February 2006. Gold sun pierced the icy morning air. My head throbbed as I walked the sidewalk between my coach house and my little black Honda Civic. The night before I’d punished my body with substances and too little sleep for the umpteenth day in a row. I was off to my sales job on Randolph and Ada Street in Chicago.
I hated my job. I remember the first time I got kicked out of an office building by a security guard (in reality he politely asked if I’d seen the sign that said “No Solicitors” and requested that I leave). I called my boss from my car, crying through my gray flip phone, while he assured me that I’m not soliciting but offering a quality service to folks who don’t yet know about our company. I fantasized about quitting and working in a bar, to be amongst drinkers and other striving musicians.
Once I had money coming in, though, I loved what my job afforded me. I’d graduated college two years prior and, in that time, grew my $35,000 base salary to nearly $80,000. I sold many people on the idea that using DHL to ship their overnight packages instead of FedEX or UPS was a good idea.
My work schedule consisted of going into the office, checking in with my half-dozen co-workers who shared our tiny West Loop loft space, and, after an hour of administrative work, I’d leave for the day to make cold-calls around Chicagoland.
I’d visit one or two customers, make a handful of in-person cold calls to prospects in suburban business parks, and then cut out early and drive home, usually just after lunch. With no expectation of being immediately responsive (remember the days before texting?), I could avoid phone calls from my boss under the guise of being with a customer.
Once home, I’d put on running clothes, smoke a bunch of pot, and then go on a six-mile run along Lake Michigan while my iPod shuffled the perfect playlist.
My roommate and I had been living about a mile southwest of Wrigley Field for a few months. I’d found us the perfect place to live on Craiglist: a big coach house with a basement where I could set up my drums and amps, easy street parking, and no shared walls, which meant we could blast our stereo (Outkast, The Postal Service, Modest Mouse) and smoke as much as we wanted. Plus the place cost $1300 a month, which was a steal even then. I had the life I thought I wanted.
But on that below-freezing February morning, a new and terrifying thought shocked my dormant denial: Why was I so unhappy? Until that moment, I had never been conscious of my misery. I stared into the cold blue sky as this mysterious but radically true thought shook my bones: I hated my life.
But how could I? I had everything society told me I wanted! (Note the particular society whose messaging I’d bought into.) As I turned on the ignition, I rattled off all the external things I’d acquired to convince myself that I couldn’t really be so unsatisfied: a college degree from a good school, a high-paying job, a beautiful place to live on a quiet street in Wrigleyville, a reliable car, a girlfriend who I thought was gorgeous, and enough time and money to do whatever I wanted. Haven’t I reached the holy grail of mid-20s-dom? Of life in general? Isn’t this what all my friends are doing, too? They all seemed very happy!
What I didn’t know at the time was that I was experiencing two things: one obvious (alcoholism), the other more insidious (hedonic adaptation).
The philosopher Richard B. Irvine writes about hedonic adaptation in his book A Guide to the Good Life–The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. Irvine explains that “we humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.”
My main problem at the time was that the desires I had weren’t really mine. Sixteen years later, I can say that most of my desires are really mine. Yet I still experience hedonic adaptation regularly because I am a person living on Planet Earth.
When I hear the word “hedonic,” I think of “hedonism.” Though similar, the definitions vary in significant ways. Considering how Irvine’s book discusses the psychological ramifications of hedonic adaptation, here are definitions for both words from the American Psychological Association:
Hedonic: a psychological perspective that focuses on the spectrum of experiences ranging from pleasure to pain and includes biological, social, and phenomenological aspects and their relationship to motivation and action
Hedonism: the view that all human action is ultimately motivated by desires for pleasure and the avoidance of pain
My desires until my mid-20s were purely hedonistic. No wonder I was so miserable. But now that my desires are less about always doing exactly what I want sprinkled with a consistent state of chemical-induced euphoria, how do I still fall prey to pangs of not feeling like I’m in a life that’s what I hoped for?
Irvine writes that though we get what “we might once have dreamed of,” we humans can experience hedonic adaptation in many areas of our lives. This pertains to:
Consumer purchases (“we find ourselves longing for an even wider-screen television or more extravagant handbag”)
Careers (“finally landing the job of our dreams, we will grumble about our pay, our coworkers, the failure of our boss to recognize our talents”)
Relationships (“we start out in a state of wedded bliss before we find ourselves contemplating our spouse’s flaws”)
Financial success (“[we] start taking [luxuries] for granted, the way we took [our lesser possessions] for granted”)
I wonder then: Should we all be ascetics? Why bother striving for abundance? Why bother wanting anything externally luxurious? Is going after what I want completely futile?
Irvine’s writing tells me that it’s less about the thing we want and/or achieve, and more about our relationship to process and result. This line of conversation is something my clients and I often talk about. Many times we end up circling back to a related topic of external versus internal gratitude. This means we look less at the thing we’re grateful for and more at what’s going on inside of us.
For example, I can say that I’m grateful for my bandmates. But what if I show up to rehearsal they all quit? Do I make my gratitude contingent on other people’s behavior? On things outside of me?
Yes, I can be angry, sad, disappointed, afraid, etc. That’s not only acceptable but necessary. But what I don’t want long-term is to hinge my gratitude on any external result (i.e. my bandmates). I want my deep feelings of appreciation to reside on an intrinsic plane—in this case, on the inherent nature of what it means to be in a band. For me, this is to be in a place where three people other than me believe enough in my songs to devote their time and resources to playing. That feels really good regardless of who the people are. Plus, their belief in me helps me build more belief in myself, thus enabling me (over time) to rely less and less on external validation.
Of course I should be (and am) very grateful for my bandmates. Their presence enables me to make albums and play concerts and we always have fun eating pizza and drinking Topo Chicos. However, I want to be very clear to myself that the deep happiness and satisfaction does not come from them showing up to play with me. I’ve had many bandmates come and go over the years… when they leave, should my gratitude go away, too? For me to have peace, I must reframe what I’m grateful for—i.e. my willingness to write and share my music with others and to invite people I love to join me in the process. Regardless of who plays music with me, I can still write and share my music and invite others to participate.
By cultivating internal gratitude, I maintain a more lasting and authentic satisfaction for what I have within rather than what I want outside. And if I aspire for something new within me that I don’t yet have (and let’s be honest, for the things I want externally, too), exercising the muscle of internal gratitude enables me to build a more lasting appreciation for life instead of saying to my inner critic after getting something I strived for: “I’m already over it. What’s next?!”
This leads back to Irvine’s writing. He says, “as a result of the [hedonic] adaptation process, people find themselves on a satisfaction treadmill. They are unhappy when they detect an unfulfilled desire within them. They work hard to fulfill this desire, in the belief that on fulfilling it, they will gain satisfaction. The problem, though, is that once they fulfill a desire for something, they adapt to its presence in their life and as a result stop desiring it–or at any rate, don’t find it as desirable as they once did. They end up just as dissatisfied as they were before fulfilling the desire.”
Irvine concludes that negative visualization is a way to reverse this adaptation process. I say yes to negative visualization, and an even stronger yes to the practice of intrinsic gratitude so I have less mental gunk to unlearn as life gets fuller.
How do I fill my life with things I desire? For me, getting a coach two and a half years ago was a start. Working with a coach has been instrumental to give myself space to think, articulate my inner wishes, and build tiny actions towards achieving them. The consistency of meeting with my coach enables me to: check the items off my list, appreciate myself for all the work I do, and be more aware of how I am in the world. Working with a coach also helps me cultivate self-acceptance, less shame and inner joy when I don’t do the things I say I want to do.
Most importantly, my coach slows me down to remind me how far I’ve come because no matter what, left to my own devices, I will forget.
Farewell,
Matt
P.S. Last week, after hitting send, I realized that Farewell as a subject line sans quotations might have come across as quite dramatic, especially to those who received my newsletter for the first time. I apologize if I made your stomach drop. Yikes. I’m compiling an archive of my missives and have put marks around the subject line, which I hope adds a tinge of levity.
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