If you’ve never heard the term “hedonic adaptation” you need to learn it. It’s a critical factor in your ability to create happiness. If you don’t understand it you’ll be forever frustrated by the elusive nature of happiness.
“Hedonic adaptation” is a fancy way of saying that we mentally adapt to our environment – good or bad. This ability to adapt is not an external physical adaptation, but rather, our ability to get our heads around a new situation. It’s important to our mental well being to make sense of new circumstances. Change (again, good or bad) requires us to reevaluate our situations and hedonic adaptation is the mental survival tactic to help us come to terms with the new “normal”.
Historically, hedonic adaptation evolved in our ancestors so they could survive the constant crises, losses and disasters that arose. It’s a survival instinct. Those who could mentally adjust and move on after the loss of their livestock, crops, homes, families, friends and even communities survived. Those who withered and broke down didn’t.
More recently, however, the idea of hedonic adaptation has turned on us. Most of us no longer face the crippling events of our ancestors. Our lives are fairly routine and safe. As a result, our instinctual hedonic adaptation is focused on adjusting to positive things. Mentally adjusting to a new “norm” is no longer adjusting to bad situations (although that still happens), but more regularly, we’re quickly adjusting to the new good in our lives.
Here’s a simple example.
A year or so ago I’m on an airplane flying from Milwaukee to New York. I’m sitting next to a guy who has his laptop up and he’s connected to the WIFI the airline offers. About halfway through the flight he loses his connection and is unable to reconnect. His frustration mounts as he asks the flight attendants for help and ends up so angry he curses out loud and is red faced, slamming shut his laptop. In essence his trip has been a disaster because he can’t get his e-mail or send anything during the last hour we are in flight. This man is a perfect example of how hedonic adaptation has changed his ability to be happy.
The reality is that this man is sitting in an air conditioned aircraft, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, 30,000 feet in the air, drinking a Coke with ice, able to get from Milwaukee to New York in two hours, using a series of technologies that didn’t exist 20 years ago, able to communicate via technology that didn’t exist (in-flight WIFI) 12 months earlier. Despite all those “benefits” he was upset and angry. Why? Because his mental hedonic adaptation had reset his “norm” to include all those things and when they didn’t all happen he was no longer “happy”.
It happens all the time in all kinds of situations to all of us. We have so many good things happening in our lives so often we’re in a constant state of resetting our “norm” to things that would have been considered miracles 50 years ago. We are unhappy as a group because we adapt too quickly.
Keep in mind, hedonic adaptation happens with anything new – purchases, lifestyles, surroundings, relationships, skills, knowledge – everything. So, in order to increase our happiness, we have to manage an instinct that has been developed in our brains for thousands, if not millions, of years to help us survive. How do we do that?
Here are some ideas:
1. Spend time seeking slow adaptation things.
We don’t mentally adapt at the same rate to all things. We adapt most quickly to money, material possessions, personal beauty and surroundings. However, we adapt more slowly to relationships, personal growth and things in which we find a higher purpose. By spending our time developing and acquiring things to which we adapt more slowly, we get a better happiness rate of return on our efforts.
2. Practice gratitude.
Gratitude reminds us of how much better things are now than they were before. The guy on the plane could have done a lot better to remind himself that he was lucky to be where he was and that in-flight WIFI was not the critical factor in his happiness. He had much more to be grateful for than angry about.
3. Learn to adapt down – be flexible.
We’ve been conditioned to believe our life should always be improving upward. That’s not how it works. Sure, we want to expect things to get better or go as planned, but the more rigid we are in those expectations the greater the likelihood we’ll be unhappy because life doesn’t work as planned. Back to the guy on the plane - his expectations were too high and too rigid. There was not enough flexibility in his life to adapt to a new, even minor, situation.
4. Pace your positive experiences.
Most of us deal with the Veruca Salt Syndrome. Verucua Salt is the spoiled girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory who sings, “I want the world, I want the whole world . . . I want it now!” We want the iPhone and iPad and HD TV and the trip to Cabo San Lucas and the new car and, and, and. If you know you’re going to adapt, why not pace yourself a bit more? Spread it out.
5. Focus on smaller but frequent joys over bigger infrequent things.
Studies have shown that we are happier when we enjoy smaller things that happen more frequently than bigger things that happen less frequently (see blog Predicting What Will Make Our Future Selves Happy). Instead of fixating on the iPad, how about savoring the first cup of coffee, watching your daughter play with her toys, finding a good new book, or the feel of the carpet on your bare feet. There are millions of smaller joys that get overlooked as we focus on the infrequent bigger ticket items. As a result, we forego happiness longer.
We’re conditioned to adapt. That’s a fact we cannot avoid. What we can do, however, is manage how we adapt so our survival instinct doesn’t undermine our own happiness.
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