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Remember, the human body has Performance Requirements: food, exercise, and rest are not optional. Health is a major contributing factor to happiness: when you feel great, you’re more likely to feel happy.Įxperimenting with ways to improve your typical level of health and energy can result in huge improvements in your quality of life. Focus on improving your health and energy.
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Knowing your monetary point of Diminishing Returns is useful: by consciously limiting your consumption beyond a certain point and establishing long-term savings, you can reap the benefits of financial security and Resilience without spending every waking moment working to pay for pleasures you’ll adapt to in less than a month.Ģ. Once you have enough money to cover the necessities and a few luxuries, you reach a point of Diminishing Returns. Work to make “enough” money.: Money contributes to happiness, but only to a certain point. Short-circuiting the Hedonic Treadmill is tricky. Based on the available research, here are five priorities that will contribute to your long-term happiness in a way that minimizes hedonic adaptation:ġ. As a result, we begin seeking something new, and the cycle repeats. When we finally achieve or acquire what we’re seeking, we adapt to our success in a very short period of time, and our success no longer gives us pleasure. This cycle is called the Hedonic Treadmill: we pursue pleasurable things because we think they’ll make us happy. Before long, your new car will blend into your surroundings, and your mind will fixate on something else to pursue in the quest for happiness. Over time, however, your joy will fade, a phenomenon psychologists call hedonic adaptation. In the short term, it might: for the first week or so, you’ll probably experience great pleasure when you drive. Let’s assume that you believe buying a fancy new car will make you happy.
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