Michelle: That promotion you're chasing? It'll make you happier for about two years. That devastating breakup? It might be the best thing that ever happens to you. Mark: Whoa, that's a bold way to start. You're basically saying everything we think we know about happiness is backward. Michelle: According to the science, it pretty much is. Today, we're exploring why our instincts about what makes us happy are almost always wrong. Mark: I'm intrigued and a little nervous. This feels like it's going to challenge my entire life plan. What's the source for this psychological earthquake? Michelle: This all comes from the book The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does by Sonja Lyubomirsky. Mark: Ah, I've heard of her. She's a big name in this space. Michelle: Exactly. And Lyubomirsky isn't just a self-help guru; she's a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, with a Ph.D. from Stanford. Her work is built on decades of rigorous scientific research, which is why it's so compelling and, frankly, a little unsettling. Mark: Right, so this isn't just feel-good advice. It's the hard science of why we get happiness so wrong. I've seen that the book gets a mix of reactions. Some people find it life-changing, while others feel it's a bit dense or demanding. It's not a 'magic formula' kind of book, is it? Michelle: Not at all. It’s more of a reality check. It forces you to look at the cultural scripts we all follow. Let's start with the myth we all live by: the 'I'll be happy when...' fallacy. Mark: Oh, I know that one intimately. "I'll be happy when I get this job... when I buy a house... when I finally get married." It's the hamster wheel of modern life. Michelle: It is. And Lyubomirsky argues it's a trap built on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our brains work.

Michelle: The core concept here is something called hedonic adaptation. It's a fancy term for a very simple, and sometimes frustrating, human tendency: we get used to things. Especially good things. Mark: That sounds a bit depressing. You're saying the thrill is always gone? No matter what? Michelle: In a way, yes. The intensity fades. The book shares this perfect, almost heartbreaking story of a woman named Jennifer. She meets Keith, and it's a whirlwind romance. We're talking candlelit dinners, skipping work for intimate moments, sharing their deepest secrets. It felt like the ultimate happiness, the end of the search. Mark: The Hollywood movie version of love. Michelle: Precisely. But fast forward eight years. They're married, they have a routine, they have responsibilities. And Jennifer feels... bored. The passion has cooled. She finds herself looking at him and wondering what happened to the magic. The excitement that she thought would last forever had simply become her new normal. Mark: And that's hedonic adaptation in a nutshell? The extraordinary becomes ordinary. Michelle: Exactly. And the research backs this up in a shocking way. One famous study tracked people who got married and found that the sizable happiness boost they got lasted, on average, only about two years. After that, they were right back to their pre-marriage level of happiness. Mark: Only two years? That's it? So what's the point? Are we just wired for boredom, doomed to be dissatisfied? Michelle: Well, our wiring is definitely part of it. The book brings up this fantastic, slightly scandalous story to explain our need for novelty. It’s called the "Coolidge Effect." Mark: The Coolidge Effect? Like President Calvin Coolidge? He was known for being so quiet they called him "Silent Cal." What does he have to do with this? Michelle: The story goes that President Coolidge and the First Lady were touring a poultry farm. Mrs. Coolidge noticed there were very few roosters and asked the farmer how they managed to fertilize so many eggs. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters performed their duties dozens of times each day. Mark: Okay, an impressive rooster. Where is this going? Michelle: Mrs. Coolidge, impressed, said, "You tell that to the President." So the farmer does. President Coolidge thinks for a moment and asks, "And does the rooster do this with the same hen each time?" The farmer replies, "Oh no, Mr. President. It's a different hen every time." Coolidge just smiles and says, "You tell that to Mrs. Coolidge." Mark: That is hilarious! And surprisingly witty for Silent Cal. So the "Coolidge Effect" is basically our brain's preference for novelty? The rooster gets re-energized by a new partner. Michelle: You got it. It illustrates that we are biologically wired to respond to novelty and variety. When things become predictable, our excitement wanes. This applies to our jobs, our possessions, and yes, our relationships. The book isn't saying relationships are doomed. It's saying that if you want to combat hedonic adaptation, you can't just rely on the initial magic. You have to consciously and actively introduce variety, surprise, and appreciation. Mark: Ah, so you have to be your own new chicken, so to speak. You have to find ways to keep things fresh because your brain's default setting is to get bored and start looking for the next shiny thing. Michelle: That's a perfect way to put it. You can't stop the adaptation process, but you can slow it down. You can re-experience the good things, appreciate your partner, and actively create new, surprising moments together. It’s about fighting against that natural drift towards the mundane.

Mark: Okay, so getting what we want doesn't guarantee happiness because our brains get used to it. That's a huge insight. But what about the flip side? The things we're terrified of—a relationship falling apart, a major setback, getting sick. The book's title suggests we get that wrong, too. Michelle: We do, and in an even more profound way. This is the "I can't be happy when..." myth. We believe that certain negative events will permanently destroy our well-being. A divorce, a job loss, a bad diagnosis—we see them as the end of the story. Mark: Which feels pretty rational, honestly. Those things are objectively awful. Michelle: They are. The book doesn't deny the pain. But it argues that we are terrible fortune-tellers. We can't see the full picture. The best illustration of this is an ancient Chinese parable from the book, about an old farmer and his horse. Mark: I think I've heard this one, but refresh my memory. Michelle: So, this old farmer has a prized horse, his most valuable possession. One day, the horse runs away. All his neighbors come to console him on his terrible luck. The farmer just replies, "Good luck, bad luck, who can say?" Mark: A very zen farmer. Michelle: A few days later, the horse returns, and it brings with it a whole herd of wild horses. The neighbors rush over to congratulate him on his incredible good fortune. The farmer just shrugs and says, "Good luck, bad luck, who can say?" Mark: I'm sensing a pattern here. Michelle: The next day, the farmer's son tries to tame one of the wild horses, gets thrown off, and breaks his leg. The neighbors are back, lamenting this awful tragedy. And again, the farmer says, "Good luck, bad luck, who can say?" A week later, the army comes to the village, conscripting all the able-bodied young men for a war they will not survive. They see the farmer's son with his broken leg and pass him by. Mark: Wow. So what seemed like the worst luck—the broken leg—actually saved his life. Michelle: Exactly. The story perfectly illustrates the book's point: we see events in isolation, but life is a chain of interconnected consequences. What looks like a disaster today might open the door to an unforeseen blessing tomorrow. Mark: That's a great story, but it feels like a fable. How does this apply when you, say, lose your job in the real world? It's hard to see the "good luck" in that moment. Michelle: It is. But Lyubomirsky provides real-world examples. The person who gets laid off from a stable but soul-crushing career and is forced to reassess, ultimately finding a new path that's far more exciting and fulfilling. Or the person who goes through a painful heartbreak, which gives them the time to figure out who they are and what they really want, leading them to meet a much more compatible partner down the line. Mark: So it's about the growth that can come from the crisis. Michelle: Yes, and the book explains the mechanism behind it. We all have what's called a "psychological immune system." Just like our physical immune system fights off germs, our psychological one helps us recover from emotional distress. It's our capacity for resilience, for rationalizing, for finding silver linings. We are incredibly good at making sense of our suffering and turning traumas into sources of strength. Mark: I love that term, "psychological immune system." It implies we have this built-in capacity to heal from emotional wounds. We're not as fragile as we think. Michelle: Not at all. In fact, the research cited is stunning. Studies show that people who have experienced some adversity are actually happier and better adjusted than people who have experienced no adversity at all. Enduring tough times "toughens us up," as the book says. It builds our coping skills and our confidence in our ability to handle whatever life throws at us. Mark: So avoiding all pain and hardship isn't the goal. A life without any challenges leaves you unprepared and brittle. Michelle: Precisely. The crisis points—the moments we fear most—are often the very moments that forge our character and lead to the most profound growth. We just can't see it when we're in the middle of it.

Michelle: When you put these two myths together, you see the full picture of how we sabotage our own happiness. We're constantly running towards things we think will save us and running away from things we think will destroy us. Mark: And we're wrong on both counts. The promotion won't bring lasting bliss, and the breakup won't bring permanent misery. And Lyubomirsky's point is that believing these myths isn't harmless. It makes us make bad decisions—chasing a higher salary at a job we hate, or staying in a miserable relationship because we're terrified of being alone. Michelle: Exactly. These myths turn normal life passages into full-blown crises. The solution, then, isn't to find the "right" circumstances. It's to change our response to the circumstances we have. Mark: So what's the practical takeaway here? If we can't trust our instincts, what should we do? Michelle: The book suggests a fundamental shift in focus. Instead of chasing the next big thing to make you happy, focus on injecting appreciation and variety into what you already have. That's how you combat hedonic adaptation. And instead of fearing the worst, you need to learn to trust your own resilience, your psychological immune system. Mark: It's about working with your psychology, not against it. Acknowledge that you'll get used to the good stuff, so you have to actively keep it fresh. And acknowledge that you'll recover from the bad stuff, so you don't have to live in fear of it. Michelle: That's the essence of it. It's about moving from being a passive passenger in your emotional life to being an active, informed driver. Mark: That really makes me think about my own life. It makes you wonder, what's one 'good' or 'bad' thing that happened to you that turned out completely different than you expected? Michelle: That's the perfect question to reflect on. We'd love to hear your 'Old Farmer's Horse' stories. What was a moment of perceived bad luck that turned into a blessing in disguise? Share them with us on our social channels; we're always fascinated by these stories. Mark: It's a powerful reminder that the story is never over. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.