The easiest path to happiness is to dream less about the future and appreciate the present more

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Do you often find yourself thinking that your life is not as beautiful as you would like? Looking through the joyful photos of friends on social networks, greedily devouring glossy images of posh houses or listening to success stories, do you inevitably compare your life to this concentrate? Tim Urban, the author of the blog, invites you to stop and appreciate the reality. It may not be as colorless as you think.

This is Jack:

And this is Today:

Jack and Today together.

They are on good terms, and Jack is reasonably happy, but for some time he has known that Today is not the only possible one. Of course, he and Today are good together, but too often Jack feels that Today sometimes reminds him of any other day - this is not at all how he imagined his life.

Now that he knows that their relationship is temporary, Jack doesn't really invest in it, he spends his energy thinking about someone else, about Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day he would like to have a long-term relationship with. It is fulfilling, dynamic, exhilarating and full of meaning. Jack knows that over time he will find this Today, where he will meet his love, build a career and live in the city of his dreams. Now he only imagines Tomorrow:

Sometime this time will come, but Jack already has another plan. He's getting a promotion next week, breaking up with his Today as early as possible and starting a Today-After-Promotion relationship. Of course, the new Today is not too worthy of a guy like Jack, but it is more fun and exciting than his current gray.

In the morning after the promotion, Jack wakes up a completely different person, he is in a good mood. He already loves the new Today:

That evening he goes to a restaurant that until recently could not afford, and the next day he buys a new set of golf clubs.

Two weeks later, Jack returns to that fancy restaurant, but something is no longer quite right. The food is just as great, but somehow not amazing.

A month later, he plays golf for the fourth time with new golf clubs, but this no longer affects his mood in any way - an ordinary game, nothing special.

And one day everything around becomes exactly the same as before the promotion.

Jack is confused. He left his ex. Today, why does it seem to him that he has not gone anywhere? It was assumed that this part of his life was forever behind.

Sadly, Jack is oblivious to this. The promotion was bullshit anyway, and the real future was ahead, and that he was half happy was not that important.

A few years later, Jack has a fruitful month. Firstly, after several years of loneliness, he meets an amazing girl and a connection immediately arises between them. She is exactly who he imagined her to be, and after a couple of dates, they become a couple. At the same time, Jack's restaurant appraisal business, which started a year ago, is being reported in a major newspaper, and it suddenly goes up. He knew that the idea with this business was great, and now everything is confirmed. This is now reality for Jack.

His new Today is Today-Business-Gaining-Momentum-And-I-Have-I-Have-a-Girl - the kind he dreamed of for the last few years.

Jack always knew that such a life would come at some point, because he is the same guy. His everyday life will never be gray again.

But then something happens. Despite the fact that things with his girlfriend are going well and the business is growing, after a few months Jack notices that the new Today is not so impressive to him, and life is not so eventful. He's busier than ever. He is endlessly at work and, although he is satisfied with his new Today, he does not feel euphoria from life.

A year later, Jack is wealthier financially, his life is filled with more meaning than before, but he is completely used to the way things go. He is a witness that a friend's career has grown stronger than his own, and he wants to know how it feels. And his other friend seems to be a little more happy with his girlfriend than Jack is with his. He thinks it's cool.

And one day Jack wakes up in this situation:

He can't believe it. What the hell is it doing here?

He thinks of placing a restraining order on Today, which won't leave him alone, but then decides to let him go. After all, he is not going to devote his life to this Today-Business-Gaining-Momentum-And-I-I-Have-a-Girl. The real Today that he is holding on to is Today-I-Sell-Business-and-Marry, the one in which he will be truly happy.

Jack's battle is not an exceptional case. This is what happens to each of us in different forms. In his article, Harvard professor Dan Gilbert describes what he calls the indirect influence of prejudice - the habit of overestimating the effect of future events on enjoyment. People have the ability to mentally model future situations in order to anticipate how they will feel. But the simulator doesn't always work well. It can lead you to believe that the intended results are more different from reality.

Gilbert says that both in reality and in laboratory research, winning or failing an election, meeting or losing a romantic partner, getting a new position or denying a promotion, successful or unsuccessful college entrance exams are less lasting and intense than humans. expect. This even applies to tragic events. Recent research shows how significant life trauma affects people, Gilbert said. It assumes that an event that happened about three months ago (with a few exceptions) has no effect on happiness. Jack is clearly a victim of indirect bias.

Jack's difficulties are akin to pixel theory, a phrase coined by Tim Urban during his popular performance, Home Alone in Front of the Mirror.

Jack sees his life as a vivid painting with an epic story and suggests that the key to happiness lies in the crudely detailed image.

But this is a mistake, because Jack does not live in the brush strokes of the picture, he is always in one of its pixels - in the only Today.

While to an outside observer thousands of Today Jack seem to be a complete picture, Jack spends every moment of his reality in some unremarkable pixel of Today. Jack's mistake is to perceive routine everyday life as something unimportant and focus on the big picture, when these everyday life is his reality.

He assumes that someday Today will become as bright and saturated as the whole picture, because he underestimates the ordinariness and simplicity of the pixel. He believes that an inferior relationship with the monotonous Today is temporary, but in reality they are inevitable and eternal. He must accept them and humble himself in order to be happy.

Jack can really be happy with the way he spends his everyday life. This confirms a number of science-based ideas, including spending time with nice people, getting enough sleep, exercising, doing something that works well and doing something good for others.

But perhaps Jack should first learn to be aware of and appreciate the present - another path to happiness that Jack usually ignores. He spends too much time thinking about a wonderful future and plans it carefully. But he rarely thinks about how obsessively he desired so many things that he possesses.