Happiness: appealing to the like system
Actionable items you can do today
Actionable items you can do today to engage your like system
This is part II of my discussion of “Happiness: the science behind your smile”. If you haven’t read part I, I encourage you to do so here. Everything will make a lot more sense if you do.
For those that have fully embraced the smartphone age and lack patience, here’s a quick summary:
Turns out what we want is frequently separate from what we like. The things we desire in life do not always bring us happiness. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution does not care about your happiness. Its only objective is to propagate your genes. Therefore; your ancestors were rewarded when competing for status and acquiring resources. However, to be happy, you cannot simply chase your desires. Those desires must also bring you long term contentment. You can do this only if you engage both the “want system” and the “like system”.
Now that you’re up to speed, let’s dig in.
Shortly after publishing the first article about the two systems, my friend Zack asked me a really interesting question.
What’s an actionable item I can do today to determine what will appeal to my “want” and “like” system?
I’ll be honest, I had to think long and hard about this one. My gut reaction was to write a piece bashing materialism and status seeking but I feel like it’s not very satisfying. It’s hard to convince anyone that driving a brand new Tesla SUV to work on daily basis will not bring them more happiness in life. Also, as my wife frequently reminds me, “not everyone wants to live like a monk”.
Consequently, I had to step back and reconsider. What else can you do to engage the “like system”?
We’ve already established that people are terrible at predicting how much happiness their desires will bring them. We tend to overestimate the pleasure we will gain from positive experiences. Similarly we tend to overestimate the pain we will experience from negative experiences. However, I am aware of at least one method that seems to be somewhat more reliable than our own intuition. All you have to do is find someone who is at the same position you would like to be and ask them how they feel.
This might not be the bombshell you were expecting. However, the consequence of this idea is easy to overlook.
Consider for instance what you could do if you were buying a new house. You and your spouse might be looking for a 4 bedroom house at a near by suburb in a brand new development. It must have a 2 car garage and a ton of yard space to play ball with your future child. You will use the extra rooms as an office and an extra bedroom whenever your parents visit from out of town. Sure, it will increase your commute and the mortgage payments are a little high, but it’s worth it!
Sounds familiar? That’s because it is exactly what a typical couple does — at least around this part of town.
Before signing on the dotted line, and committing to 30 years of debt, you could ask a current home owner, roughly at the same stage of life, roughly with the same house, living in a similar neighborhood, what their day to day looks like. Do they have any regrets? Do they miss renting? How do they feel about Home Depot? What would they change if they could do it over again?
They may tell you that it’s incredible. It’s everything and more than they hoped for. They love entertaining friends on their brand new deck and all the neighbors are extremely friendly and pleasant. It’s the best decision they could have ever made.
Another possibility is that the commute is tough and stressful and the mortgage payments are stretching their finances further than they are comfortable. Maintaining it is also a daily grind.
Whatever the outcome, it is valuable information you didn’t have before. According to Dan Gilbert, their response will also be a much better predictor of your future feelings than your own intuition.
Now let’s take it a step further. What if you didn’t just settle for asking people that are a single step ahead of you. What if you also asked people who are multiple steps ahead of you. For example, if your parents own their home, why not ask them? You could even use the same questions.
They may tell you it was a great investment and all their retirement savings are in the house. They were able to raise 2.6 children in that house and send them to the best public schools the department of education had to offer.
Similarly, they could tell you they never once in 20 years walked into that office/bedroom without a feather duster and windex in their hands. They regret not buying a smaller house and using the extra money to travel.
Again, valuable information but this time from a long term perspective.
Finally, you can take this advice to it’s logical conclusion. I hesitate to write this because it is a morbid way to think. However, the insight is absolutely invaluable. I am talking about an article appropriately titled regrets of the dying. It took me a long time to read this partially because I couldn’t get over how morbid it is. However, I highly encourage everyone to give it a chance. Once I got through it, I realized that the fear of regret is a very powerful reason to live right. It was also indirectly responsible for this article (and many others to come).
The regrets are of course very emotional and human. I think that all of us can predict at least half of them if we just sat down and tried to list them. Yet there is something powerfully contemplative even as I re-read them.
One regret I think would resonate with everyone is #4 — I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. This is something that could haunt you your entire life unless you devote a lot of concentrated effort to maintain these relationships. One major reason for this is our endless mobility. It is certainly a great opportunity to meet wonderful people. However, the relationships you form tend to be more shallow. Once “busyness” catches up with you, those are the first to go.
This is a focus area for myself although I will make it more official in my 2019 resolutions.
So what would these people tell you about your house choices if you somehow managed to ask them? I cannot speak for them authoritatively, but my guess is they’d tell you to live your life and stop wasting your time on this shit because it really doesn’t matter.
Photo by Kristian Gonzalez on Unsplash