You can start by doing it once a day in the morning. The best part is you can incorporate it into your day right away. This simple mindset reframe reminds you to acknowledge where you are fortunate and all your opportunities in life. She was a guest on my show, the Inspire To FIRE Podcast, and clarified why the “I Get To” mentality is so powerful.Ī quick summary of the idea is to take moments in your day to reframe your mentality by replacing “I Have To” with “I Get To.” I was fortunate enough to be introduced to this concept by Shang from Save My Cents. However, I will share some ways I’ve found to work for me and can be effective for you. That’s why I say “getting off “ the hedonic treadmill instead of “get off “ the treadmill. Getting off the treadmill requires work, attention, focus, and mindfulness. This is what the hedonic treadmill looks like: Wanting Something –> Waiting To Accomplish It To Be Happy –> Accomplish It –> Adapt –> Want Something Else. That is when I realized I was on the hedonic treadmill and needed to get off! I would have been thrilled to have a balance of $51,504 two years ago! The balance has dropped from $100,000 to $51,500 in only 2 years! I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I was excited and motivated that week.įlash forward to today, and my student loan balance is $51,500. My loan went from $100,346 to $99,346, which felt great! ![]() I was happy when my student loans crossed below $100,000. Is It Really Going To Take 3 More Years Until I Can Be Happy? I wouldn’t be able to fully pay off those student loans for another 3 years. I felt like once that happened, I would be happy! Specifically, I remember thinking about how happy I would be once my student loans were paid off. I found myself in a constant internal struggle between striving to reach financial independence as fast as possible and simultaneously trying to acknowledge the progress I had made at the time. The example above about wanting to be in a specific financial situation was how I realized I was on the hedonic treadmill. How I Realized I Was On The Hedonic Treadmill The hedonic treadmill is just another form of hedonic adaptation. The desire can be anything like an item (consumerism), a state of physical health (weight loss), or even financial (more money). ![]() This is until we find the next “desire” to make us happier. This is because once we reach something that makes us happy, as explained earlier, our minds tend to return to our baseline happiness. The hedonic treadmill is best described as our mind’s constant struggle to desire more while thinking it will lead to more happiness. I’ve found myself stuck on this for far too long until I ultimately realized I needed to change my mindset. The latter describes the hedonic treadmill. In an ideal world, our minds would only bring us back up to our base level of happiness and not bring us down after something good occurred. This is a case where hedonic adaptation can be a bad thing.Įxtreme happiness fades and leaves us seeking more happiness again. On the flip side, if something good happens that makes us extremely happy, our minds will still bring us back to our base level of happiness after a while. This is a situation where hedonic adaptation is helping us. ![]() This “adaptation” helps us deal with the curveballs that life sometimes throws at us, but it can also create an internal struggle for happiness.įor example, if something terrible happens to us that makes us unhappy, our mind can adapt and, after a while, bring us back to our base happiness level. Hedonic adaptation is the habit of our happiness level returning to a stable level despite any positive or negative changes in our life. To understand the hedonic treadmill, we first have to understand hedonic adaptation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |