Our brains are super complex but sometimes the nuance gets lost when the wires cross between our conscious and subconscious, our prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. This is when we need to be super intentional and really think about why our intuition is telling us.  This series will dive into some of the ways, the biases, our brain gets it wrong so that we can be better prepared the next time we notice this happening. 

One way our brains get it wrong is that we don’t even realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff.  This is called Impact Bias, which we discuss right now. 

Transcript:

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and I was listening to the Yale happiness course by Dr. Laurie Santos and yesterday we talked about this idea that our minds are built to get used to stuff, but what Dr. Santos says is even more nuanced is that we don’t even realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff.  

This is problematic because the things we seek out that we think will make us happy, we think it will make us happy for a long time, but that’s simply not true, our minds think it will and we want to believe our mind, our intuition, but it’s scientifically not true.  Dr. Santos calls this just an illusion.  We think eating the 7th cookie will taste as good as the first, but it won’t.   

Again, Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues came up with a word that describes this phenomenon that we don’t even realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff, and it’s called, Impact Bias.  He says it’s “the tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future event both in terms of intensity and it’s duration”.  

As I read that quote, I thought about the random impromptu brunch with friends that was so fun.  There was no expectation.  As opposed to a New Years Eve party, where there is so much expectation.  I totally overestimated my happiness for the New Years Eve party and had no expectations for a brunch I had no time to think about.   

So, why are we so bad at this?  Why can’t we change this?  Well, Daniel Gilbert has this term called Focalism.  “The tendency to think just about one event and forget the other things that happen” in our lives.  So we predict losing a job is the worst thing ever.  But we don’t think about other things, like getting a new job, making new friends.   When we focus on the one narrow thing, we mispredict, but if we can zoom out, and look beyond that moment, we can create a better prediction.   

So, if you are feeling like something is going to cause great distress in your life.  One way to counterbalance that, is to take a wider view of other things that may happen to tip the scales to the happier side of the coin. 

Until next time. 

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