Our Brains Get Things Wrong

“If only I had __________ then I would be happy.”

How often have we said this to ourselves when times have been tough? 

It makes sense too. Our brains are trying to help us improve our situation, and we want to feel better too. And because we want to feel better, and our brains are trying to help us, we tend to latch on to the idea that if only I had __________ then I would be happy. 

It’s an understandable error. Surely our brain is on our side? Surely our brain knows what’s best for us? Surely our brain can be trusted? And surely it’s preferable to believe that attaining just one single, simple thing can be wholly transformative? 

Give it a try. List the things that you want that you think will make you happier in the future?

The problem is that despite its good intentions, our brains sometimes get things wrong. And it turns out that knowing what will make us happier is one of those things our brains are world champions at getting wrong. 


The field of positive psychology has studied this problem and has discovered a number of things our brains make us do that we need to become aware of. That awareness can help us mediate between our brains' good ideas and its bad ones. That mediation helps us to be more effective at building sustainable happiness, both for ourselves and others.

Affective Forecasting  

We are really quite heroically bad at predicting how we will feel about something in the future, and for how long we’ll feel that way for. Dan Gilbert will explain more.

If you speak to a student on the day they were accepted to their dream university they will quite likely tell you that they are overwhelmed with happiness. They might be in tears of joy, they might be jumping up and down in delight. They’ll tell you with certainty that going to that specific university, and no other, will definitely make them happy. 

Some studies have even asked students to predict how happy they think they will be after spending one year at their dream university. The students almost always give themselves the highest scores. They firmly believe they will be super happy super sustainably. A year later, when the study checks in with them, the students are asked to measure how happy they feel in that moment. The results are pretty interesting. It seems that students at their dream university are pretty darn happy… but not nearly as happy as they thought they would be. Why is that?

Hedonic Adaptation 

Our brains assume that the new thing that has given us a big boost in happiness (like getting into our dream university, or a job promotion, a new house, and even getting married) will last indefinitely. 

In reality, that new exciting thing does give us a boost in happiness, but over time our happiness levels more or less return to where they were before the boost. It turns out that we adapt to our new circumstances and, after a while, those new circumstances begin to feel less satisfying. This is probably not what we want to hear. So why do we have a tendency to ‘level down’?

Miswanting 

We have a habit of wanting things that don’t sustain our happiness. As we’ve seen, happiness is a complex, interdependent system: an ongoing, high frequency experience of a life with meaning, purpose and joy. 

Now, striving for this doesn’t mean we experience those elements all together, all the time. It's normal to experience the full range of human thoughts and feelings. If you sometimes struggle, fail, make mistakes, get upset and feel frustrated then congratulations, you are definitely a human being. And in case there’s any confusion: that’s a good thing. Upping the frequency of experiences that engender meaning, purpose and joy elevates our happiness, which in turn allows us to build the resilience we need to better manage those times when life is tough, hard and unfair. 

So how can we help ourselves to better and more frequently experience meaning, purpose and joy in our lives? 

Dr Tal ben Sahar devised one tool: it is called the SPIRE Check In. 

The SPIRE Check In allows us to reflect on how we’re doing in different aspects of our life. Think of the SPIRE Check In as a kind of wellbeing bank account. Everyday life asks us to make withdrawals from our account so as to get through the day. Was the bus to school crazy-loud? If so, to stay cool you just made a little withdrawal from your wellbeing account. Did you get a disappointing grade in class? To stay positive you just made a little withdrawal from your wellbeing account. Did you get into an argument, receive an unpleasant email, or have the wifi crash in the middle of an assignment? To stay upbeat in the face of all these things you make a withdrawal from your wellbeing account. 

We can guess what happens next? If you don’t pay attention to how much wellbeing currency you have in your account you will end up in debt or unable to pay. And that’s when a small inconvenience can cause a proper meltdown. The SPIRE Check In is a great way to check the balance of your wellbeing account and make decisions about which aspects of your wellbeing you want or need to deposit into.  

Why don’t you spend ten minutes now to do a SPIRE Check In?

Notice how getting into your dream university is not one of these SPIRE elements? Neither is a high grade. Nor a new house, car, phone or computer. Of course, all those above things can be great to have: they can give you some focus, they can provide you with a goal, and in the short term achieving them will give you a boost in happiness, perhaps even a spectacular boost. But it won’t last. 

We tend to focus on our goals and only then think about the means of achieving them. The goal might be that dream university, and so we then make the means of achieving our goal scoring the highest grade. But we’ve got it all back to front. Let’s take the above example. The goal is the dream university and the means is achieving high grades. What’s missing?

There’s no thought at all to the process you need to put in place to activate the means. Scoring a high grade is not a means. It's another goal. So now, to achieve your goal, you need a sub-goal. Well, how are you going to achieve that? The most common answer is… I’ll work harder. But that’s not a means either. It’s another goal. So where does this leave us? It leaves us with a life in which your happiness is measured solely by end product. But is that really a life? Life is not a sequence of end products. Life takes place in the spaces between end products. 

So our brains sometimes trick us into miswanting things. We then strive with all our might to achieve the thing we miswant. Perhaps we are even successful. We get the thing we desired. We feel great. But the feeling fades because by definition it's not sustainable. So then we start scrambling around looking for another thing to want and the cycle repeats. It sounds quite exhausting, doesn't it?  

Let’s look at what happens when we make our intellectual wellbeing our goal. We have to think of some means to achieve intellectual wellbeing. One means might be through schooling, for instance. Another means might be through reading a different book every month. Another means might be listening to a new podcast every month. By doing these things you are engaged and stimulated every day with new ideas. What will be the end product of this? You’ll feel more empowered because you can make more intellectual connections, you can combine more ideas, you can hold more conversations. You are also now making more deposits into your wellbeing account than you are making withdrawals. What’s the result of that? You’re going to learn more, and enjoy the process whilst doing so. 

Reference Points  

Even when we do focus our attention on having positive experiences over possessing things, our brains can still find a way to trick us. 

We tend to look at life in absolutes. We win or we lose. This is called Zero Sum thinking. And it's really unhelpful. 

Studies have shown that Olympic gold medalists experience a significant boost of happiness when they win. That makes sense, right? Logically, you might expect the silver medalist to have the next biggest happiness boost, and the bronze medalist to experience a smaller upward boost than the silver medalist. As logical as this sounds, it appears that this is not true. It seems that in reality the silver medalists are often upset, frustrated or even distraught. They have just proven themselves to be one of the best in the world at their discipline. And yet, they suffer a happiness decrease. Meanwhile, the bronze medalists are often almost as happy as the athlete who won the gold medal. How can we make sense of this?

This is where so called ‘reference points’ come into play. Reference points are the comparisons our brains make with other people or circumstances. Based on these reference points our brains tell us how we are supposed to think and feel about what we have achieved. For example, instead of thinking I have achieved something incredible, silver medalists tend to think… I failed.

Unconsciously or not, the reference point for a silver medalist is the gold medal winner. So a silver medalist sometimes ends up ignoring their objectively amazing achievement and instead they see only their failure to achieve gold. In this reference point a silver medal is associated with failure. Indeed, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, the British boxer Ben Whittaker won silver. However, he was so crushed that he initially refused to accept his medal on the podium. “You don’t win silver” Ben said. “You lose gold. I’m very disappointed - I feel like a failure”.

When we look at the bronze medalist we see something different. Often bronze medalists think, wow, I came so close to missing the podium altogether. For them, the reference point is the pack that didn’t manage a podium finish. In this reference point a bronze medal is associated with victory. 

Take a look at the photographs below of Olympic silver medal winners. What do their smiles tell you?

So reference points can make you long to buy a new phone just because your wealthy classmate upgraded theirs. Your brain draws you into a social comparison that has nothing to do with your actual experience, but rather the experience of those you see around you. Take a moment to reflect on your own experiences. Has there been a time when you looked at an achievement and were actually upset? Were you upset because you were measuring your success or failure against an unfair reference point? Have you ever known someone to be upset at an achievement you thought was amazing? 

Write an account of your own experience with a negative reference point. Write for at least ten continuous minutes. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling, just focus on really getting into detail of what happened and how you felt about it. 

Take a minute to clear your head. Take a few deep breaths and let the memory drift away… Get up and walk around if it helps. 

Now, re-read your journal and ask yourself the following question. Is there a different reference point you can use that would positively change how you think about your experience?