How Your Mind Gets in the Way of Happiness
Annoying Features of The Mind
Research and data show that things we think will make us happy, don’t.
None of them makes you any happier yet you expect it will.
Seeking happiness that way is going in the wrong direction.
But we can become happier if we work on the right stuff.
This is part 1 of the Happiness Series where I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned in Dr. Laurie Santos’ Yale course The Science of Well-Being.
Let’s start by diving into theory before we get more practical next week.
Annoying features of the mind
Why do we get our predictions about happiness so wrong?
It’s due to something Dr. Santos calls annoying features of the mind. Our brains are built for survival, not happiness.
Annoying feature #1
The mind’s strongest intuitions are often wrong.
The tables below are the same length yet they appear different.
It’s easy to see our biases in the context of the visual system. This is the way our mind works with all other things too, including happiness.
A lot of the intuitions we're getting are incorrect.
Annoying feature #2
Our minds don’t think in terms of absolutes.
We constantly judge things according to reference points rather than absolutes.
A reference point is a salient (yet often irrelevant) standard against which all subsequent information is compared.
For example 👇
You know what I’m gonna say, right?
These circles are the same size yet when we have the relative points (grey circles around it) we can’t see in terms of absolutes (orange circles only).
The same happens to your happiness.
Because we’re a social species, we end up comparing ourselves to the lives of others.
The reference points we’re exposed to on TV and social media have us feeling like the orange circle on the left.
You’re unable to evaluate your life on its own merit and end up feeling unhappy by comparing it with the impossible standard of life set by the few.
When was the last time you compared yourself to a child in Africa having to walk 5km one-way just to get drinking water?
Consider that there are millions of people in the world right now who would consider their prayers answered if they had the life you lead.
Annoying feature #3
Our minds are built to get used to stuff.
This concept is called the Hedonic Adaptation or Hedonic Treadmill.
No matter how many times you thought that the next desire would make you happy, you returned to a baseline level of happiness after a temporary high.
This adaptation serves a purpose, helping us maintain emotional balance, but it also means that chasing after happiness through material possessions or status often leads to temporary joy rather than long-lasting fulfilment.
There will be another newsletter on how to counteract the hedonic adaptation so I won’t spend more time on this now.
Annoying feature #4
Our mind doesn’t even realise it gets used to stuff.
In other words, we’re not consciously aware the mind has hedonic adaptation built-in.
When you get a bigger salary and want a bigger one you’re not like ‘ Hold on a moment, why do I want a bigger salary if I already have what I said I want?’
This continuous striving is called the impact bias.
It’s a cognitive bias that people display when they overestimate the intensity and durability of affect when making predictions about their emotional responses.
Let’s take the salary example. 6 months ago you dreamed of getting $50k but now it’s just your baseline - $100k looks like a salary that will finally get you there.
Our predictions about becoming happy when we get X are lower than we project they would be.
Our predictions about how unhappy we would be if things don’t go our way (e.g. break up) are lower than we think they would be.
We also think that the duration of feeling happy/unhappy will have a long-term impact but it’s shorter than we predict.
Essentially, no matter whether good or bad things happen, we bounce back to the baseline level of happiness pretty quickly.
Now what?
The mind is never satisfied yet it keeps telling you that it will be happy in the future if only you seek out [insert anything].
Now that we know our intuitions about happiness are wrong and the mind is not to be trusted, we can learn how to really become happier.
Some of the advice might seem simplistic and some you won’t like. Head here to read Part 2.
♥️ Rima