We’ve all heard that a long journey begins with the first step, but we all know it’s more complicated. Before the first step, you have to choose the right course so you step in the right direction. After the first step, you know how deep the mud is but you have to find the will to take the next step anyway. To complete forty-five steps, you need an action plan you believe in. You need to choose the first new happy habit you want to build, the date you will start, and the tools that will ease your steps. This chapter and those following will help you commit to those choices.
When you embark on a plan to stimulate one happy chemical, you can see how it might undermine another happy chemical. If you seek more serotonin, for example, you may see a threat to your oxytocin. And if you seek more oxytocin, it may feel like a setback for your serotonin. When you seek dopamine in one way, you have less energy to seek it another way. And your cortisol may be triggered by any and every kind of seeking. You may wish for a perfect plan before you take your first step, but perfect never comes. You will have to make tradeoffs on your way to a new happy habit.
Fortunately, our brain evolved to make tradeoffs:
Like those animals, you will always be choosing among imperfect options. If you focus on drawbacks and imperfections, it’s hard to commit. Here’s a close look at the inevitable tradeoffs of life. Think them through now and you will approach your new habit with confidence.
We constantly weigh immediate rewards against rewards we expect in the future. If you decide to smoke, you are trading off future rewards for a present reward. If you decide to party, you are choosing one set of rewards, and if you decide not to party, you get a different set. We cannot predict these rewards perfectly, but better predictions bring better rewards.
To make good predictions, you have to choose good information. But we tend to rely on the information-filtering habits built into our circuits by accident. If you change your information-filtering habits, you will suddenly make new tradeoffs between short- and long-term rewards. For example, if you think you are a powerless victim of powerful forces, you will overlook the power of your own choices. Once you believe that your actions have consequences, you will find the information you need about the consequences. Then you will make more rewarding tradeoffs between the long and short run.
We are always trading off the safety of the known against the promise of the unknown. Sometimes we stick with the known until we find an alternative that feels like a sure thing, and sometimes we risk an alternative before it’s fully baked. Once you choose, you see the drawbacks of your choice up close, but you never know how the other option would have turned out. So it’s easy to end up frustrated about your own choices.
Instead, you can learn to honor your decision-making ability. Uncertainty is inevitable, so there’s no use judging yourself against idealized optimums. I am not saying you should defend your decisions to the point of refusing to learn from them. But if you only attack your decisions, you will never make a choice unless there’s absolute certainty. Celebrate your ability to live with uncertainty and you will broaden your options.
The protection of a group feels good, but striking out on your own feels good too. It would be nice to have both, but that’s not a realistic expectation. Painful choices are everywhere and we often make them worse by focusing on what we’re missing. You miss your independence when you’re in a group, and you miss the safety of the group when you follow your individual impulses. Unhappy chemicals surge when you focus on the down side of each option. You could focus on the benefits you are currently enjoying instead—enjoy the group when it’s group time and enjoy your individuality when you’re alone.
Appreciating what you have is difficult to do because the mind naturally seeks what it doesn’t have. It’s natural to feel the squeeze on your personal interests while you have group support. And when you go your own way, it’s natural to worry about the loss of social ties. We want to have it all, but this tradeoff is part of being human. Instead of expecting it to go away, pride yourself on your ability to manage it.
If you were an animal in a zoo, you might envy wild animals and try to break free. But if you were a wild animal, you might break into the zoo to enjoy food that comes effortlessly. At the zoo where I volunteer, animals often break in, and rarely break out. Meeting your own needs often feels like a burden, but when you are dependent on others to meet your needs for you, you miss out on happy chemicals, because they are stimulated by the act of meeting your own needs.
A wild animal lives with great stress as it struggles to fill its belly, compete for mates, and protect its offspring from predators. Though we like to imagine a pristine state of nature, meeting your needs is stressful. Yet this is the job our brain evolved for, and escaping the burden does not make it happy. You may long to be taken care of, but if you actually escaped the burden of meeting your own needs, you would find yourself surprisingly unhappy. You might end up filling your life with stress about the inadequacy of what’s given to you. You might feel trapped in rage at your caretakers while fearing to leave them and return to a life of meeting your own needs.
Choice is so frustrating that a person sometimes opts to live in a “zoo,” meaning, they want to be protected and led. When they feel bad, they don’t know why, so they blame the zookeeper for failing to meet their needs adequately. They resent anyone they believe to have power over them, and end up with perpetual hostility toward their providers and leaders. They enjoy a sense of personal power by putting down those they perceive as more powerful. But this habit never really makes up for the personal power you lose when you make others responsible for meeting your needs. Find the joy of meeting your own needs instead. You can celebrate your freedom to choose your steps instead of experiencing them as a burden.
There is no perfect path to happiness. You will always have to navigate tradeoffs as you build new pathways. Make a list of the choices you face in each of the following categories as you attempt to build your first new circuit:
There is no set path to happy chemicals. There is only a constant string of decisions to risk something in the expectation of gaining something else.
Talking about “good decisions” and “bad decisions” creates the impression that there is an optimal path. If you believe in a right path, you compare your life to an idealized image that does not exist. That can leave you focused on disappointments and believing you’re on the wrong path, even in the midst of a good life. Instead, you can accept the fact that you will always have ups and downs because your brain is designed to continually seek rewards and avoid pain.
If you have two good choices, you can get so caught up in regretting the choice you gave up that you skim over the happiness you have and end up with a lot of cortisol. Choice is so challenging that people are sometimes tempted to shift the burden of choice onto others. This strategy doesn’t relieve the cortisol of endlessly lamenting what you don’t have, but it relieves your frustration with yourself by blaming it on others.
There is an alternative. You can think of life as a series of tradeoffs rather than an optimization function with one correct solution. Tough calls are inevitable, but you are the best judge of the fine-tuned tradeoffs of your own life.
Your brain will never stop trying to promote your survival. It takes what you have for granted and looks for ways to get more—more rewards (dopamine), more physical security (endorphin), more social support (oxytocin), more respect (serotonin). Seeking more is risky. Your brain is constantly deciding whether it’s worth giving up some of this to get more of that. Once you decide, you may not get the outcome you expected. The frustration may tempt you to leave the hard calls to someone else, but you will end up with more happy chemicals if you carry your own burden of choice.
I will retrain my brain to build a new happy habit. The new behavior or thought habit I will build is __________________.
I will repeat it every day for forty-five days whether or not I feel like it, and start over with Day One if I miss a day. As I take the new steps, I may be stepping away from something else, but I can manage the tradeoffs on the trail to a new reward.