Speaker 1: A low team. Hope you bloody terrific. Welcome to another
Speaker 1: installment of the show. I recently spoke about a thing
Speaker 1: called the hedonic treadmill and hedonic adaptation, and I got
Speaker 1: a few emails saying, can you unpack that? Can you
Speaker 1: explain that a little bit more? And I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit no matter where I am, I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing a few people. No matter where I am, it's
Speaker 1: not where I want to be. And even if it's great,
Speaker 1: then a day or two later, it's not great. And
Speaker 1: I get to top of the mountain or the top
Speaker 1: of the mountain, I should say, and I realize I'm
Speaker 1: not at the right mountain, or I want to be
Speaker 1: at the mountain over there, or the thing that I
Speaker 1: thought it would give me, it didn't give me the
Speaker 1: external kind of thing that I wanted that I was
Speaker 1: focused on, that I was chasing. I got it, I
Speaker 1: acquired it, and I didn't have the internal shift or
Speaker 1: joy or experience that I thought I was going to have,
Speaker 1: Or maybe I had it for a little while but
Speaker 1: then it went away. So have you ever worked to
Speaker 1: ass off for something, something that you really wanted? A job,
Speaker 1: a goal, a car, a particular outcome, a house, a
Speaker 1: number on the scale of whatever, a lift, a time,
Speaker 1: and you got it. You felt amazing, felt incredible. And
Speaker 1: then a day later, or a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: or not long after, you were like, ah ah, you
Speaker 1: know that high. You had that sense of excitement and satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and its short term, it fades, and then suddenly you're
Speaker 1: scrolling and searching and planning and chasing and wanting the
Speaker 1: next thing, the next goal, the next shiny object, the
Speaker 1: next When I get this or when I get that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be happy. You know that story, And
Speaker 1: then pretty soon you're back in the cycle, the grind
Speaker 1: to shoot kind of like what like a kind of
Speaker 1: a psychological hamster wheel. Does that sound familiar? Well, if
Speaker 1: it does, don't stress. You're not broken. You're very much
Speaker 1: like a lot of people. You like me, I've done this.
Speaker 1: You're not ungrateful, you're not doing life wrong? Are you
Speaker 1: quite typical? Quite typical? Sorry about that. You're not special,
Speaker 1: You're just you're just regularly, You're just human. And that
Speaker 1: experience is what I spoke about before. That's called the
Speaker 1: hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation. It's the pattern where we
Speaker 1: something great happens, we get excited, we're happy, we're joyful,
Speaker 1: we're euphoric. But then pretty quickly we go back psychologically
Speaker 1: and emotionally to where we were, and even biochemically, like
Speaker 1: we return to a baseline of biochemistry that is our
Speaker 1: normal or a baseline of emotion or a baseline of happiness.
Speaker 1: Even after major wins or conversely painful set we adapt
Speaker 1: to our circumstances, and once that thing stops being new,
Speaker 1: once there's no novelty, we stop getting that buzz from it.
Speaker 1: So let me give you a few examples. So you
Speaker 1: finally buy the car that you've been dreaming about, You're
Speaker 1: driving around like your bloody living large, like you're in
Speaker 1: a Disney movie, you're in some commercial. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: it's just another car, it's just your car. You're getting
Speaker 1: back into the routine and the rhythm and the pissed
Speaker 1: off at traffic and the you know, and now that
Speaker 1: that level of absolute fastidiousness and care and panic that
Speaker 1: you had about anyone sitting in it or taking having
Speaker 1: food in the car or anything getting a fingerprint on it,
Speaker 1: and all of that kind of associated joy slash anxiety
Speaker 1: slash euphoria of having your new shiny thing. It's gone
Speaker 1: and you're still the same person and you're still got
Speaker 1: the same car how you wanted, the car that you
Speaker 1: really wanted, and it provided a short term psychological and
Speaker 1: emotional pick me up. But then pretty soon you've adapted.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon you're back on the treadmill and you look
Speaker 1: something different, or maybe you lose some weight, as is
Speaker 1: often the case on Planet Craig over the years, where
Speaker 1: I've worked with millions of people, millions thousands of people
Speaker 1: who wanted to be leaner or a lighter or more jacked,
Speaker 1: or whatever it was is, you know, and someone loses
Speaker 1: ten k's and they feel good, they feel proud, they
Speaker 1: feel confident, they're excited, they feel amazing, and then, not
Speaker 1: long after, not always, but typically or often, their brain
Speaker 1: quietly whispers something like that's not enough, like you look good,
Speaker 1: but five more would be better. And so we move
Speaker 1: the goalposts, we move the finish line. We actually create
Speaker 1: emotional and or psychological prison or barrier for ourselves to
Speaker 1: be happy, because when we achieve the thing that we wanted,
Speaker 1: we don't allow ourselves to be happy, or the happiness
Speaker 1: response disappears pretty soon, and then we seem not to
Speaker 1: learn because we go, oh, well, it wasn't ten kilos,
Speaker 1: so it must be fifteen kilos if I lose fifteen kilos,
Speaker 1: And then we get to fifteen kilos and we're still
Speaker 1: not happy or not happy for long and interestingly, there
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any wake up call or any
Speaker 1: awareness or any kind of aha moment, and we just
Speaker 1: you know, double down, and we go, well, if it's
Speaker 1: not fifteen, it must be twenty, and so on, you know.
Speaker 1: Or we move to the coast and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we've got beautiful views, we've got stunning sunsets. We're living
Speaker 1: the dream. We're in the beautiful kind of environment that
Speaker 1: we wanted to be in. But within a short period
Speaker 1: of time, we don't really notice the beautiful views, or
Speaker 1: we notice them, but they don't have the same impact
Speaker 1: the sunsets. It's not the same relationship, the same experience.
Speaker 1: And it's not that it's bad. It's just that we've
Speaker 1: adapted and adjusted, and that is us and the treadmill.
Speaker 1: So we move forward in life, things move, things happen,
Speaker 1: but that happiness doesn't always move with us. That's the
Speaker 1: adaptation that's the hedonic adaptation. And in many ways, you know,
Speaker 1: they generally don't talk about this when they're talking about
Speaker 1: this kind of almost this biochemical and psychological and emotional
Speaker 1: adaptation that happens. But I think one variable that we
Speaker 1: need to think about and factor in with this stuff
Speaker 1: is gratitude. I know, for me, maybe this is part
Speaker 1: of the antidote, but for me, part of the antidote
Speaker 1: is to hit the pause button a little bit and
Speaker 1: try to you know, it's very hard to be objective
Speaker 1: about the thing that you're in the middle of, right
Speaker 1: because you're in the middle of it. And so everything
Speaker 1: that you're in the middle of, everything that I'm in
Speaker 1: the middle of, that is a subjective experience for you
Speaker 1: and me. And if you're in the middle of something
Speaker 1: that's pretty good objectively from the outside looking in for
Speaker 1: the rest of us, you're in the middle of something
Speaker 1: that's pretty good, but your story is this is shit,
Speaker 1: and you believe the story, then your body believes the
Speaker 1: story the psychology, and now pretty soon you're having a
Speaker 1: shit experience, not because you're in a shit situation or circumstance,
Speaker 1: but because you've told yourself that. Conversely, conversely, sometimes we're
Speaker 1: in the same situation and we have an experience, we
Speaker 1: have an encounter, we have a moment in time, and
Speaker 1: the moment in time could be that you bump into
Speaker 1: somebody that is in a really really, really fucking terrible, horrible,
Speaker 1: undesirable situation and they can't get out of it. They'reon
Speaker 1: they have a terminal illness, or they have a permanent disability,
Speaker 1: or they're in some kind of situation that there is
Speaker 1: either no solution or there is no simple or fast solution.
Speaker 1: And then you go home same person, or you jump
Speaker 1: in the car, you get in your car, or you
Speaker 1: get in your house or where it is, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you've had an encounter where somebody and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you realize, fuck, my life is good,
Speaker 1: my body is good, my relationships are good, my situation
Speaker 1: is good. And there's been a psychological and emotional shift
Speaker 1: at times, not because anything's changed in your world, but
Speaker 1: you're now looking at your world through a different lens,
Speaker 1: albeit typically momentarily, because you have this encounter. You have
Speaker 1: this encounter, So why does it happen? Why does this
Speaker 1: hedonic adaptation happen? Why do we spend and our life
Speaker 1: or part of our life on this treadmill. Well primarily
Speaker 1: because which is good and bad. But your brain is
Speaker 1: amazing at adaptation. It's wired. Your brain is wired, ironically
Speaker 1: not to be content. It's wired to keep you safe
Speaker 1: and scanning and where and vigilant. Especially you know, historically,
Speaker 1: evolutionarily speaking, our brain was like that was our protector.
Speaker 1: Its job was and still is, but maybe we don't
Speaker 1: need it as much as we once did. It's to
Speaker 1: keep us safe and aware and vigilant and scanning the
Speaker 1: horizon for threats and problems and issues. Its job is
Speaker 1: not really to keep you and me satisfied or still.
Speaker 1: In many ways, our brain is built for survival, yes, survival,
Speaker 1: not serenity. So the moment something becomes familiar, even if
Speaker 1: that's something is amazing, our brain often files it under normal. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not special, this is not unique, this is
Speaker 1: not great, this is not amazing. I know this now,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with this. Now I've had this, And now
Speaker 1: your brain files that thing that was fucking amazing under normal.
Speaker 1: Now it's normal. It's not abnormal, it's not special, it's
Speaker 1: not spectacular, it's not incredible. Now it's normal. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, that feeling that you had, that biochemical
Speaker 1: reward that you had it goes to dopamine. The initial
Speaker 1: dopamine hit disappears, and then suddenly you're searching for the
Speaker 1: next thing, the next big thing, the thing that's going
Speaker 1: to light you up, the thing that's going to excite you.
Speaker 1: And we do this. We do this all the time.
Speaker 1: We do it with money, we do it with career,
Speaker 1: we do it with bodies, relationships, we do it with
Speaker 1: a myriad of things, and we The underlying story is
Speaker 1: like when I when I do this, when I own that,
Speaker 1: when I have that, when I look like that, In
Speaker 1: other words, when X, then when I get or do well,
Speaker 1: be or have X, I'll be happy. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that we've told ourselves a version of that story hundreds,
Speaker 1: maybe thousands of times, when I do this, when I
Speaker 1: have that, when I own that, when I earn that,
Speaker 1: when I look like that, when I arrive at this
Speaker 1: place literally or metaphorically or spiritually or psychologically, when this happens, then,
Speaker 1: but often we get there and we're just us. We're
Speaker 1: just us. We might have a temporary emotional and or
Speaker 1: psychological or experiential shift, but it's it's just us with
Speaker 1: slightly nicer scenery, and here's the kick out right. This
Speaker 1: doesn't this is really interesting. It doesn't just apply to
Speaker 1: the good things like people. When we think about this adaptation,
Speaker 1: this hedonic adaptation, we primarily think of all the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Good stuff happens, it blows our socks off, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And then the same good stuff happens. But over time,
Speaker 1: our relationship with that changes, or our response to that changes,
Speaker 1: and now it doesn't feel amazing anymore. But this also
Speaker 1: happens with negative experiences. So you lose your job, you
Speaker 1: break up with someone, you miss out on something huge,
Speaker 1: you're disappointed, you're shattered. It's horrible. It's an emotional and
Speaker 1: psychological and financial and sociological disaster. It sucks, but truthfully,
Speaker 1: for most people, not all, but most people, over time,
Speaker 1: and quite often it's not a long time, our psychological
Speaker 1: and emotional state returns to somewhere close to where it
Speaker 1: was yesterday or the day before or a week before.
Speaker 1: So it happens with good things. That happens with bad things.
Speaker 1: It happens with the things that give us joy and
Speaker 1: pleasure and dopamine and give us that positive kind of
Speaker 1: integrated response, the psychological and emotional and biochemical and all
Speaker 1: of that. You know, it happens with the good stuff,
Speaker 1: also happens with the shit. And we call this emotional.
Speaker 1: This is I love this term this. We call this
Speaker 1: emotional homeostasis. And it doesn't mean that those things don't hurt.
Speaker 1: Of course they hurt. But it means that most of
Speaker 1: us are more emotionally resilient than we think. Of course,
Speaker 1: things suck, of course things are hard. Of course, in
Speaker 1: the moment, it's fucking horrible. I've had a few things
Speaker 1: in the last year happened that when they happened, and
Speaker 1: in the very short term after it was horrible, it
Speaker 1: was it was very, very difficult. But you shift, you adapt,
Speaker 1: you come back, you bounce back to you know, to
Speaker 1: that that kind of status quo, that emotional, psychological, biochemical
Speaker 1: status quo, or as I called it, a moment ago,
Speaker 1: that the emotional homeostasis. And so it just means that
Speaker 1: either way, most of us are more likely to get
Speaker 1: back to baseline out of a positive or a negative
Speaker 1: thing more quickly and more often than we think. Most
Speaker 1: of us are more emotionally resilient than we think. It's
Speaker 1: been my experience watching lots of people and also myself
Speaker 1: going through stuff where I've had people that I really
Speaker 1: love die. I've had one of my best friends in
Speaker 1: the world die in front of me. As you know
Speaker 1: about my training partner died in the gym. Fortunately he
Speaker 1: only died for seventeen minutes. He came back, but that
Speaker 1: was pretty fucking traumatic. But that trauma fortunately because he
Speaker 1: came back, I guess, But just that moment of being
Speaker 1: over someone who's literally dead, who has no heartbeat, who
Speaker 1: has no respiration, there's no brain activity, nothing for seventeen minutes,
Speaker 1: and I was over the top of him for eleven
Speaker 1: minutes giving him CPR. In the moment, You're like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is full on, And for a day or two
Speaker 1: or three after it quite traumatic. And of course everybody
Speaker 1: responds differently to different stimuli, so I'm not suggesting anyone
Speaker 1: should be or do or respond a certain way. But
Speaker 1: I know for me, I got back to somewhat of
Speaker 1: a normal kind of baseline quite quite quickly. So whether
Speaker 1: or not something great or awful happens to our baseline mood,
Speaker 1: our baseline biology and physiology tends to reset. If not quickly,
Speaker 1: definitely over time. All right, so we've got a bit
Speaker 1: of an understanding of what it all means. So what
Speaker 1: do we do with it? What do we do with it?
Speaker 1: I should probably thought, should probably have thought this birth through. No,
Speaker 1: I've got some DearS. So what do we do with
Speaker 1: this knowledge? What do we do now moving forward? Do
Speaker 1: we just give up? Do we not chase things? No,
Speaker 1: it's a good question, and the answer is that we
Speaker 1: don't try to stop growing. We're not trying to stop growing,
Speaker 1: We're not trying to be successful, We're not trying to
Speaker 1: chase goals. Of course, I'll never tell you to do that,
Speaker 1: but maybe part of the answer is to stop assuming
Speaker 1: that the next big thing is the cure for inner
Speaker 1: peace or contentment or calm or perpetual joy or happiness,
Speaker 1: but rather to be more self aware and saying to yourself,
Speaker 1: if this is true for you, just as it is
Speaker 1: for me. There are many times where, especially when I
Speaker 1: was younger, when I thought, once I have a B
Speaker 1: and C, I'm going to be good, and that urgency,
Speaker 1: that need, that whatever, that whole, that emotional or psychological
Speaker 1: whole will go and I'll be more fulfilled and I'll
Speaker 1: be more confident, and I'll be less insecure, and I'll
Speaker 1: be happier, and all of these things will happen because
Speaker 1: I'll do this thing in my physical external world, and
Speaker 1: I'll have this correlated internal, non physical, unseen spiritual, psychological
Speaker 1: emotional shift and bibity bobbedy boo. I'll be fucking great.
Speaker 1: Well it doesn't happen, which is why at sixty one,
Speaker 1: I can still share these thoughts and ideas and stories
Speaker 1: with you and be still periodically the overthinker, still operate
Speaker 1: an ego and do dumb shit, still be fearful, still
Speaker 1: regret things that I do, still get a myriad of
Speaker 1: things wrong, but with I guess for me, but with
Speaker 1: a greater awareness that that internal kind of space that
Speaker 1: I want to get to or I want to inhabit
Speaker 1: as much as possible. And by that internal space I
Speaker 1: mean that of calm and contentment and joy and satisfaction.
Speaker 1: And you know there will be periodic, of course, anxiety
Speaker 1: and discontent and fear because I'm human. But when I'm
Speaker 1: for me, in order for me to get to that
Speaker 1: place where I'm I'm consistently my internal reality is for
Speaker 1: one of the better term a more enjoyable place to be.
Speaker 1: That's not so much for me anyway. That's not so
Speaker 1: much about me changing the things in my external world.
Speaker 1: It's not so much about arriving at a certain outcome
Speaker 1: or ticking a box or making a certain amount of
Speaker 1: money or producing a certain whatever. It's more about me
Speaker 1: working on me, not me working on all the other
Speaker 1: things that people see. But for me, anyway, it's more
Speaker 1: about me working on me. So what are some ways
Speaker 1: that we can potentially get off the treadmill. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you some. They might sound some of them
Speaker 1: a little fluffy, but I've already the first one I've
Speaker 1: spoken about practice gratitude. Yes it sounds fluffy, but it's neuroscience.
Speaker 1: Gratitude literally forces our brain to focus on the good stuff,
Speaker 1: to focus on what's working, to focus on the positive,
Speaker 1: and to have a different I guess perspective about what
Speaker 1: we are in who we are and where we are
Speaker 1: and how we are and what is great about our life.
Speaker 1: So we're focusing on what's good, not what's not just
Speaker 1: what's missing, and that focus, that focusing on the good now.
Speaker 1: By the way, when we're practicing gratitude and when we're
Speaker 1: focusing on the good. We're not pretending that it's all good.
Speaker 1: We're well aware that there's shit. We're well aware that
Speaker 1: there's problems. We're well aware that things won't work out
Speaker 1: moving forward, and that bad things happen to good people.
Speaker 1: We're practical, We're grounded in reality. We know that things
Speaker 1: are going to be good and bad. There are going
Speaker 1: to be peaks and troughs. But in the middle of
Speaker 1: the inevitability of the madness and mayhem and unfairness that
Speaker 1: comes with life, along with the beauty and joy and
Speaker 1: wins and successes along with that, we're going to consistently
Speaker 1: look through a lens of gratitude and thankfulness if we
Speaker 1: can as much as possible. So when I feel a
Speaker 1: bit sorry for myself because I fucked my back, he's
Speaker 1: a really quick kind of reset button. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: not cancer, is it. Or when you know, I lose
Speaker 1: a gig that I was going to that I thought
Speaker 1: I had booked in. It's a really good gig, it's
Speaker 1: a big conference, it's lots of money, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and I'm getting a bit sad. He mac sads because
Speaker 1: I'm feeling sorry for myself. And then I look around
Speaker 1: me at the reality and the comfort that I live in,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, shut the fuck up. Most people in
Speaker 1: the world, or at least a huge percentage of people
Speaker 1: in the world, would love to live where you live,
Speaker 1: or in your situation, or have your financial situation. So
Speaker 1: just pull your head in. So for me, practicing gratitude
Speaker 1: Number two building meaning, not just milestones, building meaning. So
Speaker 1: instead of chasing a number, you might ask, why do
Speaker 1: I care about this? What's this goal really about? For me?
Speaker 1: And when I speak about our values and living in alignment,
Speaker 1: but when our actions align with our values, not just vanity,
Speaker 1: not just ego, not just greed, but all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now we're on a rewarding journey. It's a different paradigm.
Speaker 1: It's a different energy. Number three invest in experiences and people.
Speaker 1: Research shows that we adapt slower to experiences than possessions.
Speaker 1: So weakened away with your mates, with your friends, meaningful conversation,
Speaker 1: a cold swim at sunrise, Those moments stick. They create stories,
Speaker 1: and not just dopamine spikes. They create memories that can
Speaker 1: live on with you. There's nothing wrong with building a business,
Speaker 1: building a brand, getting stuff, owning stuff, but I think
Speaker 1: inevitably we all, I hope we all get to the
Speaker 1: point where we go, oh, it's not about stuff. Stuff's
Speaker 1: not bad. Wealth is not bad. Being wildly successful in
Speaker 1: your career is not bad. By the way, if that's you,
Speaker 1: fucking well, congratulations. But if you are that person who
Speaker 1: makes lots of go, who's got a great career, has
Speaker 1: got a great body, and got lots of toys, and
Speaker 1: then I'm sure you well understand that that isn't the
Speaker 1: meaning of life. It's just part of life. Number four,
Speaker 1: we're getting there. Number four is train your baseline. We
Speaker 1: spend heaps of time working on outcomes, but very little
Speaker 1: time working on our emotional set point. You want to
Speaker 1: be happier, You want to be calmer, You want to
Speaker 1: be more grounded than prioritize, sleep, move your body, get outside, meditate, laugh, hug,
Speaker 1: a fuck with as I say, or not a fuck with, hug,
Speaker 1: someone say something kind. You know that boring but brilliant,
Speaker 1: biologically regulating stuff. That's the real training. Train your baseline
Speaker 1: and flip the formula and the conversation a little bit
Speaker 1: from Instead of I'll be happy when I get X,
Speaker 1: try when I'm grounded. When I'm calm, when I'm grateful,
Speaker 1: I tend to produce better outcomes. Anyway, Happiness is not
Speaker 1: just a reward. It's not just something we're chasing. It's
Speaker 1: literally something that's fuel. It's it's like psychological and emotional
Speaker 1: fuel for help to help us live better. So let's
Speaker 1: sum it up. Stop waiting for the next win to
Speaker 1: make you happy. Start doing the work to be happy
Speaker 1: between the winds, because that's where your real power is.
Speaker 1: Life's going to keep changing, goals will keep shifting, the
Speaker 1: treadmills always fucking running. But the real freedom is learning
Speaker 1: how to step off. Sometimes, step off the treadmill and
Speaker 1: enjoy the walk. All right, team, be good, love your
Speaker 1: collective guts is think better, choose better, be better, live better.
Speaker 1: Harps out