A set of algorithms to improve happiness
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “L Mr. / a> “(ID: lxianshengmiao), author: Lachel.
As you can see, this is a big topic.
So, I want to start from a smaller perspective.
I don’t know if you have this experience too:
Knowing that it is time to sleep, but always stay in front of the computer, brush the news, brush the article, brush the social network… even if you don’t do anything, wandering aimlessly, don’t want to shut the computer to bed.
Or, just lie in bed and play with mobile phones, read novels, brush friends, and try to stay awake until the eyelids sink, and then sleep unconsciously.
This phenomenon, I call it “day and night obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
So, why is there a “day and night obsessive-compulsive disorder”? The reason can be complicated.
Some people, because they feel that they haven’t done anything today, have ruined for a day and are unwilling to end it too early. Even if you stay a few more minutes, you can be more comfortable.
Some people think that they have to go to work tomorrow and repeat the boring life, so they have a sense of shrinking and hope to extend this little time to themselves.
But more common, it could be a situation:
We have been trained by this era to be extremely sensitive to informational stimuli. As a result, we can’t do it in the “screening” of a moment before going to bed.
Think about it: If you can be 100% sure, you can fall asleep when you go to bed, will you still reject “sleeping”? In fact, most of them will not, right?
What is the biggest obstacle for us? It is the feeling that the eyes are closed and the eyes are not able to fall asleep.
This feeling is too difficult, and even with it, we continue to delay the time to fall asleep, just to make this “sleeping period” as short as possible.
In 2014, researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia did a similar experiment: they kept the participants alone in a small room, without any items, and isolated everything from the outside world, asking them to stay inside. 15 minutes.
Then, the researchers put on a electric shock device on them, which can be used to shock themselves, causing mild pain (no danger). It was found that nearly half of the participants preferred to choose an electric shock within 15 minutes.I am not willing to do nothing.
Our brain, like a drowning person, is eager for the excitement of the outside world.
With these stimuli, we will suffocate.
Why is this happening? This starts with the brain’s “reward circuit”(Reward circuit) – I often refer to this concept, but many friends may not understand it.
This is a simplified reward loop model:
In this model, 1 is called VTA, 2 is the nucleus accumbens, they together constitute A pathway; 3 is the prefrontal cortex, responsible for cognitive, behavioral, and regulatory functions.
How does this model work? Simply put, when receiving a stimulus that is beneficial to survival, the “1-2” valve opens and the nucleus accumbens is stimulated, giving feedback to the frontal cortex, allowing the prefrontal to direct the brain to “continue this behavior.”
What is the messenger acting as a commander? It is the dopamine we are familiar with.
Why is it called “loop”? Because the prefrontal cortex receives the signal from the nucleus accumbens, it tends to continue the previous behavior, thus forming a “strengthening” of behavior – generating behavior, stimulating VTA, generating feedback, and strengthening behavior – thus forming A closed reinforcement loop.
And the activation of this whole loop creates a feeling for our consciousness, called “happiness.”
You can understand that the prefrontal cortex sends a signal X to the brain to continue the previous behavior; at the same time, it sends a signal A to our “consciousness”, let us feel happy and agree to it. Instructions.
(This section can be found at: Do you think you are in control of the brain? No, the brain is manipulating you)
Therefore, many people refer to dopamine as “happy substance”, but strictly speaking, dopamine is only a carrier for transmitting information, and the whole “reward” is the reward circuit.
It can be seen that if we define “happiness” as “long-term and stable happiness”, then it is closely related to the reward circuit.
In other words: What is the nature of happiness? In fact, it is the healthy operation of the reward loop. Thus, we can feel continuous and stable happiness in all kinds of small things in life.
Of course, this is a narrower definition. You might say that happiness also includes healthy interpersonal relationships, a comfortable living environment, a good social atmosphere, sufficient financial strength, and so on.
But they are essentially the same. These are nothing but driving and maintaining the reward system through various external factors, so that we can enjoy the life of each day with vitality and enthusiasm.
What is the most critical thing here? It is “long term”.
After all, life has been for decades, you will not want happiness to be short-lived, but hope that it will last for a long time, every day, every year, you can feel happiness, this is happiness. right?
So there is a problem here.
The activation of the reward loop has a very critical feature:
The expectation is poor.
What do you mean? In short: the promotion of dopamine release is not the “behavior of behavior” itself, but the “difference between expected and actual income”.
Immediately: Reward loop strength = actual revenue – expected return.
The greater the difference, the greater the stimulus to the reward circuit and the higher the concentration of dopamine that is stimulated, and thus the greater the happiness we feel.
This conclusion was first proposed by Schultz et al. in 1997. It is extremely important, please remember it, it will be used later.
For example: You messed up a task and the boss asked you to go to his office. You think “bad, this time you must be defamed.” As a result, the boss not only did not marry you, but also comforted you. In this process, although the actual return is 0, since the expected return is negative, the actual reduction is positive, so you will feel the positive emotions that are relieved, relaxed and happy.
Another situation: You have a project, the boss has promised to give the team a bonus, cashed outBut give less than promised. Although the actual return is positive, you may not be happy, but will feel angry because the actual reduction is negative.
Specifically, you can see this picture:
Situation 1 is the most common situation, needless to say.
Case 2, when you have foreseen that a certain behavior will be rewarded with a reward, you will not activate the reward loop – in essence, This reward has been advanced in advance ”
The situation 3 is very interesting:
When you think that your behavior will bring some kind of reward, but it does not actually, it will not secrete dopamine, but will inhibit dopamine neurons, which is to reduce the secretion of dopamine.
So, what does this suppression cause?
You might think it’s the opposite of happiness, but it’s not. This kind of suppression brings about a “craving” beyond normal.
Improve your desire to find ways to activate the reward circuit and secrete dopamine.
Have you discovered that this model is actually what? Addiction.
The mechanism of drug addiction is to stimulate people to feel strong positive emotions by stimulating the nucleus accumbens and secreting a large amount of dopamine. But as the potency disappears, the dopamine concentration in the nucleus accumbens drops sharply, creating a huge “difference.”
It is this “difference” that encourages the brain to thirst for something that secretes dopamine and restores normal concentrations – more stimulation.
According to this model, we can divide all rewards into “Health Awards” and “Non-health Awards”.
Health rewards are slowing down – through a series of actions, slowly activate the reward circuit and slowly calm down. What it presents is a long, gentle curve.
Not a health reward? It is a big ups and downs. In a short period of time, you apply a lot of fresh stimuli to promote the rapid secretion of dopamine, showing a sharp and high peak.
What consequences does it have? The most immediate consequence is to increase the “expectation” of the brain.
In other words: the brain repeatedly experiences “non-health rewards” in a short period of time, and will gradually adapt to this level of stimulation to form a new “expectation.”
At this time, you will find:
1) The original stimulus doesn’t seem to be “sweet”. You need to increase your frequency and increase your stimulation to get the same feeling.
In short, your “threshold” has been improved.
2) Once you leave the stimulus, the dopamine level drops below the “expectation” and you become bored, boring, bored, and uncomfortable…
You must remember that our brain has a feature called “loss aversion “.”
Compared to earnings, we are more sensitive to losses and have more motivation to get rid of it.
And here, once the level of stimulation falls below “expectation,” what is equivalent to the brain? A loss.
It’s this new expectation and aversion to loss that drives your brain and constantly seeks new pleasures.
The problem is that in this era, the rhythm of everything is accelerating, and the information we can reach is too much.
Every day, there is a huge amount of information bombarded with us, filling every sense of ours, every moment.
This has two consequences.
On the one hand, these massive information stimuli will make the brain constantly exposed to the “pleasure” and constantly raise the threshold of the brain. Thus, a desire for fresh stimulation is formed.
At the same time, this information will be designed into a variety of consumer products, in order to be simple, fun, fun, fully mobilize your senses and brain areas, so that you do not need to bother, do not chew, you can take a bite Swallow it.
Over time, you’ll get used to these low-input-high-reward “short-term feedback,” which will result in long-term feedback on those who need long-term investment but are hard to generate revenue. , creating a sense of rejection and delay.
This is what I have been worried about, the reverse shaping of the brain in the information age.
So, I have always had a habit: try to avoid those “non-health rewards” that don’t move your mind and instill in your life with entertainment and freshness. It is not a scorn chain, nor a sense of superiority. Instead, I want to keep my brain as healthy as possible and maintain my “threshold” at a relatively low level.
Even if I read novels, TV shows, and movies, I will try to pick those who need to use their brains. Either you need to pay attention to the details, or you need to string together the logic chain, or you can stimulate thinking and creativity. In short, you need to invest some energy.In order to receive a reward.
The purpose of this is to get used to the “high-input-high-return” feedback model, to constantly develop your own brains, hands-on willingness and ability.
So, including the public number and the course, I won’t give you a lot of things, but I hope you can think, analyze and search. The reason is the same.
In doing so, I may lose a lot of excitement and experience, but I can maintain a more gradual, longer-lasting “happiness curve.”
Also, when the threshold and expected curve are kept at a low level, there is no need for a variety of “non-health rewards”, and there is no need for big ups and downs. In the many small things and many details in life, I can find the fun. — This is also a way to improve happiness.
For each of us, this may be a more valuable life.
On the other hand, a lot of self-media will continue to sell you anxiety, show you the life of various “others”, and tell you by side-clicking: You see, how successful others are, this is good. The way life should be.
Such as we have seen reports such as various monthly incomes of 100,000, annual salary of millions, 90 millionaires, rich nights, and counter-attacks of life.
The media will always focus on “typical” and “extreme” because only extremes can attract attention and bring benefits to themselves.
But these extremes, the true look of this era, every one who struggles in the city like you and me, with the ideal of big or small, overtime, 996, and even overdraft to sub-healthy people, will become Are they the protagonists in the pen?
No.
These content is constantly pushing up our “expectations.”
Slowly, our perceptions will be changed, and we will be shaped into the media and the way we look at the media. Our expectations curve is constantly being raised by external forces.
In contrast, the results we achieved, the exact happiness and rewards in our lives, compared to the “monthly 100,000”, “million assets” and “10 suites”, seem to be too small to be worth mentioning.
In 2015, a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences entitled “China’s Urban and Rural Residents’ Identity Status Deviation” pointed out that: More than half of urban residents would underestimate their class status.
Interestingly: the higher the level of education, income, and professional prestige, the more likely they are to underestimate their class status.
The greater possibility is that the higher the family, the more “probability” and “other people’s life” they are exposed to, the more likely they are to be adjusted, and thus they are ashamed of themselves. Not satisfied.
This may be the so-called “middle-age anxiety.”
In 2012, a study also pointed out that under the same income, the higher the average income of the people exposed, the greater the pressure on them and the lower the happiness.
And what the media and the media have done is to “connect” us to those who are hard to reach.
But those lives are really what we want?
In summary, I want to share my “Life Happiness Algorithm” with you.
It may not be comprehensive and may not be suitable for everyone, but I hope that it will bring you more long-lasting, stable peace and happiness.
I divided it into five variables: expectation, threshold, meaning, diversity, and sense of control.
Specifically:
1. Adjust expectations
How do you adjust your expectations to a lower level? It’s not that you want to close your eyes, not to look at them, but to distinguish between “his own life” and “other people’s life.”
Other people’s lives may be good, but is that what I want? I may not reach the height of others, but does that mean that others must be happier than me?
Everyone can define a variety of successes. Finding the area of interest and finding your own “location” to reflect and exert your own value may be a more meaningful “success”.
A person’s life is actually a process of asking and answering “what kind of person I want to be.”
Admit your own possibilities, pay attention to your every step of the effort and results, this is what we need to do.
2. Control Threshold
How do you control your own threshold? You can refer to the approach described above.
On the one hand, avoid all kinds of “non-health rewards”, avoid “lazy income”, avoid all kinds of noise and information that attract attention, and keep your brain clean.
On the other hand, develop a habit of brainstorming. Examine the information received, try to solve the problem yourself, think about several layers, and let yourself get used to the long path of “high investment-high income” to avoid being domesticated by too many short-term feedback.
In other words, in life, try to pursue “heart flow” as much as possible.
Once you turn your thinking into a habit, you don’t feel that thinking is too “tired.” Instead, you will have subconscious doubts and scrutiny about behaviors that don’t require thinking.
Keeping your sensitivity and low threshold is the source of long-term happiness.
3. Seek meaning
In the process of adapting and getting used to “long-term feedback,” there is bound to be a problem: how can I overcome the frustration and boredom in the process, letStick to “feedback”?
A valid approach is to attach a meaning to your behavior and make it your inner drive.
The essence of this meaning is creation and connection: by creating something that brings you closer to the people you care about, your partner, family, friends, and the wider community, to the world. The links make them better.
It will feed back into your actions and provide you with a constant source of motivation.
People can never exist out of contact, try to take the initiative to control this connection and make it your power.
4. Explore diversity
How can I try to increase my thresholds and expectations while gaining rewards and happiness? In addition to lengthening the feedback path, another way is to look for a variety of stimuli.
If your life is often repeated day after day, try to give it some freshness and try to do something that you haven’t touched before.
Whether you are out of the comfort zone, get to know people in different fields; explore new activities, new possibilities, or make some minor tweaks in your life to make “different” every day – these, It can be a source of happiness.
Let the field of vision be wider, and the world you feel will be wider.
5. Stay autonomous
I have said in previous articles: Self-efficacy theory believes that people have a basic need, that is, the need for Autonomy.
In other words, are all the choices I make made to be self-centered or driven and manipulated by the outside world?
Only by insisting on autonomy, all your decisions and actions are valuable to you.
From the perspective of the reward circuit, where is autonomy? It is the sense of control over behavior. This is also the basis of the reward circuit: all actions of “I” must be controllable and clearly aware of this sense of control.
So, you may wish to interrogate yourself in your life:
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What do I want?
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What can I do to achieve it?
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What are I willing to give up?
For example: Can marriage bring happiness? To a large extent: Do you really want to get married, or do you get married because of family pressure, public opinion pressure, circle regulation, and life pressure?
Keep your life in your hands and you can truly hold happiness.