self help

You are Precious Treasure

I remember my dad once said, “Whatever is the most precious is most often buried” and that hit me hard. We might look around and see the rich and successful strolling around like walking lotteries and feel a pang of envy. In all truth, it is tempting to want all that they have. But let’s shift our focus for a minute, shall we?

 It is possible that the rich have become rich by the deeply crafted art of scamming but there is also the possibility that what you are seeing the evidence of hard work put under the surface. You only see the elaborate shoot system with its fancy real estate, big bank accounts or even multi-million dollar lifestyles. But what about recognising the unending toil and sweat where the real work had started, years ahead. Here the soil is grimy, the struggle is real and the work is plenty. What about the effort put day in and day out when the world was asleep and their only company was the slow wake of dawn.

 It is that root system that people don’t see, where efforts go unnoticed, where the air of solitude is heavy but the drive for success is urgent. But it is that same root system, that plants their identity into the soil of reality,  humility and perspiration even when success catches up with them. You must remember that it is not the materialistic evidence of their success that you must crave for, but the inner grit, resilience and passion that drives them forward in the face of repeated opposition that you must yearn for. Because as my dad said, precious treasure such as these developed qualities is hidden and needs to be found in ourselves 

If we are to be looking for gold, why are we chasing behind big blocks of concrete?

You might tell me, “But I am nowhere close to that. I don’t think that is genuinely in me”. Listen to me. Yes, I am talking to you. Motivation rises and motivation wanes, but repeated actions solidify purpose. And when you have found your purpose, nursed in the heart of the discipline, it will drive you like flaming horses running to the sea. Where the inner fire is so great that you need to spread it to people who are lacking it. You might assert again, “I don’t feel like I have any talents or skills or gifts unlike most people”. This is exactly the post for you. Most people might be living on huge masses of land filled with precious ores without even realising it. And that is the same with you. 

Everyone has treasure and it is buried for a reason. Treasure is not kept in the open like a tray of bird seeds for everyone to come and nibble. Treasure is deposited deep within the soul and it is only found in the careful process of exploration, unearthing, purifying and moulding. This is probably why you yourself can’t seem to find it at a superficial glance. You need to understand you are a gold mine waiting to be unearthed. Plan a date with yourself every morning, where it is all about unravelling you and I am not saying it is going be easy. But do this for one year or even one month and you tell me if you haven’t found glimmers of potential treasure.

For this, you must set aside time every day for yourself and pursue yourself as genuinely as you would pursue any other guy or girl. Discover your likes, your preferences, your love language, your deep desires, the pursuits that make your heart race with delight, the kind of people that inspire and challenge you, the music that makes you feel alive. Fall in love with yourself, because your falling in love with a treasure mine, waiting to be unearthed. And from an economic standpoint alone, it is completely worth it 😉

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Picture Credits: Pexels

Practical tips to beat procrastination (Blueberries #29)

|Cue music|

I think we have come far along in this relationship. So let’s just chat about some real things.

We all want to do great things. We all want our names metaphorically etched in the canvas of the sky.  

|Bass drop|

We all have these crazy dreams, of things we want to do, of places we want to see and of lives we want to change. Sometimes we are so caught up in these moments of visualisation that we feel a little exciting engine roar in our tummy. 

|Music out|

But But But we are stuck. Starting feels so hard. The thought of finishing is akin to cognitive torture. It is too hard to even think about it. So we distract ourselves with blips of instant gratification or maybe even other tasks on your to-do list. We could do anything else right now. Babysit your daughter? Sure. Clean out the loft? Sure. Do your sister’s homework? Anytime.

When we think about a task that causes us anxiety, the pain receptors in our brain light up causing us to feel a sense of actual pain. Therefore, just like you would soothe a physical injury with maybe some ice, we are immediately flooded with the desire to alleviate the pain. And what is the fastest way to do that? We turn toward the distraction leech. We feed this sluggish leech with all kinds of fattening feasts; a 4-hour Netflix binge, a few hours of extra sleep, a 2 hour Instagram scroll. 

All the while we are starving the purpose butterfly, its wings barely flapping, devoid of the sweet nectar of happiness, self-efficacy and goal-oriented jubilation. You keep feeding the leech until it is so full and it bursts open, leaving a trail of dark black nothingness. The void of wasted time. But you know that the distraction leech always comes back for more and more. At the same time, when we reach the end of the road, we nudge and force the frail purpose butterfly to flap its wings and fly. We burn the midnight oil at the last minute and shoddily finish the project and collapse into ourselves. All of us can relate to this at some point in our life. 

Okay, let’s step back from the picture of doom and gloom for a moment, and think of practical things we can do to get out of this cycle (starve the leech).

  • If the whole task looks too daunting, break it down into the smallest mini chunks and hack away at only one mini-chunk.
  • Use the Pomodoro technique, where you set a quick timer for 25 minutes and work with uninterrupted focus and then take a break. Tell yourself that even if it seems hard, you will just work in quick bursts of time.
  • Focus on the process, not the product. As Barbara Oakley, a facilitator in the learning how to learn course explained. Don’t worry about the outcome, just focus on the flow of making progress. You no longer should focus on the final product, but in just immersing yourself in doing little things that get you to the final desired outcome.
  • Keep an anxiety journal. If you are demotivated to write a paper, take some time and do a brain dump of all the possible things holding you back. This could potentially give you some insight on the root of your problems so that you can start to devise specific strategies to fix the problem areas.

Reframe your mindset. Start bit by bit. It’s all about progress not perfection. 

|Cue music|

If you can relate with being a procrastination junkie say, Aye!

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Therapy 101 (Blueberries # 27)

For those of us who haven’t ever gone to therapy, it can be a daunting experience in our head. The uncertainty of the experience can cause us to feel inexpressible anxiety about even making the first move. This is why I have got a refresher guide that will help you be mentally prepared for what is to come your way. Trust me it isn’t as scary as you think.

A few things to remember while starting this journey

Paperwork

Just like with a normal hospital visit, you will need to fill an initial form with basic personal details, purpose for visit, any counselling goals, current medications, medical and mental health history and insurance details if applicable. 

Payment

Yes, counselling is just like any other profession requires for their services to be remunerated. If you are not able to afford the actual fee, you can ask if they offer discounts or payment slides. This fee helps protect the therapist-client relationship and helps both the parties to value the interaction by being completely invested in it.

Time 

A single session usually lasts for 50 mins, even if you paid for a 1 hour session. Don’t be alarmed if your therapist has to abruptly stop you or even has an alarm go off.  This is so that the therapist takes a small break and prepares for the next session. This also offers some buffer time in case a session takes longer. Therapy is often a long term investment if one wants to see true results. Most individuals depending on the problem might need over 1 or 2 sessions to witness an actual breakthrough. 

Questions and Notes

The first session isn’t usually too intrusive but be prepared for seemingly generic questions like, How do you feel today? Or what has brought you here? You have to remember that you can’t get away with formality based social non-committal answers. In therapy it’s all about being real, and know that you can be open, as anything you say will be kept completely confidential. 

Don’t be surprised if a therapist is taking notes during your conversations. This is just to note down some observations or links for their personal reference. A quick run through the notes before each session offers a refresher so that the therapist can continue the session appropriately. If you are ever uncomfortable, you can point it out to your therapist and some resolution can be eventually attained. 

Relationship formed with your therapist

It is important to find the right therapist with the right specialisation for your needs. It is okay if you do not click with your first therapist, you have the right to pursue other options. The success rate of your therapy is highly dependent on the relationship you have built with your therapist, therefore it’s worth investing in that process.

Even Though your therapist is completely there to help you, do not expect them to  become your best friend. This is because this will be crossing professional boundaries and also because the lack of emotional distance will dilute objectivity. Therefore, know that even though most therapists are friendly, do not expect them to be overly expressive or show signs of emotional attachment. There is also a possibility that you might get emotionally attached to your therapist but remember that they are here to guide you towards a goal and cannot be expected to act beyond that role. 

Rewirements

Be prepared to have some homework given to you, on areas that you need to work on. It is completely natural to have periods of stagnancy but the progress is the ultimate goal of the therapy. And this involves hard work and if you are consistent, it is the key to growth. 

There is a misconception that therapy is only for the ones who need desperate help. That is true but therapy can also be about helping you reach a specific goal, say you want to be able to be calmer when that boss of yours says nasty things. It can be about just wanting to be more mindful or wanting to learn to communicate better. It can be to deal with a specific trauma episode that has recently been bothering you or it can be about wanting to talk about some dark thoughts swirling in your mind. 

Therapists are professionals who have invested years of practice that makes them a much better option than just talking to a friend. They come with a completely neutral point of view and since they are emotionally distanced from the problem, they can make connections and see solutions quicker than you can. Their role is to be a guide that leads you through your own inner experience and process through all the incidents, thoughts, behaviours and emotions that are holding you back from reaching that level of desired actualisation.

There is something so strangely therapeutic of a stranger sitting opposite to you, listening wholeheartedly with the sole intention of helping you come out of this process stronger. With time, walls break and all that stored up anguish will melt away, making you take one step closer to the person you want to be. What you need to remember that there is no judgement. You might cry uncontrollably during some sessions or clam up completely during some. It is all okay because for the first time ever, it is all about you. 

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Bibliotherapy: Fiction to cope with Mental Health issues (Blueberries # 24)

I came across this wonderful article published in the New Yorker titled, “Does reading make us happy?” by Ceridwen Dovey. There are many of us who love reading for various reasons. Some of us want to escape, to live in other words, in different centuries, quietly peeking into the minds of the characters to temporarily forget our own misery. 

Some of us want exposure, to go behind the curtains of different settings and soak up on different perspectives. Some of us just want to experience the jouissance or indescribable pleasure that reading can often offer. It exhilarates your senses, there is roaring behind your ear, you’re in a state of hypnotic trance, the syllables and words dancing in the caverns of your brain. But more often than we realise it, book lovers have taken on reading unconsciously as a way to self soothe. And the fact that we keep reading is testament to the fact that it actually actually works. 

As in the article, Berthoud and Elderkin were two tight friends who began the process of prescribing books to each other, to tackle different phases of life. When Elderkin was perplexed about whether she could handle the profession of writing, because of the inevitable rejection that came with it, Berthoud prescribed Archy and Mehitabel poems written by Don Marquis. After a few years, Elderkin prescribed Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale when she wondered how she could balance life as both a mother and a painter. This was a lifelong journey of friendship between the two that evolved into a professional bibliotherapy system for others. 

The author of the article, Dovey was recommended a series of books to read after answering a questionnaire that probed his deepest anxieties. Berthoud believed that fiction was the ultimate cure because of the transformational experience it brought with it and it was this transformational experience that she wanted to give her clients. Dovey could read through the prescribed novels earnestly at his own pace and it yielded results like any other therapeutic practice. Therefore reading is just like any other pill, it mitigates suffering by making it manageable. You just have to make sure you are ingesting the right pill.

There is truth in the fact that people find relief by self-medicating during reading. There is a biological basis for this. As we read and take in other people’s experiences while reading our mirror neurons begin to fire causing us to deeply relate to the experience as if it were almost happening to us. Therefore reading can promote empathy, can provide transformational experiences or even bring us a moment of closure. Reading an intense monologue of women at a tombstone can possibly somehow enable us to come in terms of our own feelings of grief.

So if you are a book lover or know someone who is a book lover, take some time to prescribe some love, possibly even some healing.

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How I tackled my insomnia (Blueberries #20)

After the lockdown was initiated and I had to come back home, the gift of a good night’s sleep had bid me adieu. I am the kind of person who is usually blessed with the ability to fall asleep anywhere and I never had a problem sleeping at nights. This was a completely unfamiliar territory and a very frustrating problem to deal with. What made it worse was that I had to wake up by 7 in the morning and do chores before diving into some studying. 

This progressively got worse as I would lie in bed for 3 to 4 hours before being able to sleep. One night sleep evaded me so bad that I ended up staying awake till 6 am. You can imagine how dysfunctional I was that day. This was when I realised that this was turning into an actual problem and I couldn’t ignore it. I called almost all of my friends and told them what was happening. It was surprising when all of them revealed that they were having the same kind of issues. 

Two weeks later I am sleeping almost like how I used to. And I realised that there are things that actually work for me and I hope it helps you sleep better.

It is  important to track your body’s sleep-wake cycle to see if you are a morning person or a night owl. This morningness-eveningness questionnaire gives you a clear idea of what your actual wake up-go to bed sleep cycle is, based on your own body clock. It is advisable to standardise this time pattern by going to bed at the same time as often as possible.

Secondly, I assumed that exercising in the night was the best way to tire myself so that I could crash into bed. I would then follow this ritual with a hot bath at 11 pm. And sadly I would still be awake till after 2. This is when research opened my eyes to what I was unknowingly doing wrong. One of the ways in which the brain signals that it is time to sleep is by releasing melanin. The morningness-eveningness questionnaire aims at estimating that time of release to predict when you are more likely to naturally fall asleep.

But another way, your body signals that it is time for bed is by dropping the basal temperature of your body. Therefore, the body’s internal temperature steadily starts falling to get us ready for sleep. Now when we exercise or have a bath late at night, it increases the body temperature sharply messing with our body’s natural cooling process. This is why it might take a few more hours for the body temperature to reduce, ultimately allowing us to fall back to sleep. So give exercising or showering  early in the day a shot. 

Thirdly, I realised that I was drinking way too much green tea which also has caffeine. So cut cups of caffeinated drinks or limit consumption after sunsets. Another suggestion is to create a sleep context. Essentially what this means is to use your bed only for sleeping and go to bed only when you feel that you can sleep. In case you are awake and constantly writhing in bed, your brain associates the bed with you staying awake, instead of a place to sleep. So next time you can’t sleep, change the context. Get up, go to another room and do some chores, journal or read a book.  I have found that the app Headspace has some soothing meditations that lull you to sleep. Or try an audiobook in bed.

And finally the biggest tip I can give you is to put your brain through cognitive workouts. Spend multiple hours devouring some philosophy, do a bunch of online courses or write a couple of blog posts. I thought that tiring my physical body would help me sleep, but in some sense tiring the brain is what will actually force your body to sleep. It is true that the brain consumes 10 times more energy than the rest of our body, this is why when we go to college or engage intensively at work, sleep hits us out of nowhere. This is because when we sleep, the brain finally gets a chance to reset and start processes that clear the mind of any excess toxins due to all the cognitive weightlifting earlier in the day. 

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For the one’s that continue to support me. I can’t thank you enough. As writer’s we know that it sometimes can be a thankless endeavor. But it does make me happy and feel good about putting myself out there. And hope it touches and helps some people along the way. And for the people who have chronic insomnia or sleep related disorders related to a multitude of other issues, my heart goes out to you. Sending prayers and love your way ❤

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“I can’t finish anything I have started!” (Blueberries #19)

Dear World,

I have noticed this trend with myself that I essentially need to process. I find myself super motivated and excited to start a task or embark on a particular journey such as pursuing a new hobby, or exercising or even doing online courses at atomic rates. And the motivation I seem to suddenly find is insane. It gives me a ridiculous amount of drive and purpose behind why I am doing this task. I also think about the end results and my sense of motivation soars. But after two or three days of honestly going all in at it, I hit a wall and just feel burnt out. I just lose focus and start getting distracted and question what’s the point of continuing when you really don’t feel like or have the mood. I feel like I am going crazy. Please help me. 

– Miss Flat Tyre

Who hasn’t felt this way at least once or twice in their life? It is important to address the elephant in the room. Some of the reasons we may lose steam in the middle of the task could be 

1. Lack of self-belief 

More than it is the lack of self-belief, I think it is the lack of self-discipline. Every task is akin to a lump of disorganised clay. It is up to you to get your hands dirty and just explore. Do this as consistently as possible. Make mistakes. Give yourself the leeway to make mistakes. Progress follows those who try, it doesn’t follow the fearful. And fast forward time, your sense of self-efficacy would have grown. 

2. Difficulty of task

Some tasks are genuinely daunting, sometimes way over our actual competencies. Break it down to the smallest tidbits. Start small. Exploit the universe. Research like a maniac. Hound the internet. Reach out to your friends. 

3. Weak purpose or meaning

Sometimes you can’t get past an hour of work, because in all honesty, “What’s the point”. That is your job, find the point of the why behind the what you are doing. Look at your haters, the ones that said you couldn’t, the ones that coyly act like they are better than you. They are your biggest fuel. Visualise your future, if you need what you need to do(check sentence). Find an accountability partner. Make your commitments public. Look at all you have been through in life and finally just suck it up and do it for yourself. 

4. Lack of rewards or reinforcement

The fundamental reason why rewards don’t like motivators anymore is because of self-discipline. We watch 5 hours of Netflix because the task seems too tough. Rewards have become agents of procrastination rather than awards for hard work. Find meaning in the task or linking a strong purpose with the task will serve as intrinsic motivators. Secondly, try to refine the value of rewards. Give yourself a Netflix episode after you have finished a task. Talk to a friend after you have finished a challenging report. And make sure to take short breaks and sleep well. The weekends should be your time to reset and chill. 

5. Time paucity

Sometimes you don’t have the motivation to finish a task because the deadlines loom like kryptonite bands over your neck. Re-centre and pace yourself. Realise that the task expands in relation to the time you assign towards it. Hack away at the hardest tasks first. Enter into a flow state, by working in short bursts of ultra-focused energy. Time batch. Discard distractions.

6. Laziness

This genuinely plagues us all cause, meh. We don’t even want to spend energy forming a coherent excuse as to why we don’t want to do the task. This is most likely because we know we haven’t reached the 11th hour yet and the world wouldn’t end if you haven’t started working yet. This is because some of us do work better at the last minute. Now is time to create artificial pressure. Arrange a girl’s night out and the only way you can go out is if you finish your deadlines. Plan something that you really enjoy (Even if it is a binge-watch session)and that will be your reward if you finish your tasks. 

Or just tell yourself that you will spend 20 minutes of quality time on a task and then sign off. If you feel like continuing after 20 mins, forge ahead. Some work is better than no work done.

7. One of those days

We all have those days when we just don’t feel like doing anything. We don’t even know why. We can’t even drag our feet to the laptop. Reflect on your life, see if there are any unresolved conflicts with yourself or others. Sometimes it is okay to be kind to yourself because who else will be? Take it as a day to genuinely reset. Don’t just lie in bed and mope about how your life sucks. Do things that are healing. Fill it with moments that burst with joy. Take having a good time seriously. Make your “one of those days” absolutely worth it. And jump back into work the next day with full vigour. 

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Picture Credits: Pexels

Why invest in lifelong learning? (Blueberries #18)

My team and I recently had an interview with an OD practitioner at a reputed software company. He expertly navigated all our questions in such a way that he gave us an overload of information without divulging any of the company’s practices. And he did it in such a way, that we were momentarily fooled thinking that we had all the answers we ever needed. And that was pure skill on his part. 

But what personally intrigued me was one line that he said, almost in passing. He said that he spends 4 hours learning every single day. And this was apart from his 9 hours of work. And I wondered how this was even possible. Because if you are like me, the minute we finish work or college, our brain decides it has done enough and shuts down. It only responds to words like Netflix, recreation or chill time. 

I was deeply disturbed by the fact that someone could show so much dedication. As always, I pushed it deep into my subconscious mind and went along my incredibly segregated life. UNTIL. There is always an until. Until a random thought came and sat on my head like a cheeky chameleon. It kept blending in with my other thoughts and refused to go away. 

It was an internal monologue of sorts. “So you know that your 7-year-old sister is so smart that she has to just read a poem twice and she has it memorised. That’s the grasping power of a young mind. You have somehow managed to live life on auto-pilot making sure you don’t have any time for actual learning. Do you think your brain is always going to be like this? Make hay when the sun shines”

And then it hit me. It is a question of choosing between brain efficiency or time availability. I always think that I will start learning when I finish college, when I finish work and when I finally retire. At every stage in life, there are sufficient excuses as to why I will start learning later. But what we should understand is that our brain’s capacity to absorb is at its peak today. And tomorrow is not even in our hands. But what we learn today will help us with our tomorrows.

I think that the biggest gift we have received is our awesome, unfathomably brilliant brain that is capable of so much if we choose to test its limit. Even the impact of diseases like Alzheimer’s, which is basically a widespread loss of neural connectivity can be reduced if we keep our brain active. Just like how we exercise our body in hopes of it carrying us for life. In the same way, let’s hinge our mind on the road of lifelong learning and development. 

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Picture Credits: Pexels

Minimalism (Blueberries #16)

I am not gonna allude to any minimalist practitioner or post. This post is completely from my heart and I hope that it can speak to you in some way.

It is sometimes easy to look at life as a series of days, weekends and dates carefully arranged like a tin of biscuits. It is just numbers. It is carefully calibrated moments of sun rises and the sunsets. Life can often be reduced to a meaningless sandy decoction of sawdust. It doesn’t taste like how it is supposed to anymore. 

And I have often wondered why this happens.

If I can crudely boil it down to one word. It would be CLUTTER. The clutter of the mind. The clutter of the day.  The clutter of the house. The clutter of the to-do list. The clutter of unresolved emotions. The clutter of numerous fraying relationships.

If I could equally, crudely suggest a remedy. It would be CLARITY. That clarity that knows precisely what you want in life. The clarity that helps you pick out your top business goals for the day. The clarity that helps you invest in the relationships that matter and weed out the relationships that don’t. 

For me, minimalism is not a lifestyle. It is a mindset. A mindset of intentionally knowing that less is sometimes more. A mindset that intuitively realises that it is always quality over quantity. A mindset that acknowledges that simplicity can be profound. 

Declutter. It is a very rewarding process that will shrink your To-do-list by 70%. Once you have that 30%, give it oxygen. Understand that life is not a series of dates anymore. It is a reel of a burst of beautiful moments. And you get to be the director. 

Take some time off today. Go through some of the fundamental quadrants of your life. Be it Relationships, Career, Fitness, Education, Home/Chores, Finances, Spiritual/Intellectual pursuits or whatever is important to you. Prune the excess. Nurture the non-negotiables. 

The essence of a beautiful detox tea with its ginger shavings, parsley or turmeric can only be absorbed once the elements boil over and reduce. Go over all the clutter of your life and using the mindset of minimalism, reduce it to the things that truly matter now (whether it is happiness, time, a boost in sales, cost reduction, creating experiences or enjoying social connections)

And watch clarity become your favourite cup of chai.

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Picture Credits: Pexels

Why do I get so angry that I scare myself? (Blueberries #15)

We are all familiar with that feeling of anger when someone accuses you for no fault of yours or brings up an unrelated tidbit from your past. You can literally feel the steaming cauldron of green fighteresque energy bubbling from the caverns of your belly. It slowly comes up to your throat and you spit out verbal venom that burns everything in its way. You have to let it out. And if you try to keep it in, it feels like this acid is eating up your insides.

It is a very relatable challenge that we all seem to go through. How do we keep calm in situations that seem to irk the very foundations of our core?

PsychCentral does a beautiful job of explaining the brain physiology as our body responds to anger. When we encounter a stimulus that induces anger, the amygdala, that stores emotional memories, tries to decide what is the apt response. If there is enough emotional charge, depending on the intensity of the new trigger, there will be either a fight, flight or freeze response.

There is a trigger for the release of the cortisol hormone. When too much cortisol is released it short circuits the hippocampus, which is the centre for processing new information and learning. There is a misfiring of neurons that causes an inability to adequately judge the situation or give the right response. Then the prefrontal cortex that is responsible for high order thinking such as employing rational thinking or looking at the big picture is shut off. This is because the more emotional amygdala takes over. 

Therefore the awareness of this physiological process of anger can help you in multiple ways. Firstly, it will help you understand the need to calm down or remove yourself from the situation because of the understanding that the cortisol is shutting off of your prefrontal cortex. Therefore it is almost a give in, that you will make errors in judgement. Secondly, it helps you rationalise the other party’s seemingly irrational behaviour. Because in all truth, their brain actually does not work properly at that point in time. 

I believe that for the sake of your mental and physical health it is advisable to sometimes do those seemingly cheesy things, such as counting backwards from 10 to 1, or taking a time out or going for a run before you react. Because letting your anger rise to uncontrollable levels is harming your own body at a literal biological level. So the next time you feel your cortisol spiking, channelise it into positive behaviours (exercise or writing) or just take it as an opportunity to reset and show yourself some much-needed love. 

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Picture Credits: Pexels

Is Hedonic Adaptation ruining your happiness? (Blueberries #14)

The first time I heard about the term hedonic adaptation was in a course titled the “Science of Well-Being” taught by Dr Laurie Santos from Yale University. This is one of the must enroll courses that I would suggest for anybody trying to find scientific ways to increase happiness. 

Now, what is hedonic adaptation?

It is a mechanism by which we have the tendency to reach a fixed state of happiness. So even if we encounter moments that make us happy or get things that are supposed to spark joy, the moments of euphoria are temporally spiked and then we return to our previous baseline mood level. On a positive note it is the same with bad moments, that we assume will wreck our life forever.  It does not affect us for as long as we think. But we often prolong this process by visualizing it or ruminating about its negative points over and over again.

Another way to look at hedonic adaptation is to envision our happiness potential to be like a sponge. Initially, that single like, or that first raise or making one good friend would inflate our happiness sponge and we are brimming with happiness. But after a slow but continuous rise in subsequent variables that increase happiness, we reach a point of saturation where more of the same things don’t make us as happy as it used to make us. And this is almost an unconscious process that plagues us all. That is why the third car might not give you as much happiness as the first.

If it is an unconscious process, is there any hope to break that cycle?

I am going to give you 3 quick strategies to combat hedonic adaptation and if you sincerely adopt it, it will do you good over time.

Savouring

Our brain often goes through each day on auto-pilot often filing away all the good moments like an efficient often emotionless secretary. The good memories are often gone before we even have a chance to process it. Savouring is the very intentional act of slowing down and immersing ourselves completely in that moment.

 It is akin to the act of slowly taking a bowl of our favourite ice cream, taking the time to drizzle it with warm chocolate sauce and throwing on some toppings of our choice. And then sitting down, totally focussed on the coolness emanating from the bowl and swirls of colour in the bowl. You stick a spoon into and take a luxurious scoop, close your eyes and let the taste and texture override your senses. This is a moment of savouring where you engage all your senses and you are completely devoted to the moment.

Contrast this without how we usually shove our mouths with icecream while simultaneously being engaged in other tasks and before we know it, we are frustrated that it’s over. And we are mad at the universe because all good things last for milliseconds. Savouring can be applied to all sorts of situations, such as talking to a loved one, going for a walk, when you do well on a test. Just immerse yourself in that feeling and this prolongs the feeling. You can prolong it further by sharing that positive experience to someone, or recalling it during other times of the day or even writing about it.

Gratitude

It is not just about fully experiencing moments but it also about being grateful for those moments once the experience is over. This is why keeping a gratitude journey is the best way to increase happiness. This especially helps us when we look back to it and are able to relive all the happy moments that memory would have erased. It is also important to show gratitude towards people. Writing a gratitude letter for people who have impacted your life in small or big ways, will reorient your perspective of life more positively. Count your small blessings and be vocal about it.

Negative Visualisation

This is a technique that helps you break hedonic adaptation by visualising the quality of life if you didn’t have the things/people that you do have and enjoy. For example, instead of overthinking about a fight with your loved one and how it has reduced your level of happiness, visualise what your life would have been like if you had never met that person. If you’re unhappy with your current progress, envision your life if you had a brain injury and couldn’t even articulate a single sentence.

I hope that these tips were helpful and you find avenues to make it actionable. So take 5 mins every day (set a timer), either once you wake up or right before you go to bed and practise one of these techniques religiously. Go through all the how your life would have been if you didn’t have your house while brushing your teeth. Think about all the good moments you had in your day when you are trying to go to sleep. Completely enjoy that feeling of accomplishment when you achieved that one small goal. Once this becomes a habit, let’s all hope for a rising trend in happiness. 

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Picture Credits: https://www.njlifehacks.com/negative-visualization-antidote-to-hedonic-adaptation/