Loss of pleasure from what we have

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A person begins to lose the moment he gains something. No joy lasts forever for him. With the power of feelings and time, the sand of the miraculous erodes, the gilding of the first impression peels off. And now he is already alone and again naked, because everything is overcome by his terrible enemy - habit.

We choose depending on the available opportunities, and the more of these opportunities, paradoxically, the worse. We choose what we can afford or almost we can, that is, we take on credit or develop additional knowledge, skills and even personality traits in ourselves in order to possess it. Then, finally, we get this.

But the joy passes quickly. There is only one "wow effect" left. Because we suddenly see that what we have chosen is not as perfect as we imagined. Or suddenly we find out that there is something better than the chosen one. Then, in addition to disappointment and regret, we still have a sense of guilt and dissatisfaction with ourselves. Added to these unpleasant sensations is the anger that we have to pay a loan for what we no longer need and do not like, and for what has disappointed us. Then there is regret about the lost opportunities, because any choice is always the killing of other alternatives. And our psyche is designed in such a way that the pain of loss is stronger than the joy of possession.

PENCIL EFFECT

How to work less and earn more? Many people find the answer to this question and get what they want, but this does not bring the expected satisfaction, since hedonistic adaptation occurs and the person ceases to feel pleasure from what he has. Our perception is used to dividing everything into “bad” and “good”, we think in dualities and perceive the world in contrasts. Therefore, no matter how good we are, very quickly the subconscious will divide this “good” into “good” and “bad”, reducing the bad in life to a certain level brings pleasure, but after passing this threshold it no longer improves our well-being.

For example, you have moved to a new house for the summer, very expensive and beautifully furnished. The first month you enjoy its beauty. Then your eye begins to notice cracks in the paint, an uncomfortable writing desk, not a very large stream of water in the bathroom, a little crookedly laid tiles - these little things begin to annoy, gradually accumulate. Then your perception segments the house into zones. Now you do not like it entirely, but only parts of it. One room seems much better than the other. You are already thinking about finding something better for yourself or constantly improving this home.

After a year of living in the house, you no longer notice its coziness and comfort, you want to go on vacation more often. After some time, the dignity of the home begins to seem like disadvantages. Let's say the house is too big for you, or the silence around it has begun to annoy and depress.

Even if our choice is very rational, many of the pluses turn into minuses over time. Some of the gurus called this effect of the psyche "the pencil effect." Concepts such as "delicacy", "day off", "vacation" and "holiday" are necessary not so much for human physiology as for the psyche. The rentier feels much worse on Saturday than the one who goes to work on Monday. The nature of man is abhorrent to complete freedom, because he is lost in it. But the freedom to choose your limitations is a natural possibility.

REPLACEMENT ACTION

Hedonic adaptation is getting used to a certain level of consumption or possession, in which we cease to experience pleasure.

Consumption alone cannot bring long-term pleasure. Although Western wise men assure us that a person feels happier buying experiences, not things. Consuming something cannot saturate a human being, who feels the highest peak of satisfaction only when he creates.

A person who is engaged in creativity, creating something, be it a shelf in the house, a garden bed in the country or a new model of a cell phone, is at the peak of pleasure. Even in a time of difficult searches and failures, he is more satisfied than the one who buys a new car.

DIY workshops, whether it's sushi or soap, are one of the most popular, because many people like to create.

As long as people are looking for emotion without the action that precedes it, they get frustrated. This is the same as trying to buy an orgasm without sex, sex without love, and love without moving towards each other through all the difficulties, obstacles and fears.

THE WAY TO ADAPTATION

As long as we have families, children and our lives for which we are responsible, we have an unconditional need for safety and a certain level of comfort. Despite the generality of these concepts, they are different for everyone. Someone feels safe and comfortable, having bought a house in the Ulyanovsk region and keeping their farm there, while someone needs a large house in Moscow and food delivery from a private farm. These needs have nothing to do with pleasure - they are basic human security. Our fears determine the level of our life, having reached which we can think about pleasure.

Suppose a person dreamed of being a pilot, but had a serious accident as a child and became unfit for the job. He developed a hobby that compensated for the tragedy - gluing model airplanes. But a huge number of obligations, the need for their own housing, taking care of the family completely supplanted this hobby, there was simply no time left for it. This man is not at all satisfied with life right now, but the situation will change when he reaches a basic level of safety and comfort and returns to his hobby again.

Hedonistic adaptation begins when a person forgets about his hobby, about the needs of his soul and cannot stop, building higher and higher walls of his security.

FALSE EXPECTATIONS

The higher our expectations, the greater the disappointment. Expecting something, we create our own "tasty" image of all kinds of highs that we will experience. The more unattainable our dream, the more uplifting, joyful and promising it seems to us.

An interesting fact is that people who have no experience of using something weigh it down with such a huge weight of their overestimated expectations that they experience colossal disappointment.

A man who constantly flies in business class does not yell at the flight attendants if he is not served champagne. Meanwhile, the one who saved up for these tickets and is flying for the first time requires a level of service that has never been on board. If something is very costly for us, we raise our expectations in proportion to our ideas and the effort spent. If the cost of the product is acceptable to us, the expectations from it are adequate to reality.

A girl who works as an accountant and receives a salary of 30,000 rubles was once presented with a certificate for SPA at the Ritz with a face value of 30,000 rubles for just six hours. She came with him to the hotel, spent the whole day in the SPA and … was very disappointed. It’s scary to think what she was expecting from a one-day procedure, which was the cost equivalent of a month of her work.

HABIT TO THE BAD

Hedonic adaptation manifests itself not only in a positive, but also in a negative way. A person gets used to everything - both good and bad. And this habituation will happen the faster, the less he sees contrasts. Being constantly in the same environment, in a limited circle of people, everything, even the most absurd and ridiculous, begins to seem the norm, and the correct norm.

That is why so many people do not buy new models of phones or, in general, cell phones, do not move from old dilapidated houses, do not feel well in new clothes, do not change their disgusted work and do not even enter into close relationships, having got used to loneliness.

Also, a person easily adapts to a lack of something, savings, illness, conflicts. Until he sees and tries something else, content with what is. Paradoxically, this "what is" can be quite satisfying. And after a few years, having changed his life, a person can look at himself in the past with surprise and bewilderment and think about how he could live in that area with that person and still enjoy life.

One of my acquaintances was very fond of expensive cars and even took part in races, buying herself a new Porsche. After moving to America, Texas, where there is mainly a farming society, she began to dream of a creepy (by our standards) farm Ford pickup truck. She told me for a long time about the merits of this car and that she dreams of buying it, completely forgetting about her previous hobbies. When I reminded her about the Porsche, she looked at me strangely, like I was a UFO, and said: “This is an ugly and unreasonable car. And most importantly, it is impractical."

TABLET FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

The problem is not the choice itself, but our attitude towards it. Considering ourselves a mega-significant person and taking ourselves and our lives very seriously, fearing the future, we get a neurosis, and the consequences of choice only reveal its presence. How to save yourself from the negative consequences of choice?

1. TAKE RIGHT TO THE ERROR

A person always chooses the best possible. Note - always. This means that mistakes do not exist, we cannot harm ourselves by choosing. Regretting the past, we waste precious minutes of the present and the future, and we should not hide behind the statement “I draw conclusions”.

2. REMEMBER YOUR INTERESTS

Do I really need a special shampoo or does the manufacturer need my money?

3. TRUST YOURSELF

Whether it is intuition, reason, or feeling, this is what inspires more confidence in you.

4. DO NOT JUDGMENT

We never know how today's choice will turn out for us in twenty years, because after it we will make countless more choices.

5. DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF

The more we make mistakes, the better we understand what suits us. And the feeling of guilt in matters of choice, as a rule, is associated with the overestimation of one's own person.

Sometimes it should be remembered that I am not Zeus the Thunderer or Batman, but just a person. In the end, in life you can always find something to regret, only one question - why?

Author: Anna Adrianova