Nirvana? Sorry, I Prefer The Variety Show

We’re all chasing something. At 15, I was chasing down the vault. Again. And again. And again. I remember walking back to the start of the vault runway to await another turn, the soft and worn-down carpet meeting my feet with each step. Ignoring the dull ache in my post-op right elbow that I had become so good at blocking out. I was feeling glum, defeated, and frustrated. I felt that way more often than not in those days - and I was tired of it. “Don’t worry”, I told myself, “once I get my Yurchenko back, I’ll finally be happy”. For a moment, I believed it. Then a split second later a realization materialized that shook me to the core. How many times have I told myself that before? Always the same formula “once I achieve x, then I’ll be happy”. I’d work hard, achieve x (whatever “x” may be), feel happy for a few hours or even days depending upon the importance of the goal, then return to my baseline. Surprisingly, that’s what happens to lottery winners. You may think that once you win the lottery, you’ll be so much happier from there on out, but "in a classic study that illustrates this hedonic adaptation, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) found that 18 months after winning the lottery, people were no happier than a comparison condition who did not win the lottery." (Sylvester et al., 2018). Once I saw the formula so clearly, there was no going back - the earth-shattering moment was realizing that it was not true - there was no achievement that was ever going to result in permanent happiness, self-confidence, and pride. So the next thought was “okay, then how do I find happiness?”. I felt like a child running frantically through a house opening doors to one room at a time looking for a beloved pet they lost track of - each room was empty, the panic increasing with each fruitless step in the search. Silence. Just silence. Darn it!!!

For the longest time, I thought happiness was the ultimate goal. Western culture certainly seems to place an emphasis on strong positive emotion - excitement, euphoria, whatever feeling comes with winning and accolades... and a lot of self-help books and influencers seem to tout the idea that if you weren't feeling those things all (or at least most) of the time, something is wrong with you. That was my interpretation, anyway.

When I came across the below diagram in Dr. Emma Seppala's book "The Happiness Track", it just felt like things clicked into place. In an instant, my goals for how I wanted to feel completely changed trajectory.

The engineer in me was SO EXCITED to see something as complex as human emotion laid out so simply in a chart. 2 axes, 4 quadrants. Beautiful. Elegant. Ahhh. Excuse me while I savor that for a moment...

Ok, I'm back.

As it turns out, high intensity emotions are psychologically EXHAUSTING and put you under physiological stress (faster heart rate, shallower breathing, etc). Oooh, maybe that's why I'm so tired all the time.

"Calmness, it turns out, is the key to better energy management. Cultivating calmness keeps you happy and helps you consistently achieve your goals, doing your best work without exhaustion." (Happiness Track p. 70)

My goals shifted to consider what percentage of my time I wanted to spend in each quadrant, and worked out to something like this:

Something unexpected happened - I found that when I embrace the goal of having low-intensity positive emotions, I am so much kinder to myself and less self-critical than when I am aiming for high-intensity positive emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling ecstatic and elated, it's just that there's also nothing wrong with feeling a broad range of emotions.

The "desired emotion distribution" shown above in the pie chart reflects the fact that I don't think that it is realistic, or even healthy, to not experience negative emotions at all. I don't want to fall into the trap of shame when I do feel some form of upset - it'll just keep me stuck there. I would so much rather meet those emotions with self-compassion and acknowledge that they are likely indicating that something important needs adjusting. When the gas tank indicator on my car gets close to empty, my solution is not to turn the dial up to "full" so that I don't have to face the fact that I'm about to run out of fuel - I simply visit the gas station and refuel. Our emotions work similarly to the indicators in our cars - they tell us when things are working well, and tell us when something might just need to be readjusted or rebalanced.

I encourage you to do an exercise: write down activities, thoughts, and interactions you have experienced and how you feel with each scenario - what quadrant of Dr. Emma Seppala's diagram do they fit in? For example, going for a walk on a beautiful day puts me in in the "low intensity, positive emotions" quadrant. Working in an environment where there is frequent gossip and stressed leaders who aren't clearly articulating their expectations (likely because they're receiving the same from the leaders above them) results in me having to keep high intensity negative emotions in check 40-60 hours a week (ugh, talk about exhausting). Having this information at hand makes it so much clearer how I can plan each day as well as long-term goals in order to maximize for primarily feeling content, fulfilled, and connected.

What's your balance?

References:

Seppälä, E. (2017). The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success. HarperOne.

Sylvester, B. D., Jackson, B., & Beauchamp, M. R. (2018). The Effects of Variety and Novelty on Physical Activity and Healthy Nutritional Behaviors. Advances in Motivation Science, 169–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.adms.2017.11.001