I believe happiness is earned.

In the same way we can accumulate wealth in a financial sense, we can accumulate happiness. In the same way we can go into debt financially, we can go into debt emotionally.  It’s amazing how getting a new gadget/car/boat with debt is identical to using drugs to feel good: it’s a fake sense of having earned something – or a fake sense of owning something.  Then we become a slave to the ‘something’ because there are certain measures we need to do in order to keep making payments.   This is identical to addiction.  Addiction is a loan with a terrible interest rate.   The happiness that comes from getting high will need to be repaid with interest and you’ll have even less than you did before.

It’s really important to understand the debt concept for your sense of wellbeing.  “Yeah, I’d like to feel better right this second, but am I fully accepting how it’s going to make me feel even worse eventually?”   It’s unlikely to have that thought (but it would be nice).  The more likely thought could be planted afterwards.  It’s in the trust of the cleaning-power of time: “yeah, I feel awful right now as I’m repaying my emotional debt, but I know if I keep making payments and I refuse to go even further into debt and take out another loan, I’ll eventually straighten things out and can build some wealth happiness.”

There are also two other concepts worth noting: ‘saturation’ and ‘autonomy’.

Saturation is one of the saddest psychological phenomena I’m aware of.  It basically means “getting used to how you feel.”   The term is used most often when talking about sleep.  After a small dose of sleep deprivation, we can tell we’re not firing on all cylinders.  We feel groggy and we look forward to catching up on rest.  If we let that level persist, we’ll lose the awareness that our cylinders aren’t firing and we’ll get used to it.  It’ll become the new status quo and we’ll forget we don’t feel very good.  It’s the new normal and we lose sight of better.  Saturation is also mentioned a lot when talking about hydration.  It is literally forgetting life can be better. Isn’t that awful?

For myself, considering the type of work I do, I think about it mostly in terms of substance use rather than hydration or sleep (people don’t generally come into my office and tell me how they’re having a difficult time staying hydrated.. lol).  Whenever I have a full dose of depressants in my blood – or when I’ve slowly built up too much of a tolerance to coffee – I’ll start thinking, “ugh.  This is what a huge portion of the population feels like. That is terrible!”  Fortunately, my compulsive side doesn’t settle for less-than-awesome, so I’ll put some work into shifting the status quo back to where I feel amazing.  Saturation doesn’t have a chance to take over.  That’s not the case for everyone.  That’s why, to me, saturation is one of the saddest phenomena out there.  It’s not on people’s radar and it sneaks in.  My intent in these paragraphs is to put it on your radar, stir up the part of you that wants more, and to encourage you to do the hard work of repaying your emotional debts.

Lastly, to return fully to the analogy of psychological wealth building: ‘autonomy’.

Sometimes when a person starts to catch the scent that the idea of psychological growth is a movement towards autonomy (becoming more “needless”), they will attempt to jump prematurely towards autonomy.  This is a near-perfect analogy to financial wealth as well.  It’d be sweet to be “independently wealthy,” right?   That’s a strong financial goal.  But a person can’t simply immediately choose to be independently wealthy.  We have to get out there and make it happen – working hard – making deliberate decisions – making sacrifices.   We have to fulfill the needs in order to reach the destination of being independently wealthy.  The same is true with psychology.  We can’t just decide to be autonomous.  We have to put the work in to get our needs met… then we are closer to autonomy.   It would actually be an obstacle (or it will completely stop you) on the path to autonomy if you prematurely act autonomous and needless.  It’s analogous to calling your job and saying, “you know what? I don’t need my paycheck this week.  Keep it.”  That’s probably not going to help your financial goals, right?  In the same way, acting autonomous doesn’t help your psychological goals.  The needs need met.  Ignoring them makes them last longer.  “What you resist persists.”

Take care of yourselves.  Repay your debts (don’t take out emotion-loans with high interest rates).  And let your needs move you.