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Posted by Jerry Lopper Jan 16, 2007 |
The new and growing field of positive psychology offers much good advice with loads of tips to help your pursuit of happiness and the good life.
Good Life Tip: We systematically over estimate the duration of our feelings about both positive and negative future events. The raise we anticipate will bring us happiness for a lengthy time, very quickly becomes our standard salary and we adapt to our new level of income.
Conversely, the pain we think we'll feel "forever" if we miss out on that promotion fades surprisingly quickly when the feared event actually occurs.
Though knowledge of this principle may not be useful in making you happier, it may help you understand why something you looked forward to with great anticipation delivered positive feelings for a much shorter time than you expected.
You might also take consolation in knowing that the negative event you feared would be devastating will probably not have as long lasting an impact as you expected.
Source: A Primer in Positive Psychology, Christopher Peterson