The upside of “getting used to things”

This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 11/21/22.

Chicago got cold real fast last week.

Like so cold. I was freezing!

It was definitely amplified by the fact that a week prior, temps were unseasonably warm (60s! 70s!). But in any case, the freezing temps – combined with the sun setting at 4:30 PM – had me wondering, really? How do I do this again? How do I get through winter?

It’s amazing how quickly we adjust and how quickly we forget, right?

This experience makes me think of something called hedonic adaption.

Dr. Laurie Santos, professor of psychology and head of Silliman College at Yale University, describes the idea as a “fancy way of saying‘we get used to stuff.’” As author and professor Dr. Cassie Holmes describes in her book, Happier Hour, that “seeing the same thing, doing the same thing, or being with the same person again and again lowers its impact on our emotional experience.”

We’re adaptable. With continued and related exposure, we adjust.

I think this idea is really powerful, and through understanding that we have a natural tendency to adapt and get used to things, there’s some ways we can harness – and offset the effect – to improve our happiness levels on a small, day-to-day basis.

There’s a lot I’m interested in about this topic, so I’m planning on writing about it next Monday too. 🙂

 But for today, I want to focus on the upside of hedonic adaption.

If hedonic adaption = “getting used to stuff” and “lowering our emotional experience of something through continued and related exposure,” that means hedonic adaption can be pretty helpful in unpleasant situations. Over time, hedonic adaption diminishes the pain. That’s good news! 

I’m sure we can all think of a time when we’ve gone through something really tough. At first, it’s really hard. Whatever happened feels all-consuming and we wonder if life will ever feel normal again. But our ability to adapt makes us surprisingly resilient.

Because of hedonic adaption, when I get in my head about certain fears or worries and forecast nervously into the future, I remind myself that – no matter what – I will adapt. I’m wired to do so.

I found the conversation at around the 15-mintue mark in this podcast episode fascinating. It centered around how we’re not the best at accurately mental forecasting how we’re going to feel weeks, months, years from a certain situation. Our emotional predictions of how things will feel are often way off track – we’re wrong about how intense something will feel and how long we’ll feel that way. It’s just not possible to mentally simulate all the different circumstances that will happen in reality.

I loved when Dr. Santos said here, “We don’t take risks because we think, oh, if that happens, something bad will happen and a bad outcome and how horrible that will be. Well, your brain’s just going to adapt to it anyway, so put yourself out there.”

It’s not to say everything should be easy and that all pain goes away completely. But at least for me, this idea feels reassuring.

In not-so-serious situations, I find it helpful to think of hedonic adaption too.

Like last week, when I was getting down about the weather.

I allowed myself to feel down and frustrated. But I also reminded myself that the start of anything new or different feels hard. I will get used to living in the winter season. The extra time to bundle and layer before going outside will become second-nature. The sun setting so early won’t always be so jarring. A week of 20-degree weather will make a 35-degree day feel balmy.

I’ll adapt. I always do!  

But for the good hedonic adaption can offer, there’s also a pretty big downfall. While it’s helpful for diminishing the pain of bad experiences, this same tendency can also diminish the pleasure of good experiences. It’s why some even call this idea the hedonic “treadmill” instead of hedonic adaption. We get used to the good stuff, too.

And finding ways to offset that is what I can’t wait to talk about next week – more to come! 🙂

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