The chasing game....
02:00 Sep 22 2013
Times Read: 608
This article really speaks to many people that just have to chase...even if what they are chasing will not bring them the joy they ultimately want. I once was a chaser...not anymore, happiness found me. (not all are that lucky though)
How Desire Fools Us: The Benefits and Dangers of The Chase
Desire brings us joy. Learn to harness its benefits while avoiding its dangers.
Published on August 13, 2013 by Emma M. Seppala, Ph.D. in Feeling It
Why do we love to chase? What is so intriguingly attractive about hard-to-get partners, Black Friday sales, and the very latest iPhone? Whether it's for a trophy, a promotion, a slice at a popular pizza parlor, or Twitter followers, desire simply gets us all fired up.
Anticipatory Joy
A cat will chase a toy mouse because a good chase activates its brain's reward system. The same is true for us. We experience anticipatory joy. In other words, anticipation of a desired outcome makes us feel good. Research by Stanford University's Brian Knutson shows that just looking at the object of our desire activates neural signals associated with the release of dopamine (a neurotransmitter released during reward signaling) in the brain. Knutson's research suggests that we don't just derive happiness from attaining, receiving, or consuming the object of our desires, we also do so from anticipating it i.e. it's not just eating the cake that makes us happy but also staring at it through the storefront. Think of anticipating a fantastic vacation, or a reunion with a friend you haven't seen in a long time, or a meal at your favorite restaurant. This may be the reason why people go window-shopping, gamble, test-drive ferarris or go to strip clubs. Although they can't possess the object of their desire, they experience the titillating state of anticipatory joy.
Loving The Chase Helps us Survive & Thrive
In his book Authentic Happiness, psychologist Martin Seligman describes a telling story of a pet iguana who refused to eat and was slowly starving to death until, one day, he saw his owner eating a sandwich. That's when the iguana pounced on the plate with the sandwich. The iguana would rather starve to death than not experience the pleasure of chasing, hunting and capturing the food. This anticipatory joy - prevalent in both animals and humans - probably helped us survive (pursuit of food sources) and ensured our reproduction as a species (pursuit of sexual partners). Anticipatory joy also helps us complete more complex and challenging goals by providing us with the determination, excitement, and grit needed to complete marathons, college or graduate school degrees, or fluency in a foreign language. We enjoy chasing our dreams and also value things more if we have worked for them.
However, our love of a good chase carries with it some dangers to be aware of. Can we avoid the pitfalls of chasing while still harnessing the benefits of anticipatory joy? You bet! Here's how:
HOW TO AVOID THE DANGERS
1) Runnin' for Nothin'
Oftentimes, the things we chase don't bring us what we want. Dan Gilbert at Harvard has shown that we are terrible at predicting what will or will not make us happy and we often overestimate the amount of happiness something will bring us. Just like a cat who will chase its toy but lose interest as soon as it catches the toy, we sometimes do too.When we finally get what we want - whether it's winning the lottery, receiving the promotion, or finding the perfect job - we often find that we are not as happy as we thought we would be. Some people love to seduce but as soon as their romantic partner is smitten, they lose interest; others purchase a dream car, and shortly thereafter want to trade it in or regret not having chosen a different model. Our anticipatory joy itself deceives us. We falling prey to habituation or the negativity bias (described in this post).
2) Risking Health and Happiness
When we don't find the joy we were expecting, we move on to the next chase…sometimes ad infinitum. Many will go from relationship to relationship, car to car, apartment to apartment and job to job. The chase is like that of a dehydrated man running after a fata morgana - the mirage of an oasis in the desert. In some cases, the chase runs our lives. Research by Michael Treadway has shown that people who are more motivated to work hard also release greater amounts of dopamine in reward areas of the brain. Many overachieving Ivy Leaguers and CEO's are on the treadmill of workaholism which is just another chase in disguise. Granted, this kind of chase may pay off and result in external rewards such as validation, fame, power or money. However, it also often comes at a high cost: exhaustion, divorce, and health problems. Others succumb retail therapy or get addicted to gambling. Consumed with the chase, they miss out on our life, on being in the present moment with loved ones, on savoring what they already have.
3) Being Taken for a Ride
Marketers play on our anticipatory joy by telling us that we will be happier if we buy or consume certain products. Sales, discounts and special offers are nothing but a play on anticipatory joy. So are casinos and horse-races. Driven by anticipatory joy (that can turn into addiction), recreational drug users often describe their addiction as a constant chase after that elusive first high.
HOW TO HARNESS THE BENEFITS
Chasing has its benefits that we can harness with awareness. For example, it can also help us achieve our professional and personal goals. Positive Psychologists agree that there are benefits to having goals, especially when it comes to goals with meaning. A life of meaning is a life well lived. So how can we work with the positive effects of loving a good chase (the willingness to work hard, for example), without falling prey to its possible dangers?
1. Use Anticipatory Joy as a Tool
Be aware of your brain's love of a chase, and use it as a tool to foster the enthusiasm and energy you need to complete your goals. Rev up your anticipatory joy by looking forward to your end result, whether it is recognition or payment or even the satisfaction of crossing it off of your to-do list. Whatever the source of your anticipatory joy, use it as a motivator but also remember to stay realistic about the fact that the end goal may not bring you the unbounded pleasure you imagine.
2. Maintain Balance and Keep it Real
Learn to maintain a balance. If your anticipatory gets you over-excited, learn to calm yourself down (try breathing exercises, like the ones I describe in this post or meditation whose impact I describe in this post), write in your diary and reason with yourself as you would with a friend, or speak to others who have gone through the experiences you are about to have and can help you realistically assess the amount of joy you will derive from them.
3. Remember What the Research Says about True Happiness
Remember that happiness researchers agree that the key to happiness - after having adequate food and shelter - lies in personal relationships and social connection (as I've described at length in this post this post and this post). Most importantly, recent research shows that some of the deepest feelings of fulfillment don't actually come from buying, purchasing, acquiring or succeeding at all, but that they actually come from giving (see this post).
4. Contemplate that the Source of Joy May Be Inside You
Many philosophies entertain the intriguing idea that the secret to happiness lies with in us. If you remember anything from this post, take this last question with you: If you yourself are activating your brain's own reward circuits by thinking of or seeing your desired object (before you even have a chance to possess it), then where is the real source of joy? Is the key to reward or happiness really in that object, or is it in fact inside of you?
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See also ccare.stanford.edu
© 2013 Emma Seppala, Ph.D.
An article I found on LONELINESS06:49 Sep 20 2013
Times Read: 622
Why Loneliness Is a Trap and How to Break Free
How loneliness impacts our perceptions and behaviors in self-defeating ways
Published on September 19, 2013 by Guy Winch, Ph.D. in The Squeaky Wheel
Loneliness is a personal and subjective experience, one which is defined not by the quantity of our relationships but by their subjective quality. Not all lonely people live in isolation. A person might have many friends around them or live with a partner, yet still feel the deep ache of emotional or social isolation (read Are You Married but Lonely here).
For some of us, loneliness begins gradually. One friend moves away, another has a child, a third works a seventy hour work week, and before we know it the social circle that had sustained us in the past ceases to exist and we find ourselves spending most of our weekends alone. For others, loneliness is a result of life transitions such as leaving for college, enlisting in the military, losing a partner to death or divorce, starting a new job, retiring and losing the daily company of collegues and associates, or moving to a new town or country.
How Loneliness Entraps Us
Loneliness fosters a self-defeating psychology that makes it difficult to escape its clutches. Complicating matters, lonely people are likely to encounter a variety of societal responses that marginalize them even further. The longer our loneliness lasts, that more challenging it can be to break the mindsets and judgments (both ours and others’) that contribute to maintaining our isolation. Specifically:
1. Loneliness impacts our perceptions such that we are likely to view our existing relationships more negatively and pessimistically. We assume people aren’t interested in our company and that if we reach out to them they will reject us and turn us down. As a result we take little initiative and find excuses to turn down invitations when we do get them.
2. Our negativity and reluctance to give our friends the benefit of the doubt creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in which our own reactions and avoidance pushes them away even further. Because we remain blind to our part in creating the distance, we see their withdrawal as confirmation of our fears and become even more convinced they no longer care about us.
3. Loneliness is very visible to others who are likely to label us as less interesting and less appealing as social prospects. This stigma, combined with the negativity and suspicion we might project in social situations makes it challenging for us to establish new social and romantic connections.
4. Loneliness is contagious. Studies of social networks found that over time, lonely people ‘infect’ those around them such that they too become pushed to the periphery of their social networks (read more about loneliness and contagion here). As a result, our remaining friends and social contacts might provide diminishing opportunities for social connection.
5. The more socially and emotionally isolated we are the more our social skills and relationship ‘muscles’ tend to atrophy. Skill sets often weaken when unused and our ability to connect and relate can easily get rusty after a period of isolation. If things go badly when we try to use these ‘muscles’ we don’t attribute the failure or rejection to our skill sets being rusty but see it as further evidence of our fundamental undesirability.
How to Break Free of Loneliness
In order to emerge from our loneliness we have to do several things, all of which involve taking a leap of faith in one form or another.
1. Take initiative. If you’re socially isolated, consider volunteering, doing community service, or an activity you enjoy, as these are good ways to meet people. In addition, try going through your phone and email address books as well as your Facebook and other social media contacts and make a list of people you haven’t seen or spoken to for a while. Don’t psych yourself out and tell yourself they’re not interested. Instead:
2. Give others the benefit of the doubt. Once you’ve compiled your list of friends and acquaintances, reach out to one of them each day. Yes, they might not have been in touch for a while or returned your phone call from two months earlier but give them the benefit of the doubt. Invite them to have coffee, a drink, or even a catch-up on the phone and you’ll be surprised by how many of them will happily make plans—especially if you remember to:
3. Approach people with optimism. It’s perfectly normal to fear rejection, but you have to get yourself in the right frame of mind when you contact people so the vibe you put out is positive and inviting (rather than overly cautious and uninviting). Getting into a positive head-space is also important when you contact people on line. Emoticons can be very useful. “How have you been? :)” is much more appealing than “Haven’t heard from you in two months, wanna get together?”
The bottom line is that you have to recognize your loneliness for what it is—a trap that requires effort, bravery, and a leap of faith to escape. Freedom will be sweet once you do.
For more techniques for overcoming loneliness check out Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries (Hudson Street Press, 2013).
Join my mailing list and receive an exclusive gift: How to Recover from Rejection
I also discuss loneliness in a talk I gave at Google NYC which you can see on YouTube here.
Copyright 2013 Guy Winch
Follow me on Twitter @GuyWinch
On a personal note: I sent this article to a friend of mine because she is going through a loneliness spell and I was hoping this might get through to her. I thought maybe there is someone on VR that might know someone or who is going through this and they might find it useful.
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