A lot of time and money is spent on frivolous things in the vain hope that they will help us feel “good.” Here’s a shocker. This will not work… and feeling “good” might not be what you actually need.
Pushed & Pulled to the Un-Necessary
The basic idea used in marketing is to establish a feeling of need in a target market. If you can generate this sense of need, then you can generate sales. The target market is told stories and shown images of people living an ideal life… you know, the life you want to live… and at the center of that life is the thing that will make it all come together. A car, a phone, a vacation, a medication. None of which are truly necessary.
The story that we adopt is that if I have this thing we will feel good. But when we get that thing, odds are it will feel good for a brief moment and then we quickly return to our previous state. Even worse, we might feel buyers remorse, guilt, or maybe even be ashamed of ourselves. We feel bad again which makes us susceptible to more “feel good” marketing and off we go. This phenomenon is called the hedonic treadmill.
It’s ok, this happens to all of us. But we don’t have to live in this endless loop.
The Real Problem
At the root of this marketing strategy is the simple fact that most of us think we should feel good all the time. When in reality this is an impossible standard to sustain.
Don’t get me wrong, feeling good is awesome, I’m just saying that it is not something we can feel all the time. And relentlessly seeking to feel good could be a root cause of feeling bad… What a mess.
A Better Focus
A solution to this problem is to find a more achievable goal. Instead of solving the problem by trying to feel good, what if we sought out not feeling bad? I know it’s a subtle change but I think it is powerful.
Not Feeling Bad
Not feeling bad doesn’t mean you have to feel good all the time. It gives us a lot more flexibility in our mood. And that flexibility means less stress and pressure to attain and sustain a state of feeling good constantly. Sometimes just reframing this goal is enough to remove some anxiety in our lives, but let’s look a little deeper.
For most of us the best case scenario is that sometimes we will feel bad, and sometimes we will feel good and the rest of the time will exist somewhere on the spectrum between these two states. If feeling neutral is at the center of this distribution then our own personal average will fall somewhere to the left or right of center. If all the way to the left is feeling bad, and all the way to the right is feeling good, then the goal should be to keep our average… or baseline… to the right of the center.
Let’s look at how to do that next.
Keeping Things Positive
In order to keep our baseline on the positive side of things we need to start with the basics. Here is the list.
- Sleep – get enough quality sleep
- Exercise – Move your body and lift heavy things
- Get outside – Sunlight, blue spaces, and green spaces
- Eat Right – Whole foods, no garbage
- Stay Connected – Family, Friends, Colleagues, Mentors, Coaches, Teachers
- Aim Up – Identify and stick to your values
Notice how a lot of these things aren’t necessarily going to make you feel good… but they will keep you from feeling bad. And not feeling bad might be the secret sauce in feeling better.Of course there are other things but these are what I consider to be the core tools that help us keep our baseline in the positive.
Thanks For Reading
If you found this helpful, you can read all of my Daily Reflections at www.tacticstotalwellness.com/blog
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