habituated to the new setting and expectations get quickly readjusted.
This tendency of humans to return to a baseline level of happiness (or life-satisfaction) despite major recent positive or negative events is called Hedonic Adaptation. For instance, lottery winners tend to return to their original level of happiness after the novelty of win has worn off.
Interestingly, hedonic adaptation is “less complete” and slow when it comes to negative experiences. But when it comes to positive experiences, the adaptation is quite efficient and quick. Perhaps due to our inherent negativity bias.
Relevant Plug: The Negativity Bias — Your Brain Loves Negativity
The evolutionary explanation for hedonic adaptation goes something like this. Any peaceful humans who felt content and lived in harmony died ages ago. They were killed or outbred by the ones who were cunning, greedy, and eternally discontent. And you are their progeny.
We are programmed to seek status and accumulate stuff because that kind of behavior increased the likelihood of mating and survival back in the day.
Now we make decisions assuming that more income, comfort and achievements will make us happier, failing to recognize that hedonic adaptation (and social comparison) will come into play, changing our aspirations and leaving us feeling no happier than before.
We are left chasing the dangling carrot of external achievement, sometimes even compromising our health and relationships in the process.
Look at modern society. We are significantly better off than previous generations in almost every aspect. And yet, if the surveys are to be believed (it’s quite obvious), we are no happier than before.
Some guy named Jean-Jacques Rousseau put it quite eloquently:
“Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet…”
This is not to say that setting goals or material pursuits are pointless. I believe wealth is a worthy goal. And everyone should strive for it because it enables freedom, which is priceless.
But lifestyle upgrades won’t have much of an impact on the quality of your life.
So factor in hedonic adaptation when you’re setting your priorities or making major life decisions. Keep in mind that what you want isn’t always what will make you the happiest. And know what would be enough.
All that being said, here are a few ideas to resist hedonic adaptation:
Gratitude
Gratitude is the perfect antidote to hedonic adaptation.
As our minds adapt to new experiences, we start taking things for granted. Luxuries become necessities. Expressing gratitude is an easy way to resist this process.
Take time out to think of the time when you wanted what you now have. The goal should be to make it a habit — maybe in form of gratitude journaling or simply counting the things you are grateful for before you go to sleep. Because when we do something repetitively, it becomes second nature.
Relevant Plug: Building Habits — Are you taking it seriously enough?
Hedonic Resets
How does that saying go? About how we never realize the value of something until it’s gone.
Maybe we should purposely lose things from time to time. By strategically depriving ourselves of things we take for granted, we can get more value out of them.
Identify a “pleasure” you have become habituated to and cut it out temporarily. When you get back to it, you’ll have a new-found appreciation for it. Kind of like the joy you feel when you find money in the pocket of an old pair of jeans.
Do this for all your pleasures periodically. When you rotate through your hedonic activities this way, you also enable variety, which counters the adaptation process.
Be present
Have you noticed how the first bite of that pizza slice is heaven. But by the third slice, our attention wanders away. Hedonic adaptation at a micro level.
Being present teaches us to properly savor positive experiences. And elevates our hedonic set point. It’s perhaps the simplest way to get more out of your life without needing anything else to change.
Not easy though, it’s a skill to be honed. That’s why a daily meditation practice is important (for your happiness).
Relevant Plug: Why Meditate? — How Meditation Alters Your Brain
Play “Infinite Games”
There are two ways to play the game of life — Finite and Infinite games. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
The idea is to find things you can enjoy without an end goal in mind. Like dancing, listening to music, creating art, or talking to a friend. Where you can lose yourself. Such activities are immune to the effects of hedonic adaptation. On the contrary, the more we engage in these activities, the more we enjoy them and the more fulfilled we feel.
You can adopt the same philosophy for your career and relationships.
Have a good game.
Thank you for reading. Most of the content on this website has emerged from conversations with readers like you.
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