Why Not Getting What You Want Is Great
By: Maria Milojković
Tags: Life Lessons, Choices, Mental Health, Psychology, Self Improvement

Why Not Getting What You Want Is Great

Your happiness generator works best after you decide

Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash

“That kid from work bought himself a brand new Mercedes“, my partner told me with a chuckle, “And he already has to take it to a mechanic.“

“He’s young, he doesn’t have a family. He still doesn’t know what he’s doing.“

I was that kid. I’d get a nice paycheck and drag home a new TV or trendy clothes. I finally had the money to do what I wanted, so I’d buy whatever I craved for. It didn’t make me feel better for too long.

You don’t get happier after you fulfill your dreams

You still feel something is missing. And it’s your mind’s fault.

We have a psychological mechanism called hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation. It helps us get used to a new situation and get back to the same level of happiness despite the change. With it, we survive the bad more easily. But the treadmill makes even awesome choices become the new norm.

We also have a prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain no other species has. It helps us make decisions and foresee the future before it happens. Although you can visualize possible outcomes, too much deliberating won’t get you to happiness. Instead, happiness comes to you.

Happiness comes from limitations

A few years ago I would’ve been disgusted with my life. A housewife stuck with kids, who finds joy among plants, the laundry, and a laptop. The thing is, I’ve never been happier. This is human adaptation and self-preservation in practice.

Limited circumstances make you believe you are satisfied and live the best you can. When you can’t change anything, you adapt to the current situation in order to survive. It becomes the new norm that helps you go on without beating yourself up. And you become happier without ever intending to.

Your mind can synthesize happiness

“Synthetic happiness“ is the term I heard from Daniel Gilbert, a social psychologist from Harvard. He claims that you can be happy even with bad events because your mind can generate happiness.

In his TED Talk, he describes an experiment his team did in a hospital with former alcoholics suffering from anterograde amnesia (they can’t make new memories). The doctor would show a set of 6 Claude Monet reproductions and ask a patient to put the paintings in order: from the one he liked the most to the one he liked the least. Then the patient could keep one of the two in the middle. After the patient picked it, the doctor would promise to send it later and leave the room with the whole set.

Half an hour later the doctor would return. The patient wouldn’t remember him. The doctor would take out the set and ask him to place the posters in the order of preference. The patient didn’t remember any of the reproductions including the painting he had chosen to keep.

His order of preference was different this time. The patient liked better the painting he owned although he didn’t remember it was his. He even saw it as more beautiful than 30 minutes ago. And he liked even less the one he didn’t choose. The patient’s aesthetic reaction to the paintings changed even though he couldn’t remember them or the fact that he owned one.

How come? Because our final choices can make us happy and help us reframe our reality.

“We synthesize happiness but we think happiness is to be found.“ — Daniel Gilbert

You have a psychological immune system to rely on

There are nonconscious processes in your brain that transform lousy past events into the experience you wouldn’t change for the world. They help you adapt to new circumstances and go on. Gilbert calls them your “psychological immune system“. It helps you synthesize happiness.

Gilbert says natural happiness is getting what you want. Synthetic happiness activates when you don’t get what you want. Although it sounds fake and delusional, Gilbert affirms it is of the same quality and duration as natural happiness.

Synthetic happiness can make you feel even better than when you fulfill your desires. The only condition is to stop crying after things you didn’t get.

“Let go or be dragged.“ — Zen proverb

Freedom to choose is your enemy and you don’t know it

If you have a choice, you’ll pick natural happiness and go after the things you want. But if you can’t choose, you’ll settle for the only option you have. Then your nonconscious processes kick in:

“The psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck. “ — Daniel Gilbert

Also, with natural happiness, you are not sure about your choice if they give you some time to change your mind. You’ll spend it in hesitation and like the picture you took home even less. People who don’t have time to reconsider are more satisfied with their choices.

Gilbert conducted an experiment on Harvard students to prove people are bad at choosing what makes them happy. Experimenters invited students to take a photography course, develop 2 of their favorite photos, and keep one.

Before they started, they offered them 2 options:

1) you have to decide immediately which picture you’ll keep,

2) you have a few days to change your mind about the picture.

66% of the students chose to have a few days to reconsider although that option would ruin their happiness by constant indecision and reconsideration.

Conclusion

Indecisiveness can be useful. It helps you choose a better option in a complex situation — you wait for new information to have a clear picture before you decide what to do. But it is your enemy if you’ve already chosen something short-lived which can’t transform your life.

As you blame yourself for the choice you’ve made, you waste energy and get stuck in the negative. You are less satisfied with what you have, and risk to be unhappy for the wrong reason. You will always prefer one thing more than the other. But two temporary alternatives are not a good enough reason to be chronically unhappy. Don’t overrate their differences. Just choose and don’t look back. Your psychological immune system will do the rest. You’ll be more than fine.

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