Life Dysmorphia: How Hedonic Adaption Ruins Everything

Why aren't we happier?

Imagine being a 28-year-old social media influencer with millions of followers. You appear to live a glamorous life, filled with travel, brand deals, and an adoring fan base.

However, you also feel an intense pressure to maintain an online image and constantly compare yourself to other influencers.

Despite the admiration and opportunities, there is a nagging sense that your life is hollow. You even struggle with feelings of inadequacy and loneliness.

The curated perfection of your online persona exacerbates the dissatisfaction with your real life.

Welcome to Life Dysmorphia.

What is Life Dysmorphia?

The concept is that someone can have a permanent sense of dissatisfaction despite having many objective indicators of success and well-being. Just like in body dysmorphia where someone can’t help but obsess over the illusion of the flaws in their appearance although they are objectively good-looking.

Life Dysmorphia is not just for social media influencers but our society at large has issues. Humans have an innate urge for upward comparison and a mimetic desire to aspire to what others have.

We see this fake version of joy and success all around us in the connected world where everyone has better finances, better holidays, and better relationships than us. We are sold this concept we can be as successful as we dream and yet our reality is much less impressive.

Hedonic Adaption

Desire is a contract to be unhappy until you get your desire. But social media, advertising and human nature are built to jack up our desires forever.

I think the hedonic treadmill is one of the worst parts of human nature. Working to get of this constant race for new desires is the best thing you can possibly do for your mental health.

It’s crazy to think that 200 years ago 1 in 3 kids in the UK died before they were 5. Almost everyone that you know having kids would have one child that died.

That is insane.

Having a child die is no doubt one of the most traumatic experiences anyone can have. and pretty much everyone used to have it.

Now the mortality rate is over 100 times lower, yet here we are stressing about our job in marketing not quite being our calling or not having the latest phone model.

NEWS UPDATE

After proudly announcing I was back 2 months ago I managed two posts and since then we’ve had crickets for 8 weeks...

Sorry.

I’ve been writing more than I ever have in history with 3 episodes a week coming out on my podcast.

I've enjoyed diving into all sorts of geeky and inspiring Psychology surprises:
- Mental Models:
  - - Jeff Bezos' Epic Mental Models
  - - Calculus of Effort
- Cognitive Biases:
  - - Ego Based
  - - Money Based
- Funky nuances of the brain like:
  - - Default Mode Network
  - - Inner workings of the Motor Cortex.

I even invented an entire Personality Disorder and a framework for diagnosing it, leading to the grand conclusion that half of humanity is stuck with "Social Pressure Personality Disorder".

Anyway.

It's about time I started bringing the Podcast and the Newsletter more in sync.

I'm expecting to write shorter content:
- Ideas like this installment today - max 1000 words
- Bite size fun facts from psychology

Just letting you know.

Maintaining a Grasp on Reality

You might not know that Hot showers only became common practice in the 1960s in England. Imagine only having the option of a cold shower in winter when you’re also down about your social status.

Jimmy Carr who coined the term “Life Dysmorphia” says when you stand in a hot shower try and remember that no one you admire from over 100 years ago had easy access to one.

Our access to food, medicine, education, entertainment, and travel is so inordinately better than it has ever been in history.

It’s hard to imagine what it was like when we could be killed as easily by a famine, invading Viking or well-meaning doctor draining us of all our blood because they thought that was good healthcare for a common cold.

When we compare ourselves to the fake lives of the 1% on social media we might want to compare our lives to the 99% of the 100 billion humans.

Those humans struggled through a terrifying life compared to what we have now.

The reality is, we are the 1% with the incredible life.

What or When is enough?

Something else Jimmy Carr said

“Life has never been objectively better and yet felt objectively worse.

How happy you are is based on your quality of life, minus envy.

Wanting things you don’t have makes you unhappy”.

The ability to be grateful for what you do have is being content.

In 1961 Joseph Heller published Catch 22 which was a bestselling novel of the times and still popular today.

He was at a party of a billionaire hedge fund manager when Kurt Vonnegut pointed out that in one day the billionaire had made more money than Joseph or Kurt had with all of their book sales.

Joseph Heller responded

“Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough”

And it’s a perfect summary of the problem.

In society there is no limit on what enough entails with increasing numbers of billionaires and people who seem to have a situation in life we want, be that a bigger house, a faster car, a remote lifestyle or a bigger bank.

But you will never have enough if you look at the world like that.

So do whatever works for you to stop raising your desires, a good place to start is limiting social media, spending more time outside, and placing higher value on your time.

An Accurate Value of Your Time

It’s easy to forget how short life is.

Warren Buffet is worth $133 billion. He’s also 93.

No chance would a sane human trade life with him. $133 billion is useless if you’re going to die.

Considering I’m 33, he’s 60 years older than me. Based on the maths of $133 billion for 60 years of life.

Each year I’m alive is worth $2.2 billion to me.

It probably is for you as well.

Hopefully, that’s a reason to be positive.

So I’d like to present a friendly challenge to you to find some reasons to get off the hedonic treadmill.

Instead of looking for more things to desire, look for more ways to desire what you already have.

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Wondering what were my favourite episodes of the last 3 months?

• The 10 Greatest Mental Models of Jeff Bezos
  Seriously, these are epic - also my first semi-biographical episode

• Ego Blindspots: 9 Cognitive Biases to Avoid
  I am loving the entire cognitive biases series but anything to get us out of our tiny mental prison of awareness is gold.

• Loud Thoughts: Depression, Anxiety, ADHD and the Default Mode Network
  The DMN is the coolest thing you’ve never heard of. Also the heart of the ego (see above opinions)