While I was looking through the books in the bookstore I stumbled upon a book called Everything is Fucked by Mark Manson. And, although I was in doubt to buy this book because it seemed that it was just another self-help book speaking about similar topics that most of this types of books speak, I ended up taking a leap and purchasing it.
After further read, I was actually pleasantly surprised. The writing style was simple enough to easily understand the the philosophical and psychological topics mentioned, and the comedic touch was something that suited my personality. But, what really caught my mind is the chapter about suffering and pain. There the term Hedonic Threadmill is mention so I thought to further explore this topic.
So, what is it about?
The term Hedonic Threadmill states that whatever happens in your life, the level of well-being will tend to return to its baseline.
Manson also mentions that in a research done 80s and 90s some psychologist asked people how happy are they from 1-10 and what are they doing that causes that feelings.
The results?
Whatever happened the level of well-being soon returned to 7.
Similarly, another research showed that the people who won lottery and people who became paralyzed, after the initial reaction, experience the same degree of happiness.
If you think about it this is something that constantly happens through your life.
Remember how you really wanted that car, and you finally got it, and you we’re super happy, but after a short time the happiness decreased and you were searching for something else. You got a promotion, but shortly you felt the same as before. You found a perfect romantic partner, but after a while you seem to notice more and more the flaws.
Maybe you didn’t get payed. A friend betrayed you. Somebody close to you got ill. You felt crushed. You felt anxious and depressed, but you somehow recovered and, in the end, felt like before.
When I got diagnosed by leukemia it was like the whole world around me crumbled. I and my family felt lost. But after a while (from my perspective it was after around 2 months) we adapted to the situation and that environment became the new normal. It was my new 7. After the clinical treatment I was happy that it was finally over, but soon I found another problems regarding going to school. After I solved those problem, I found others etc…
What all of this point to is that we are adaptive beings and that one of the fundamental aspects of life is this small amount of dissatisfaction. It is this exactly those challenges that gives our lives meaning.
The problem starts when we start to fight against the circumstances that are not under our control, when we chase happiness as the end-goal and when we try to force it. We can then try to increase the happiness, but we will return on the same spot where we started, and end up feeling worse.
What we can do instead is accepting. Accepting the pain. Accepting the ugliness. Accepting the bad things. Accepting the non-happy emotions. In the end, sometimes we have more control over how we view things than what happens to us.
https://positivepsychology.com/hedonic-treadmill/