Imagine you’re receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Human Magnificence. You hear wild applause as your name is called. It feels great. A few minutes later, however, the ceremony is over and you are back to who you were before it. Why? Because your happy chemicals have been reabsorbed. Though you may enjoy some more when you reminisce, your brain will go back to scanning for potential threats as well. And it will find some: Was my speech well received? What if they hate my next project? Why didn’t my friends come to the ceremony? If you expect your award to bring constant happiness, you will be disappointed.
Everyone’s happy chemicals droop, which is why everyone looks for ways to stimulate more. That’s how our brain is designed to work. Even if you discovered a new planet, the happy-chemical surge would not last. You could look at your planet every day, but you would not feel the full joy of discovering it in every moment. You would want that feeling again, though. You’d try to fulfill that need with the pathways you have, which might motivate you to look for another planet.
But if you found one just like the last, it would not feel as good as the first time. You’d have to find a bigger planet to get that surge. This brain we’ve inherited saves the happy chemicals for new information. The same old information does not get them going.
I experienced the brain’s indifference to old information in a local flower shop. I was thrilled by a fabulous smell when I walked in the door, and decided to buy a bouquet so I could keep enjoying it. After I paid for the bouquet, I took one last deep breath before heading to my car. I was surprised to find that I hardly smelled anything! It was not new information.
The fading of happy chemicals motivates us to keep renewing our survival efforts, but it leaves us curiously vulnerable to frustration. You might blame your frustration on “our society” until you understand its physiology. Your brain is always comparing the world to the early experiences that built your circuits. When you were young, everything was new, so you often experienced things as “the best ever” or “the worst ever.” That caused a neurochemical surge big enough to wire in a circuit. But the next time you eat the same pizza, it’s not “the best you ever had.” The next time you suffer the same public humiliation, it’s not “the worst you’ve ever had.” Life often falls short of your expectations because you built those expectations when the information was new.
I feel a surge of joy when I smell coffee beans grinding. But if I comment on the smell to the baristas, I’ve often found that they don’t know what I’m talking about. If I got a job at a coffee shop with the expectation of feeling joy all the time, I would be disappointed.
Each of the happy chemicals disappoints in its own way. This chapter explores dopamine disappointment, oxytocin disappointment, endorphin disappointment, and serotonin disappointment. Then we will examine the vicious cycle that results when we rush to relieve bad feelings by stimulating good feelings. You can build a virtuous cycle instead when you understand these impulses.
Dopamine is triggered by new rewards. That’s why the first lick of an ice cream cone is heaven. Ten licks later, your attention wanders. You start thinking about the next thing on your agenda, and the next. You still love the ice cream, but you don’t feel it as much because your brain doesn’t see it as new information. Your brain is already looking for the next great way to meet your needs. Old rewards, even creamy, delicious ones, don’t command your brain’s attention. Scientists call this habituation.
How can a person be happy with a brain that habituates to good things? Philosophers have long contemplated this dilemma, and now scientists and even gastronomists are getting into the act. The top-rated restaurant in America is based on the science of pleasure. The French Laundry serves only small plates because, according to founder and head chef Thomas Keller, a dish only pleases the palate for the first three or four bites. After that, you are just filling up instead of experiencing ecstasy. So the famous California wine-country establishment triggers joy over and over by sending a lot of tiny new dishes to your table.
What if you went to the French Laundry and fell in love with one particular dish? Imagine that you persuaded the chef to make you a full plate of it. When it comes, you dive in with excitement. But after a few bites, you’re disappointed. You wonder if they messed up. Maybe they did something different? No, it’s just not new information anymore, so your happy chemicals don’t respond. It’s hard to believe you’re perceiving it differently, because you are not aware of your own habituation.
The brain triggers joy when it encounters any new way to meet its needs. New food. New love. New places. New techniques. After a while, the new thing doesn’t measure up. “It’s not the way I remember it.” You may wish you could trade it in for another new thing. But when you understand your brain, you realize the disappointment comes from you rather than the thing itself.
Dopamine disappointment is easier to accept when you understand its survival value. Imagine your ancestor finding a river full of fish. He’s very excited as he runs back to tell his clan about it. Dopamine creates the energy to run back, and the memory to find the spot again. Then its job is over. Your ancestor might feel happiness in other ways:
But his dopamine will dip unless he finds an even bigger run of fish. He will look hard for more fish because he knows how good it feels.
When your dopamine dips, you suddenly notice your cortisol so you’re more aware of threats. You want the bad feeling to stop so you look for a way to “do something.” You know from experience that an immediate happy-chemical stimulator will work, if only for a moment. This conundrum is easy to imagine from the perspective of a teenager at a gambling casino. He wins $50, and a huge dopamine surge wires his brain to expect a good feeling from gambling. The next time he feels bad, the idea of gambling pops into his head. But when he goes, the great feeling doesn’t happen. He keeps expecting it, though, so he keeps gambling. Soon he’s feeling bad about all the money he lost. The bad feeling drives him to look for a way to feel better, which activates the thought of more gambling. You can have a gambling habit at any age, but a young brain more easily builds neural highways big enough to outlast multiple disappointments.
Healthy behaviors lead to a dopamine dip as well. Imagine a child winning a spelling bee. She suddenly feels more respect (serotonin) and acceptance (oxytocin) than ever. She wants that good feeling again, so she spends a lot of time studying spelling words. Her dopamine is stimulated each time she mentally seeks and finds the spelling of a word, because she linked that to a big reward. The steady stream of dopamine distracts her from any bad feelings she may have. In a world full of threats you can’t control, it’s nice to know you can feel good whenever you want just by picking up a dictionary. But the day will come when the habit disappoints. If the girl wins a few more spelling competitions, the thrill will eventually droop. To get more of it, she will set her sights on a new reward. Whether it’s the school talent show or getting into medical school, each step will trigger dopamine once she links it to meeting her needs.
Dopamine disappoints whether you’ve linked it to a healthy or unhealthy way of meeting your needs. Like the juiced-up monkeys in Chapter 2, your brain takes the juice you have for granted instead of cranking out more happy chemicals. But if you lose the juice you took for granted, you’re darned unhappy. Managing such a brain is not easy, but it’s the responsibility that comes with the gift of life.
Drug addicts say they are always “chasing the first high.” The first use of a drug triggers more pleasure than you could ever get from a natural source of happy chemicals. But the second time, it’s no longer the most intense experience ever—unless you take more than you did the first time. You constantly choose between disappointment and taking more.
Our brain chases the first high, whether it’s a natural high or an artificial high. Artificial highs build artificially big circuits and have big side effects, but even natural happiness stimulators have harmful side effects if repeated too often. People are tempted to repeat a happy habit despite the consequences because a droop in your happy chemicals leaves you face to face with your cortisol. Whether you are seeking the next margarita or the next career opportunity, your dopamine flows the moment you start seeking it, but when you get it, it’s not as thrilling as you expected.
The act of seeking is more rewarding than you probably realize. If you decide that a doughnut is the way to feel good, your dopamine flows as you search for a parking spot near the doughnut shop. It’s the same mental activity as foraging: scanning the world for details leading to a reward. When you find a parking spot, your dopamine soars. But when you finally get the doughnut, dopamine droops quickly because it has already done its job.
Computer games are alluring because of this urge to seek. But disappointment quickly sets in if you seek the same reward over and over. That’s why computer games focus on getting to the next level. You feel excited because you are approaching a new reward, even though it doesn’t meet any real needs.
Museums and shopping malls are other popular ways to stimulate the pleasure of seeking. They would lose their appeal if they always looked the same, so new exhibits and new merchandise are always brought in. If you have ever lost interest in a shopping mall or museum or computer game, you might have said “it’s not as good as it used to be.” You didn’t realize the change was in you—you stopped releasing dopamine because there was no new information for your brain to process.
Collecting is a popular hobby because it overcomes dopamine disappointment. A collector always has something to seek. When he finds it, he avoids dopamine droop by starting the next quest. A collection gives you many “needs” to fill, and you have to process a lot of detail so your mind is always distracted from unhappy chemicals. You can also bond with other collectors to stimulate oxytocin. And if you one-up other collectors, you enjoy serotonin. You never hear collectors say, “I don’t need anything else. I’ll just enjoy my collection as it is.” You have to keep seeking to keep stimulating dopamine.
Planning a project triggers dopamine. A big project like a party, home remodel, or life transition stimulates excitement with each step because you’ve linked that goal to your needs. Dopamine gets you through the inevitable frustration of a long-term project. But once the party is over or the house is remodeled, your dopamine droops. You don’t know why you feel bad, and you think maybe something is wrong. If you start a new project, you feel better.
Travel is a great dopamine stimulator. It bombards your senses with new inputs that you have to process in order to reach your goal of being a worldly person, or just to do a simple task like get breakfast. Planning a trip stimulates dopamine as you anticipate the great feeling of being at your destination. And when you arrive at that tropical paradise with its perfect bands of blue and white, you get a rush of excitement. But in a few minutes, you are busy looking for your toothbrush. The next morning, you may feel excitement again when you wake up and see where you are. But as the day wears on, you become who you were before the vacation.
Dopamine has fueled human accomplishment. Thomas Edison stayed up late, seeking filament for a light bulb. Diseases were cured because researchers spent long hours sifting and sorting details in search of patterns. When they found what they were looking for, they typically set out in search of a new goal. Our brains were not designed for sitting around contemplating what we already have. They don’t release excitement for nothing. They were meant to dip after a spurt so we have to do something again.
Romantic love is perhaps the most familiar example of dopamine disappointment. When people are “in love,” they don’t realize they are riding high on the dopamine of a long quest. But the same old reward does not excite dopamine forever. It dips, and then unhappy chemicals get your attention. You may blame the bad feeling on your partner. You may think your partner is “not who she used to be.” You may even decide that a new partner would make you happy, because the last new partner triggered a surge that built a pathway. But if you seek the excitement of new love all the time, you may create a vicious cycle.
If you bite into a brownie that’s the best you ever tasted, the second bite cannot be “the best you’ve ever tasted.” The first bite triggers a surge of dopamine, but the surge fades even as you polish off the brownie. Your brain saves dopamine for new information instead of wasting it on the same old rewards. The same is true when you get a smile from a special someone, or a nice career boost. Your dopamine surges at first, but continued rewards don’t trigger continued dopamine. When your dopamine droops, it feels like something is wrong with the world, or with you. That disappointment feels less threatening when you know your brain is making way for the new. Notice your dopamine droop when:
The great feeling of endorphin always droops in a short time because that promotes survival. Masking pain feels good, but you need to feel your pain in order to take action to relieve it. If you expect constant happiness from endorphin, you will be disappointed.
Exercise triggers the euphoric feeling, but if you repeat the same exercise routine, you won’t feel the same response you did the first time. It takes an increase in exertion to the point of pain to stimulate endorphin. So if you took the drastic step of inflicting pain on yourself to get a rush of endorphin, it would take more and more pain to trigger the same good feeling.
Starving yourself stimulates endorphin, but you have to starve more and more to keep getting that feeling. Starving triggers endorphin because it helped our ancestors forage in lean times. The ability to seek on an empty stomach promotes survival. If you’ve ever missed a couple of meals, you may have started feeling a little high. The good feeling stopped as soon as you ate something, but you ate anyway because you know that nutrition is necessary for survival.
Hurting your body to enjoy the endorphin is a mistaken path to happiness. It can only lead to a tragic vicious cycle in which you continually need to experience more pain to get the same endorphin rush. This cycle of endorphin disappointment helps us understand why people who hurt themselves seem inclined to hurt themselves more. When the oblivion of endorphin is over, you are suddenly face to face with reality. You may not like your reality, but we are not meant to ignore pain except for a brief emergency window. We are meant to live with the droop.
If you don’t exercise, you should. But if you count on the endorphin joy you get at first, you may not continue. Exercise feels good even without endorphin because it fills your blood with oxygen that goes to your head. If you think you need to exercise to the point of an endorphin high, you will end up injured. We did not evolve to inflict pain on ourselves intentionally to get an endorphin high. Pain warns you of an imminent survival threat. In the world before emergency rooms and anesthesia, a bad feeling was incentive enough to avoid pain-inflicting behaviors.
Opium derivatives (heroin, oxycodone, morphine, codeine) stimulate endorphin, but they have terrible side effects:
Social pain does not trigger endorphin, but the euphoria of endorphin masks social pain. This is why it allures people to the point of enduring physical pain. Tragically, more pain results from this quest for oblivion.
Endorphin evolved for emergencies. The euphoria of endorphin doesn’t last because we need to feel pain to make good decisions. If you subject your body to pain just to get the endorphin, your body redefines what counts as an emergency. You have to keep subjecting yourself to more pain if you want to keep getting an endorphin high. When your endorphin droops, you suddenly notice the reality of your circumstances. Your brain is designed to notice reality because that promotes survival. It would be nice to laugh your way to constant endorphin highs, but it’s good to know that endorphin droop is natural and you are designed to manage the reality that comes with it. Notice your endorphin droop in these situations:
A good way to understand oxytocin disappointment is to imagine yourself getting a massage. The first few moments feel phenomenal. Then your mind drifts, and you can literally forget that you are receiving a massage. You enjoy it, of course, but the oxytocin explosion doesn’t last. You might blame your massage therapist, unless you know that your brain habituates to things, even great things.
Oxytocin is released at birth, easing the stress of coming into the world. But soon you need more. Animals lick their young and humans cuddle them to induce the release of oxytocin. The flow of oxytocin wires the child to trust the parent and to release oxytocin in similar circumstances. It would be nice to enjoy that feeling all the time, but if you think you can love everyone everywhere, you would take candy from strangers and eventually buy bridges from strangers. Your oxytocin must turn off after it turns on so you can respond to new information about your social environment.
Oxytocin protected your ancestors from leaving the tribe every time someone got on their nerves. It saved them from the dangers that befall lone individuals in the wilderness. Today, oxytocin protects you from quitting your job the minute a coworker wrinkles his forehead at you. It keeps you from running away from home the minute your relatives cluck their tongues at your latest adventure. When your oxytocin is flowing, it’s easier to overlook reminders of past disappointments and betrayals.
But when an oxytocin spurt fades, your past disappointments are suddenly more accessible. You can be so alert for threats that you feel attacked by a slight change in tone. Social threats seem to expand when the bubble of oxytocin is gone.
Children on a playground learn about social trust. When they get support, the good feeling wires them to expect more where that came from. When their cortisol is triggered, they learn not to expect support in certain quarters. If a classmate helps you with homework, you feel good and a path to your oxytocin is paved. But if a trusted companion insists on copying your homework, you have a dilemma.
Oxytocin creates the bonds that lead to gangs, wars, battered spouse syndrome, and perjuring yourself to protect allies from the consequences of their actions. People do drastic things to sustain their oxytocin bonds because an oxytocin droop feels like a survival threat.
My grandparents came from Sicily, where the Mafia builds social bonds with the threat of violence. Mafias offer the illusion of safety by promising protection from violence if you cooperate. You’re not safe for long, alas, because the predators will see you as prey rather than an ally when it meets their needs. You learn that you cannot trust anyone. This sense of isolation leaves you feeling so endangered that you’re eager to trust those who offer protection and goodwill gestures. A vicious oxytocin cycle results.
No one mentioned the Mafia when I was growing up, and I presumed it was an invention of Hollywood. But when I researched my cultural heritage, I was horrified to discover the wretched lives of my ancestors. Surviving in a culture of violence means choosing at every moment between the survival threat of not cooperating and the survival threat of cooperating. Trust sounds like a virtue, but trusting a predator who expects complete submission may not promote survival . . . or it may. The uncertainty is staggering.
Gangs are an especially tragic example of oxytocin disappointment, because young brains are involved. Young people join gangs for protection from aggression, yet end up subjected to more aggression. The impulse is easy to understand in animals because common enemies keep a mammal group together despite internal aggression:
Gangs, like herds, stick together despite enormous internal agression because they fear external aggression even more. A gang needs the aggression of rival gangs to keep up the safe feeling associated with membership. Oxytocin makes it feel good to be “one of the gang” until the next betrayal, and the conflict keeps cycling.
Battered spouse syndrome and battered child syndrome are similar tragedies of oxytocin disappointment. Abused individuals sometimes cover up for their abusers instead of promoting their own survival. They blame themselves for the betrayal of trust and desperately seek ways to rekindle it. Instead of building new trust with new people, they keep trying to build it with the abuser because they’re wired to expect good feelings from them.
An alcoholic looking for someone to drink with is another example of oxytocin disappointment. People seek trust from those they expect to give it to them. Eaters bond with eaters, drug users bond with drug users, shoppers bond with shoppers, and angry ragers bond with angry ragers. These bonds help you feel good about yourself despite your drinking or shopping or raging. But when you decide to get control of your habit, you may be shocked to find that these allies do not support you. They may even undermine your efforts to conquer your habit. Many people end up continuing an unhealthy habit rather than risk their friendships. They tell themselves their “friends” make them feel good. The nice, safe feeling of trust doesn’t last, of course, so they keep seeking the safety of social alliances in the ways that worked before.
The pain of disappointed trust enters every life. We all seek safety from social bonds and occasionally discover that we are less safe than we thought. That’s why it’s important to keep updating your information about your social alliances. You may find that you have a lot more choices than you realized. If you try to sustain your oxytocin at any price, you might overlook real threats. Oxytocin disappointment feels bad, but it frees you to make good survival decisions about the world around you.
You may think good parenting could wire a brain for endless oxytocin. Or that you’d enjoy an endless flow if you were accepted by a particular group. It would be nice to have a safe sense of belonging all the time, and it’s tempting to dream of a world that makes this happen for you. But reality keeps falling short of this dream because people are mammals.
If your parents put your needs first when you were young, disappointment strikes when you learn that the rest of the world doesn’t treat you this way. And if your parents were not worthy of your trust, then you learned about disappointment even earlier. Either way, oxytocin droop is distressing, but it enables young mammals to transfer their attachment from their mother to their peers, and thus to reproduce.
You may have dreamed of joining a group that would make you feel good forever, and then felt disillusioned when you were finally accepted by it. It’s easy to idealize people from afar, especially people whose protection you seek. Once you gain admission, you see that these people are, well, mammals. You might start thinking that another group or organization would make you happy forever. A vicious cycle can result. Making new pathways to turn on your oxytocin will help break that cycle.
Most species have distinctive markings that instantly separate members from nonmembers. An antelope with one black stripe on its butt can instantly distinguish itself from antelopes with two black stripes or one black and one white stripe. This is how it avoids following the wrong crowd into an ecological niche it’s not adapted to. Human groups are also known for their distinctive markings, including popular accessories, physical traits, and learned mannerisms.
In-group conflict is inevitable because each group member has a mammal brain that evolved to promote its own genes. Animals stick with groups that are full of internal conflict because they are so threatened by external conflict. The more threatened you feel by life outside the group, the more pain you tolerate from within it. Each time you distance yourself from the group, your oxytocin falls and reminds you of the threat of isolation.
We are meant to experience oxytocin dips, despite the discomfort. Trust is nice, but too much trust can threaten survival:
The nice feeling of trust may distract you from building skills you need to promote your own survival. You could lean on others to avoid the bad feeling of your own limitations, but you might end up with more frustration. That would trigger an urge to “do something,” which you might respond to by leaning again on others instead of building skills.
Oxytocin droops when you get too far from the herd. Whether they’ve left you behind or you’ve wandered astray, the droop alerts you to the fact that you lack social support. Suddenly, it feels like you’re facing survival threats alone. It would be nice to enjoy the good feeling of social support all the time, but if you stayed with the herd every minute, you’d miss out on other things. We are designed to find the best way to meet our needs instead of just following other people’s quest to meet their needs. Losing support is distressing, but we are not meant to enjoy a constant stream of oxytocin. We are meant to balance the urge for social support against our other long-term needs. You can learn to notice your own skill at doing that. Notice examples of:
When people respect you, serotonin surges and it wires you to expect more good feelings in similar ways. But after a while, the same old respect doesn’t thrill you. You search for a way to get more, using past experience as your guide. Sometimes you fail to get the respect you seek, despite your best efforts.
When other people are trapped in a quest for approval, it’s easy to see—especially when it’s people you don’t like. You see how their quest for status soon leads to an even bigger quest. It’s hard to notice your own brain caught in this natural quest. Animals help us understand the brain’s urge for more social status as soon as the last serotonin boost droops. When a monkey asserts herself for a banana, the food is soon digested and she must assert herself again to make enough milk for her children to survive.
When you go to a shop or a restaurant, the staff treats you with a deference that you don’t get in the rest of life. Most of the time, the people around you are as convinced of their cause as you are of yours. If you count on getting deference from others to feel good, you may end up disappointed.
When you see people angling for the “best” table, you may think they are foolish. After all, you know that seating arrangements are not a matter of survival. But when you fail to get a good seat, it seems different. Your mammal brain is always monitoring your social position and reacting. It did not evolve to say, “I’m important enough now. I can just relax.” It evolved to keep advancing your prospects. That’s why:
The quest for respect can have positive consequences as well as negative ones, and much human achievement has been fueled by it. But however you attain your badge of status, the good feeling soon passes and you long for a bigger badge of status. When your serotonin dips, it may feel like something is wrong with the world. When you get the badge of status you seek, the world looks all right . . . for a little while.
You may think you’ll be happy forever once your poetry is published in the New York Times, but your mind would soon seek the next bit of recognition if it did. The brain learns to feel important in a particular way, and then it looks for more of that feeling. When Marlon Brando wails “I coulda been a contender” in On the Waterfront, you believe he’d be happy if he’d won a boxing title. But in all probability, he would have contended for more once he got it. And when you watch Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones, you may consciously hate the powerful, but your mirror neurons enjoy that sense of power, so you go back for more.
We often hear about Hollywood stars who go into a tailspin when their popularity wanes. I used to be confused by this. “Isn’t one megahit enough to make a person happy?” I wondered. Now I understand that the good feeling of a megahit trains the brain to seek that particular way of feeling good. If you end up feeling bad instead, you don’t see how you created the disappointment. You can blame the ruthlessness of the industry, the fickleness of the public, and the incompetence of management, without recognizing your brain’s habit of seeking serotonin in ways that worked before.
This theme pervades private life as well as the movies. Each person seeks respect from those around them in ways they expect to work. Some people impose their wishes on others just for the pleasure of it. And when the pleasure ebbs, they impose again. If they fail to get that deference from others and face the world without the serotonin boost, they crash and burn.
Rescuing others is a popular way to seek respect. Making yourself a hero is a relatively reliable way to feel important, and it helps you avoid conflicts that would erode respect. But the good feeling soon passes and you have to rescue again. Rescuers can be so eager to feel heroic that they reward bad behavior in others. The result is more bad behavior, which a hero might interpret as a greater need for their rescue efforts. The codependent partner of an addict is the most familiar example. The spouse or parent ends up enabling the addiction, but she keeps doing it because rescuing others is the way her brain has learned to feel important.
Winning the love of a higher-status person is another widespread strategy for stimulating serotonin. We don’t mix love and status consciously, but when a high-status person of the right gender notices you, your brain lights up. Even bonobos, the apes known for sexual dynamism, compete vigorously for high-status partners. Once that trophy partner is yours, however, your serotonin stops surging. It would surge again if you found an even higher-status love object. Probably you restrain the urge to do that, but it’s easy to see others yielding to it. A superstar spouse makes a person feel good, and that wires the brain to expect good feelings by acquiring a superstar spouse again. Some people repeat the cycle despite the side effects.
Serotonin disappointment is often blamed on “our society,” but status frustrations are evident in every culture and time. In many cultures, cruelty to servants is accepted, and mothers-in-law dominate daughters-in-law with raw despotism. Tribal societies often have rigid dominance hierarchies, despite their egalitarian image. What looks like cooperation is often submission to learned expectations to avoid punishment. You may think you’d enjoy a serotonin high all the time if you lived in another time or place, but if you got there you’d find that the people there are still mammals, and you are too.
Social dominance grabs your attention because it promotes your genes in the state of nature. As soon as a mammal’s immediate needs are met, its thoughts turn to social advancement. This includes everything from promoting the welfare of children to attracting a more powerful mate. Mammals that kept striving instead of being satisfied were more likely to survive and pass on their DNA. This is why we’re so unsettled by flabby skin or a child’s setbacks. Any small obstacle to getting respect feels like an obstacle to survival.
Everyone has a cousin who is doing better than they are. Your serotonin droops whenever you’re reminded of that cousin, though you have plenty of good in your life. Perhaps you grew up hearing your parents make social comparisons and lament their own position. You may have wired yourself to take the one-down position and feel threatened instead of enjoying all the good that you have.
Each brain seeks serotonin with pathways built during youth. There are no pathways that deliver endless serotonin, however. If you grew up around people who dominated you, your circuits prepared you for one kind of frustration. But if you grew up with a lot of admirers, you’re wired for another kind of frustration. No matter what kind of expectations you’re wired for, your quest for respect is disappointed sometimes. Managing that disappointment promotes your survival more than fleeing from it. When children fail to make the team or get a prom date, we teach them to try again. Seeking recognition is part of a healthy human life, despite the potential for disappointment.
You may protect yourself from serotonin disappointment by saying you don’t care about status, but your neurochemicals respond to your status ups and downs whether or not you intend to. Your responses are shaped by time and place because you learn what gets respect in your world. If you lived in another time or place, you might have fought duels to defend your honor or stayed locked up at home to defend your honor. Today, you might pride yourself on your higher consciousness. You feel entitled to the one-up position because of your higher consciousness. When you see persons of lower consciousness getting respect, you may find yourself triggered in a way you think quite beneath you. And when you do get the respect you crave, it doesn’t make you happy forever, despite your higher consciousness. Your brain is soon hatching plans to get more.
If you were a big fish in a small pond, you would enjoy the one-up position all the time. But as soon as you heard of a bigger world with bigger fish, your serotonin would droop. A “do something” feeling would nag you until you found a way to advance your position. That serotonin droop keeps you seeking. It drove your ancestors to find a better way to skin a mammoth and let others know about it. You may be convinced you’ll be happy forever when your big break comes, but each break you’ve had so far has left you longing for another break. It’s easy to see this in others, but it helps to see it in yourself. Noticing your serotonin droop helps you avoid a sense of crisis when the one-up feeling eludes your grasp. Think of a time when:
If you saved your life by running up a tree when chased by a lion, your brain would learn to feel good about trees. Anything that transforms a bad feeling to a good feeling is a lifesaver from your mammal brain’s perspective, and it builds a big pathway. If you lived in a world full of lions, you would always be scanning for trees. Since you don’t, you instead scan for anything that once made you feel good in a moment when you felt bad. These are your “happy habits.” They are not conscious choices, but pathways that create the expectation of feeling good. The good feelings don’t last, of course, so we end up resorting to our happy habits a lot.
Distraction is often the core of a happy habit. Distraction can make you feel good just by interrupting the electricity in a bad loop. Distraction doesn’t work if you smell a lion and distract yourself with perfume. But most of the time you are not facing a lion—you are facing the sting of disappointment. Anything that diverts your electricity feels like a lifesaver. If your stamp collection once distracted you from a bad feeling, your brain built a connection that expects relief from your stamp collection.
I learned about the quirkiness of habits from a hypnotist who helps people quit smoking. He told me to imagine a fourteen-year-old boy at a party. The boy sees a girl he wants to talk to, but he’s afraid. He tries a cigarette to steady his nerves, and it works! The girl returns his affection, and his happy chemicals flow. The reward is huge because it’s so relevant to “reproductive success.” The neurochemical spurt creates a huge link to his mammal brain that says: Cigarettes promote survival. Of course, the boy doesn’t think this in words, but the next time he needs confidence in the face of a “survival challenge,” his brain lights up the idea of smoking. With each cigarette, the pathway builds.
Years later, when he tries to quit smoking, the insecurity of the fourteen-year-old boy at a party surges up because it has nowhere to go without the cigarette pathway. His inner mammal feels like he’s threatening his own survival when he resists the urge for a smoke. He must build a new happy habit in order to live without the old one.
Happy habits give your threatened feelings a place to go. If you felt disappointed by a bad grade in math long ago, whatever made you feel better built a pathway in your brain. If you went to a party and enjoyed it, your brain “learned” that a party makes you happy when you’re feeling unhappy. Consciously, you know the party doesn’t solve your math problems, but when the bad feeling returns, your party circuit is there. Each party makes it bigger.
Distraction is not a good survival strategy when action is needed. But when you feel miffed by a coworker at the next desk, you may be better off not acting. When your brain screams “do something,” distraction gives you something to do. It protects you from fueling threatened feelings and rewards you with the sense that you’re saving your life.
Every habit has side effects, and the more you indulge, the more side effects you get. At first, the consequences may be small, so it’s easy to tell yourself “it’s just one little cookie.” “It’s just one little drink.” “It’s just a little flirtation.” “It’s just a little splurge.” “It’s just a little anger.” “It’s just a little down time.” “It’s just a little risk.” “It’s just a little party.” “It’s just a little project.” “It’s just a little confidence-booster.” “It’s just a little lie.” “It’s just a little competition.”
You can stop a vicious cycle in one instant, simply by doing nothing. That teaches your brain that you will not actually die without the old habit. You learn that threatened feelings do not kill you. A virtuous circle begins the moment you do nothing and live with the threatened feeling instead of doing the usual something.
It would be nice to have a habit with no side effects, but happy chemicals evolved because of their consequences. When the consequences pile up enough to trigger your cortisol, you end up feeling threatened by the very behavior you use to relieve a threat. Now you’re in a vicious cycle. You can probably think of ten vicious cycles in ten seconds: junk food, alcohol, love affairs, drugs, losing your temper, gaming, getting recognition, shopping, watching a screen, telling others what to do, withdrawing, career advancement, pleasing people, climbing mountains, rescuing people, smoking, dieting. (That’s more than ten. I couldn’t stop.) You know your happy habit can lead to pain, but when you try to feel better, you rely on the pathways you have. You feel like your survival is threatened when you resist.
The first step to happier habits is to do nothing when your cortisol starts giving you a threatened feeling. Doing nothing goes against your body’s deepest impulse, but it empowers you to make changes in your life. Once you do nothing, you have time to generate an alternative. At first, no alternative looks as good as the habit does, but positive expectations build if you give a new pathway a chance to grow. Each time you divert your electricity in a new direction, you strengthen your new circuit. It all starts when you accept a bad feeling for a moment instead of rushing to make it go away.
It would be nice to have an alternative that feels good instantly. But instant good feelings are only triggered by behaviors that appeal to a mammal, like eating a hot fudge sundae, getting kissed by your teen idol, and accepting a standing ovation. Instant highs are not possible at every moment, so it’s good to know that you can build a pathway to your happy chemicals with repetition even when something doesn’t feel good instantly. When you know how your brain works, you can build more happy habits with fewer side effects. You can start a virtuous circle without being virtuous. The following chapters show how.
Happy habits are pathways that relieved your threatened feelings in the past. When you stop a happy habit, that sense of threat resurges and you feel like you are threatening your own survival. If you yield to this impulse, the old circuit builds. If you do nothing, you create space for a new circuit to grow. Learn to notice the impulse to relieve threatened feelings with happy habits. When you know that your threatened feeling is just a connection between neurons, you free yourself to build new connections. Notice examples of: