Why We’re Never Going to Be Satisfied With Life

The lengths people will go to avoid boredom are shocking. Literally.

A 2014 study published in Science observed participants who were asked to sit in a room and think for fifteen minutes. The room was empty except for a device that allowed participants to mildly but painfully electrocute themselves.

“Why would anyone want to do that?” you might ask.

The study demonstrated that people dislike being alone with their thoughts so much, they’ll prefer to do anything else, even if that activity is negative.

It’s been defined as “a phenomenon in which negative events are more salient and demand attention more powerfully than neutral or positive events.”

Such pessimism begins very early in life. Babies begin to show signs of negativity bias starting at just 7 months of age, suggesting this tendency is inborn.

As the author of one study concluded, “It appears to be a basic, pervasive fact of psychology that bad is stronger than good.” Good things are nice, but bad things can kill you. That’s why we pay attention to the bad stuff first and remember it better.

If you’ve ever chewed on something that you did, or that someone did to you, over and over again, then you’ve experienced rumination, which is our tendency to keep thinking about bad experiences.

This “passive comparison of one’s current situation with some unachieved standard,” can manifest in self-critical thoughts such as, “Why can’t I handle things better?”

As one study notes, “By reflecting on what went wrong and how to rectify it, people may be able to discover sources of error or alternative strategies, ultimately leading to not repeating mistakes and possibly doing better in the future.”

Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction no matter what happens to us in life and may be the cruelest of all 4 factors.

Hedonic adaptation is Mother Nature’s bait-and-switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don’t—or at least, not for long.

As David Myers writes in The Pursuit Of Happiness, “Every desirable experience—passionate love, a spiritual high, the pleasure of a new possession, the exhilaration of success—is transitory.”

Dissatisfaction is responsible for our species’ advancements, and if you never felt it, you’d be at a serious disadvantage. Discontent is not a reason to give up on success. Rather, it’s a reason to introduce the opportunity for frequent and meaningful victories into our lives.

Every day is a chance to live according to our values, which Nir Eyal defines as “attributes of the person we want to be”. Living out our values means spending our time purposefully on the things that we decide are important.

We can live out our values—very concretely—if we build our values into our calendar. That “simply” means scheduling time for what matters most. By turning our values into time, we make sure we have time for traction.

At the end of the day, we can look at what we intended to do, compare it to what we ended up doing, and celebrate our victory when we stayed on track.

If you (still) find yourself feeling unhappy with life, that doesn’t mean you’ve been defeated.

The takeaway here is that if you’re unhappy, you’re normal.