As time passes, you often get bored by things that used to bring you joy. The explanation for this is hedonic adaptation. Simply said, no single item can provide you happiness for the rest of your life. After a while, you grow tired of it and want a change. As a result, it is vital for you to alter your daily routine if you want to avoid hedonic adaptation.
Hedonic adaptation refers to our natural drive to adjust to our moods. Read on as we discuss how you can avoid it.
How Can People Avoid Hedonic Adaptation or Hedonic Treadmill?
Hedonic adaptation is a potent motivator since it encourages us to reach higher levels of achievement. To put in more effort, to learn, to examine, and keep exploring. Even if we accomplish our goals, we are quick to set new ones. This can be good, but in the long term, it can also be exhausting.
That’s because hedonic adaptation causes us to focus on what we do not have rather than what we do. So, here are a few tips that can help you avoid hedonic adaptation:
Focus on Practicing Mindfulness in Daily Life
You can pause and think about the things in your life for which you are grateful by practicing mindfulness on a daily basis. It also allows you to be fully present at the moment and notice small things that would otherwise go unnoticed in your hectic schedule.
Mindfulness practices can help you relax and change the way you think and feel about your experiences. This is especially helpful when it comes to stressful events. You can use a mind-body approach here. Rather than causing your emotions to rise and fall, this approach can help you maintain a rather constant degree of happiness. Practicing mindfulness is one of the best ways to avoid hedonic adaptation.
Own Your Emotions
Emotional avoidance can lead to a wide range of psychological problems, and you will not be able to avoid hedonic adaptation if you do this. While avoiding negative emotions may appear rational and practical, these sentiments are generally related to negative events in our lives that we would prefer to forget.
While this may provide a momentary reprieve, it eventually leads to much more challenging problems than the ones that were initially ignored. Trying to avoid negative feelings may help you in the short term, but it will hurt you in the long run.
This approach helps you escape the discomfort of a negative mood for a short time, but the emotions return the next day. The longer this is done, the more the problem is disregarded, and if you’re not careful, it can quickly snowball into a bigger issue.
Nurture the Relationships around You
The best remedy for sadness is maintaining friendships with people who love you and care about you. This does not mean that you cannot be self-sufficient or live alone. Simply said, having a support system is beneficial to your health at any age if you are looking to avoid hedonic adaptation.
We live in an independent world where social relationships are scarce. This, according to some experts, is a major factor in today’s depression epidemic. You must build strong ties and social contacts to have support during difficult times. This can help you survive and then thrive.
Adopt a More Optimistic Nature
Although happiness and optimism are closely related, they are not the same thing. If you anticipate having a wonderful time, you will be more likely to be happy and enjoy life. Working to avoid hedonic adaptation via this method will also help you achieve better physical health and longevity.
Even in the worst-case scenario, you should anticipate wonderful things to happen. If you choose to expect the worse, you will get precisely what you expect.
Part of being optimistic is being able to reassure oneself that things will work out. If you can convince yourself of this, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Such positive affirmations will assist you in developing the optimism necessary to live a happy life.
Some people are optimistic by nature. That’s just who they are. That said, even if you were not born with it, you could learn to be optimistic. Studies suggest that both happy and unhappy people have the same number of unpleasant events throughout their lives.
The Process is More Important than the Goal
Keep in mind that the process is always more important than the goal when you are trying to avoid hedonic adaptation. Take this approach the next time you are waiting for something to happen that will inevitably make you happy, and instead concentrate on the present moment and enjoy the ride.
If you cease focusing on the end result, it will be easier to break the cycle of hedonic adaptation. After all, hedonic adaptation necessitates a complete focus on your next goal.
Try to Bring Variety to Your Routine
In order to avoid hedonic adaptation, change up your routine and bring some variety to your life. Even if routines are easy and you might not be entirely convinced to leave your comfort zones, breaking them every now and then will help you break free from the hedonic treadmill. Try to do this as much as you can, no matter how difficult it may be.
Conclusion
Hedonic adaptation is based on the belief that happiness can only be found outside of oneself and is completely reliant on other causes. Regularly work on your thoughts to break down these restricting preconceptions and realize that enjoyment comes from within.
Society and human nature have conditioned us to seek pleasure from outside and worldly sources. While bright new objects and activities may provide a brief burst of euphoria, they will not last. The good news is that it does not matter. By learning how to avoid hedonic adaptation and temptations and developing healthy habits to enhance our natural happiness set-point, we can eventually free ourselves from this emotional rollercoaster and achieve true happiness.
