You’ve almost certainly heard about the stereotypical story of lottery winners. Summarized and abbreviated, it goes something like this:
- Win lottery.
- Buy stuff.
- Go broke and/or revert to pre-lottery level of happiness.
Regardless of how often you play the lottery, if you’re like most people you probably think that the second part of step #3 would never happen to you. But, again just like most people, you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s certainly already happened to you numerous times throughout your life, even if you haven’t won the lottery.
Hedonic adaptation
The condition of becoming habituated to life changes is so common that it has a name: hedonic adaptation. Although this occurs with both positive and negative changes, according to The Myths of Happiness by Sonja Lyubormirsky, a professor of psychology at UC-Riverside, it tends to be most pronounced with positive experiences.
She says, for example:
It turns out that we are prone to take for granted pretty much everything positive that happens to us. When we move into a beautiful new loft with a grand view, when we partake of plastic surgery, when we purchase a fancy new automobile or nth-generation smartphone, when we earn the corner office and a raise at work, when we become immersed in a new hobby, and even when we wed, we obtain an immediate boost of happiness from the improved situation; but the thrill only lasts for a short time. Over the coming days, weeks, and months, we find our expectations ramping upward and we begin taking our new improved circumstances for granted.
So what does that have to do with enjoying exercise?
Quite a lot, actually. But we need to quickly tackle one more related concept to see why.
Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation
If you’re following along closely, you might have noticed that the positive experiences Lyubomirsky listed are all external, or extrinsic, conditions. These types of conditions fall into categories such as material possessions, fame, beauty, and, in general, achievements that tend to be promoted as important by society, culture, or tradition instead of by the individual.
As she points out later, these extrinsically motivated goals tend to leave us feeling unfulfilled and are of the type to which we most easily hedonically adapt.
Alternatively, if we want to get more enjoyment out of life (i.e. to experience more regular happiness and avoid hedonic adaptation as much as possible), then our goals need to be aligned with our individual values and seek to satisfy innate human needs such as building meaningful relationships, producing personal development, and contributing to our community. In other words, they need to be based on intrinsic conditions.
And this is where I’m going to tie it all back to enjoying exercise, including my own personal experience.
Enjoying exercise
If you train at TNT or otherwise know me personally, you might have heard me say that I don’t necessarily enjoy training (i.e. exercise/weight training) but that I do it anyway because it enables me to be better at the activities I really enjoy, like Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ) and rock climbing.
But as I was thinking about that more, two ideas occurred to me.
First, the obvious idea: I enjoy BJJ and climbing because I view both activities as play and because they’re a combination of physical and mental puzzles which always challenge me to improve. That is, I’m intrinsically motivated to develop my skills in each activity. (As an additional bonus, both activities require a tremendous amount of trust to be placed in one’s training/climbing partners, so meaningful relationships are also developed in the process.)
Second, the not-so-obvious one: It’s not entirely true that I only weight train to be better at my other activities. It is true that I don’t always enjoy it; usually those are times when I feel rushed or don’t have a specific upcoming goal (e.g. mountain adventure, climbing/BJJ competition or specific area of desired improvement).
But there are plenty of times when I do look forward to training. That happens when I have specific goals for some upcoming, meaningful adventures/challenges and intentionally appreciate that my training efforts (and progress) will make the adventure more fun. It also happens when I’m experimenting with different training ideas and approach my training time (and what I might observe and learn) with a sense of curiosity.
In other words, I enjoy training the most when I have extrinsic goals but also (and more importantly) remain mindful of the development that’s occurring throughout the process.
Putting it into practice
Of course, achieving goals is fun and exciting. But, assuming you set challenging goals, achieving them takes time. And it’s only human nature for the excitement that you feel upon achieving them to be fleeting.
So if you’re interested in nudging up your general level of happiness and, as that happiness relates to fitness, experiencing more enjoyment from your exercise, then aspiring to be mindful of the process is key.
Remind yourself that you don’t have to exercise but rather get to do so. And be intentional about looking for, noticing, and appreciating any improvements you make, however small, in relation to your progress and your skill.
Emphasizing those internal conditions might not boost your happiness as much as winning the lottery, but it’ll certainly make the happiness that you do experience last longer.