Hedonic Adaptation: Why good things must come to an end
TL/DR: Hedonic adaptation is the process of us getting quickly acclimated to nice things in our lives, so the “high” of the nice thing we just bought, etc. wears off quickly. Basically, your nice car stops feeling so nice, once you normalize to it. The key to finding happiness is to prevent, thwart, or otherwise override hedonic adaptation.
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It can be said that people are less happy nowadays than ever before, and yet the level of general wealth/amenities has increased. (read: running water, electricity, etc.) It seems like, with such luxuries, we should all be jumping for joy. But we’re not. While there are several layers to this, for the sake of brevity, we’ll only explore hedonic adaptation in this post.
As you saw from the title and the summary, hedonic adaptation is one factor keeping us from feeling our happiest. While we may feel excited about and excited by something at the beginning, that excitement fades over time. On one hand it’s great that we normalize to experiences and objects, because we’d be on constant high alert if everything felt new all the time. That said, we’re always looking for the next new thing to give us that high.
In walks, shopping addictions, rich people malaise, and always looking ahead to the future. While shopping addictions can have many different roots, one of them is a sense of accomplishment, excitement, completion, or simply thrill (read: dopamine hit) when you purchase something. This is because new things feel new and exciting. But we adjust to that excitement really quickly, leading us to buy ever more items to remind ourselves that we can, in fact, feel excitement. After spending so many months indoors, I don’t know about you, but in my already paired down apartment, I just want to get rid of all the things. But fear not, there are other ways to achieve that sense of excitement.
Gratitude. Whether it’s journaling, or simply remarking to yourself how grateful you are about xyz, gratitude is like a reset button on hedonic adaptation. It helps us bring fresh eyes to an old situation or object, allowing us to appreciate it as though it were new again. It’s like the Super Mario blocks that give you an extra coin each time you come back, much to your delight. Ironically though, there’s a sweet spot with gratitude. Overdo it and you start to lessen the intensity and effect. For many people, this looks like once a week having a moment or ritual related to gratitude.
Savoring. My favorite! Savoring, in case you haven’t heard me talk about it yet, is the act of prolonging the enjoyment of a moment by checking in with your 5 senses. What are you seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, or hearing? Bask in the ease of it. The more you savor, the more you tune your brain into finding moments to savor as well. Unlike gratitude, you can’t really overdo savoring. It’s just about acknowledging enjoyment in the moment, so it can’t really be forced. So keep your eyes peeled today for moments that feel easy, wonderful, fun, or otherwise pleasant and really bask in it.
Gratitude and savoring are both mindfulness techniques, and by that, they are bringing a quality of attention to the present moment. We often lose our happiness by craning our necks into the future or by replaying old moments on repeat like a slideshow. These pull us out of the moment and in turn out of any positive feelings or emotions we might be experiencing. In fact, we get so habituated to staying in the past and living in the future that we utterly forget this moment.
This moment is the only certain moment, and each moment has the potential for happiness. It’s up to us not to blow right past it. So find your groove with gratitude and tune into savoring every day. You just might find more moments of happiness.