Not feeling so happy?

Have you heard of 'the hedonic treadmill'? I read about it for the first time the other day and assumed it was some new fandangled fun-buzz for fit naughty people.

But no. Apparently, and perhaps more interestingly, the hedonic treadmill is just a new metaphor for 'hedonic adaptation'.

Both terms are psychobabble for our very human habit of getting used to the circumstances we've created for ourselves in our pursuit of happiness, leading us to search out our next 'high'.

But the sad thing is, we never ever reach the end of the treadmill. We never get off. We think we will, once we bag the next 'happy', but we don't. In fact, as soon as we've got the hit of whatever we were aiming for, we quickly default back to the level of happiness we were at before we got the thing.

We can't bear the feeling of the high disappearing, so we start hurtling ourselves at the next thing. And the next. Houses, handbags, cars, relationships, promotions... It's exhausting. And the weird thing is, we do it again and again despite continually defaulting back to our baseline. Even though we're intelligent creatures, we never seem to learn.

However, there is an easy antidote to this mad hamster-wheel behaviour. A way out of the permanent reaching state. And it comes in the simple form of a specific and quick type of gratitude journalling.

In her book 'The unexpected joy of the ordinary', Catherine Gray discusses the countless studies into the practice of gratitude and its multitude of benefits - from higher levels of happiness to better health. Again, it comes back to our brain-loving buddy: neuroplasticity. But it can't just be 'any old gratitude' - for maximum brain-rewiring benefits science says we must be specific and we must write it down.

Here's how:

1. Find yourself a little journal
2. Every night write down five things you're grateful for that happened that day
3. Be specific (apparently this has the biggest effect): so rather than“thank you for the sunshine” you say “thank you for the sun on my face as I walked up the road to work”.
4. Keep it brief - one line per "thank you"!

That's it 😀

Practicing gratitude not only trains our brains to feel more satisfiedright now, but helps us jump off the treadmill-to-nowhere and into the good that surrounds us every day. Because don't we already have something today that once we only dreamt of having?

Love and thanks, Jo x