Achievement and Happiness

Each Tuesday, I'm reflecting on how aspects of our lives and society relate to happiness and how we can increase our happiness. This week, I'm looking at the urge to achieve, how it is a human drive, how achieving alone makes us almost unhappy and what to do about that.

Since I'm going to get started with my happiness coaching business soon, I've been trialling around with friends. Yesterday, I had another trial which was a great talk. Apparently, my friend took away a lot but so did I. There were a lot of bits in there which I might rework into newsletters. But today, this email about achieving was flowing out of me onto this "page".

To mix things up, I'm only sending you the first part of the article from now on. I've been posting the newsletters on my blog and that's where you can read the rest. I'm following two bloggers who do similar things and I'm actually happy with reading just the emails and getting an idea about the topic. Sometimes, I want to read the whole article, sometimes I don't want that. So, here we go:

Achieving

Do you belong to the people who believe they have to achieve something to be happy? "I just need to get this done and then I relax/feel free/have time/am happy". Is that a familiar thought? And? Do you ever get there; do you get to relax/feel free/have time/be happy? How long does it last?

If we take a look into science, I'd say this is very Dopamine. Don't get me wrong, I love love love Dopamine. It's great. It gives us pleasure. It's also super important. Did you know that Parkinson happens because there is not enough Dopamine? Dopamine is crucial for movement. It's crucial for getting us out of the bed and get us motivated to do stuff. Hey, Dopamine is not a bad guy. It can be our friend. But it's the one responsible for us always wanting to achieve.

Here is the problem, though. Dopamine is triggered only to motivate. It's not triggered WHEN we achieve. That's why we can call it future hormone - it's always making us look into the future (read The Molecule of More to understand that better). Dopamine is only about desire. It's not about arriving. You might feel free or happy or relaxed for a moment and then it all starts again.

Hedonistic adaptation

Even worse, we have this mechanism which is called hedonistic adaptation. We get used to... everything. Scientists researched lotto winners and people who had an accident and couldn't move from below the neck. The scientists proofed that it doesn't matter if it's something "really good" or "really bad", after about 6 months both groups bounced back to a certain set point. Let's call that normality. And hey, I believe that's great. I mean it would be super stressful otherwise. There is always something happening - we reach goals, we experience hardship - and if we can't find a new normal, it just would mean constant stress.

But of course this also means that it will never get really better. You can achieve what you want but you will always want more. When you have more, you get used to it and Dopamine will make you want to get even more more. There is this story from, I believe, Ken Honda researching for his book Happy Money. He asks a millionaire if he's happy and the millionaire says that he's not because he doesn't have his own jet. Ken then meets a millionaire (or billionaire? oh well, it's all zeros, isn't it?) who does have a jet and asks him if he's happy. He isn't because he only has a small jet. Ken asks more rich people but I believe you got the idea. Achieve all you want but hedonistic adaptation will make you get used to it and Dopamine will start looking for the next thing.

Are we damned?

Noooo, it's all good. We can all be happy, anytime. It's all free. No achievement necessary (although I highly recommend a good dose of Dopamine, desire and dreams - it's fun). Luckily, nature was clever and provided us with more hormones than just Dopamine.

Have a happy week!

Anja