“One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation,” says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has studied the relationship between money and happiness for over two decades.
“We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them,” Gilovich further states.
Actually, savoring the anticipation or idea of a desired outcome is generally more satisfying than the outcome itself. Once we get what we want — whether that’s wealth, health, or excellent relationships — we adapt and the excitement fades. Often, the experiences we’re seeking end up being underwhelming and even disappointing.
I love watching this phenomena in our foster kids. They feel like they need a certain toy or the universe will explode. Their whole world revolves around getting this one thing. Yet, once we buy the toy for them, it’s not long before the joy fades and they want something else.
Just as we deceive ourselves into believing something will make us happier than it will, we also deceive ourselves into believing something will be harder than it will.
The longer you procrastinate or avoid doing something, the more painful (in your head) it becomes. However, once you take action, the discomfort is far less severe than you imagined. Even to extremely difficult things, humans adapt.
I recently sat on a plane with a lady who has 17 kids. Yes, you read that correctly. After having eight of her own, her and her husband felt inspired to foster four siblings whom they later adopted. A few years later, they took on another five foster siblings whom they also adopted.
Of course, the initial shock to the system impacted her entire family. But they’re handling it. And believe it or not, you could handle it too, if you had to.
The problem with dread and fear is that it holds people back from taking on big challenges. What you will find — no matter how big or small the challenge — is that you will adapt to it.
When you consciously adapt to enormous stress, you evolve.
“There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
Most people believe they must:
· First have something (e.g., money, time, or love)
· Before they can do what they want to do (e.g., travel the world, write a book, start a business, or have a romantic relationship)
· Which will ultimately allow them to be something (e.g., happy, peaceful, content, motivated, or in love).
Paradoxically, this have — do — be paradigm must actually be reversed to experience happiness, success, or anything else you desire.
· First you be whatever it is you want to be (e.g., happy, compassionate, peaceful, wise, or loving)
· Then you start doing things from this space of being.
· Almost immediately, what you are doing will bring about the things you want to have.
We attract into our lives what we are. This concept is confirmed by loads of psychological research. In his popular TED talk, Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor explains that most have happiness backwards. They believe they must first achieve or acquire something to be happy. The science shows that happiness facilities success.
For example, Scott Adams, the creator of the famous comic series Dilbert, attributes his success to the use of positive affirmations. 15 times each day, he wrote the sentence on a piece of paper, “I Scott Adams, will become a syndicated cartoonist.”
The process of writing this 15 times a day buried this idea deep into his subconscious — putting Adams’ conscious mind on a treasure hunt for what he sought. The more he wrote, the more he could see opportunities before invisible to him. And shortly thereafter, he was a highly famous syndicated cartoonist. It couldn’t not happen.
I personally apply a similar principle but write my goal in present tense. For example, rather than saying, “I will become a syndicated cartoonist,” I write,“I am a syndicated cartoonist.” Writing it in the present tense highlights the fact that you are being who you want to be, which will then inform what you do and ultimately who you become.
It’s easy to talk about how hard our lives are. It’s easy to talk about how unfair life is. And that we got the short-end of the stick.
But does this kind of talking really help anyone?
When we judge our situation as worse than someone else’s, we are ignorantly and incorrectly saying, “You’ve got it easy. You’re not like me. Success should come easy to you because you haven’t had to deal with what I’ve gone through.”
This paradigm has formally become known as the victim mentality, and it generally leads to feelings of entitlement.
The world owes you nothing. Life isn’t meant to be fair. However, the world has also given you everything you need. The truth is, you have every advantage in the world to succeed. And by believing this in your bones, you’ll feel an enormous weight of responsibility to yourself and the world.
You’ve been put in a perfect position to succeed. Everything in the universe has brought you to this point so you can now shine and change the world. The world is your oyster. Your natural state is to thrive. All you have to do is show up.
Most people “say” they want to be successful. But if they really wanted to, they’d be successful.
I used to tell people, “I wish I played the piano.” Then someone said, “No you don’t. If you did, you’d make the time to practice.” I’ve since stopped saying that, because he was right.
Life is a matter of priority and decision. And when it comes to money — in a free-market economy — you can make as much money as you choose. The question is, how much money do you really want to make?
Instead of vegging on social media day-after-day, year-after-year, you could spend an hour or two each day building something of value — like yourself.
In the book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill invites readers to write down on a piece of paper the amount of money they want to make, and to put a time-line on it. This single act will challenge you to think and act in new ways to create the future of your wanting.
For example, despite growing up so poor that for a time his family lived in their Volkswagen van on a relative’s lawn, Jim Carrey believed in his future. Every night in the late 1980’s, Carrey would drive atop a large hill that looked down over Los Angeles and visualize directors valuing his work. At the time, he was a broke and struggling young comic.
One night in 1990, while looking down on Los Angeles and dreaming of his future, Carrey wrote himself a check for $10 million and put in the notation line “for acting services rendered.” He dated the check for Thanksgiving 1995 and stuck it in his wallet. He gave himself five years. And just before Thanksgiving of 1995, he got paid $10 million for Dumb and Dumber.
