How cognitive illusions prevent you from building the life you want (part 4)

If you’re just jumping in to this series, here’s how you can get caught up.

In the intro, I told you how cognitive illusions systematically prevent people from building the lives they want…

By causing them to make decision after decision based on faulty thinking.

And how, once you know what these illusions are, you can combat them with signposts that let you know when you’re in the cognitive illusion zone…

And external structure to help you navigate through the illusion.

In Part 1, we covered Cognitive Illusion #1: Anchoring to the negative.

In Part 2, we covered Cognitive Illusion #2: Trying to do it “right.”

In Part 3, we covered Cognitive Illusion #3: Making it personal.

Today, we’re going to talk about Cognitive Illusion #4…

Cognitive Illusion #4: The hedonic treadmill 🏃🏻

Most people think that achieving certain outcomes will make them meaningfully, permanently happier.

They’ll say, “If I could just…

• Get into that school

• Get that job

• Get that promotion

• Get married

• Have a kid

• Get a dog

• Hit my goal weight

• Make a certain amount of money

• etc. etc.

Then I would be SO much happier.”

It really, really feels TRUE, that if you could just get that one outcome, your whole baseline level of happiness would shift upward and stay there forever.

But this an illusion.

Studies show this to be true.

Both lottery winners and people who become quadriplegics, after an initial adjustment period of being WAY happier or WAY sadder, return to their previous baseline level of happiness a year after the event.

Let me say this again: A year later, they feel the SAME. Despite having won the lottery or become paralyzed.

But you don’t have to look at psychological studies to prove this. Look at your own experience.

What are some times that you really, really wanted something and were convinced that if you could just have that thing, you’d be permanently happier forever?

And then…you got that thing?

DID you become permanently happier forever?

Did it solve all your problems and you never had to worry about anything again?

Or…did life go on, and now you have new problems?

This is the hedonic treadmill.

You think that these milestones and outcomes are going to meaningfully change how happy you are on a day-to-day basis.

But the reality is…the milestones pass you buy, you feel a temporary upswing in happiness for a while, and then you return to your normal baseline.

Why does this happen?

It happens because your day-to-day level of happiness is NOT a product of your external circumstances.

Your day-to-day level of happiness is a product of your mental and emotional HABITS.

It’s a product of how you habitually perceive, interpret, and think about yourself and the world around you.

Saying “If I win the lottery, I’ll be happy forever”…

Is like saying “If I win the lottery, I’ll instantly become left-handed.”

Winning the lottery is a one-time external circumstance.

Being right- or left-handed is a daily internal habit.

And one-time external circumstances don’t change daily internal habits.

It’s very intuitive to most people that winning the lottery won’t instantly change your dominant hand.

It’s persistently UN-intuitive to most people that winning the lottery won’t instantly change the mental and emotional habits that create your day-to-day happiness.

But both are true.

(It’s just that the second one doesn’t tend to FEEL true — that’s what makes it a cognitive illusion.)

So why does the hedonic treadmill lead you to create the life you don’t want?

Because it leads you to always be chasing some imaginary future point where you’ll finally have everything you want…

…without ever actually arriving there.

You might achieve lots of concrete things — degrees and promotions and houses and kids and money and all those things.

But you’ll never FEEL like you arrived.

Because you spent all your time chasing a mirage…

…instead of building the mental and emotional habit of feeling the way you want to feel today.

You spent your life buying lottery tickets, waiting for the one that would magically make you left-handed…

…instead of just practicing writing with your left hand every day until you became left-handed.

So how do you combat this illusion?

I going to be honest.

I know we usually talk about finding signposts that let you know you’re in the cognitive illusion zone.

But this cognitive illusion is SO persistent that you can pretty much assume that if you’re working toward any kind of goal whatsoever, you’re probably in the grip of this illusion.

So let me jump straight to the external structure that will help you combat this illusion.

Whatever goal you’re working toward…

Whether it’s getting promoted or losing weight or finding someone to date…

Mentally, get yourself into the place of already having achieved that goal.

Of already having gotten the promotion.

Of already being at your goal weight.

Of already being in the relationship you want to be in.

Get fully into that headspace.

Then use that headspace — those thoughts, those feelings, that perspective — to plan and execute on what you need to do.

Plan your day, show up in meetings, respond to emails, troubleshoot problems…LIKE you had already been promoted.

Choose your lunch, handle going out to dinner, figure out when to squeeze in some exercise…LIKE you were already at your goal weight.

Meet new people, swipe, chat, flirt, date…LIKE you were already in the relationship you want to be in.

(NOT in the “I’m cheating on my partner” sense.

In the “I’m secure and happy and have nothing to prove here” sense.)

Do this again and again throughout the day — it’s a practice.

Your brain will fall out of this perspective on a regular basis.

Come back to this headspace again and again.

Make all your plans and decisions from here. Do your problem-solving from here. Execute from here.

Combating about the hedonic treadmill is NOT about never having goals

Some people think the answer is to stop striving for anything, appreciate everything they have, and live purely in the present moment..

Which is also great! Feel free to do that!

But here’s how I think about it…

When you want to achieve a goal, big or small, some part of your brain is saying: “I want to BE that person. I want to feel like and act like and become the person who has that thing.”

You don’t have to kill that desire.

You can lean into that desire and give yourself what you want…

…By practicing being that person NOW. By starting to think and feel and act like them today.

You don’t have to reserve the good feelings till the very end, when you achieve the goal.

(If you do that, those good feelings won’t be permanent anyway, because you wouldn’t have built the habit of feeling that way all along the way.)

Instead, start feeling the way you want to feel NOW, while you work toward the goal. Extend the good part from “just at the end” to “the whole way through.”

That way, you work toward the tangible outcome you want…

…AND you build the habit of feeling the way you want to feel, the whole way there.

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There are several kinds of implementation gaps you might run into as you try to do this.

First, you might not realize, in the moment, that you’re falling prey to the hedonic treadmill illusion.

You’ll keep running toward the mirage and not even realize you’re doing it unless someone else points it out to you.

(This is incredibly common even after you’ve learned about this illusion. That’s why it’s an illusion — when it’s YOU in the hot seat, it really FEELS true.)

Second, you might recognize that you’re in the illusion, but your brain fights back when you try to get in the headspace of already having achieved your goal.

Your brain will say things like: “It’s not possible. I don’t know how. This seems scary. I’m going to fail.”

These kinds of objections are totally normal. Nothing is going wrong here.

But you have to work through them and answer them before your brain lets them go and gets fully into the “I already did it” head space.

Third, you might just forget to snap into this headspace on a regular basis. In the middle of your busy life, you might just have spotty implementation.

Hiring a coach closes implementation gaps.

When you have a weekly coaching call on the calendar…

You have someone who is trained to see your blind spots and show you when you’re caught in a cognitive illusion you can’t see yourself.

You have someone who can help you work through your brain’s objections to your new way of thinking, so that they’re resolved, not just spinning endlessly in your head.

And you have someone who can help you troubleshoot the last mile of implementation and make sure you actually shift your habits fully and consistently, for long enough that you actually create the life you want.

Reading my emails just gets you started.

Working with me gets you over the finish line.

Let’s start today.

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⬅️ Part 3 || Part 5 ➡️

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