The book of the week was Morgan Housel’s Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, and it’s another easy read (just like his Psychology of Money) that makes you think a lot about why you think what you think.
Here was the biggest lightbulb.
He says the expectation game is one that we all have to play, so it’s important to know the rules:
“It goes like this. You think you want progress, both for yourself and for the world. But most of the time, that’s not actually what you want. You want to feel a gap between what you expected and what actually happened, and the expectation side of that equation is not only important, but it’s often more in your control than managing your circumstances.”
It’s about the gap.
A celebrity losing fame to become slightly less famous feels terrible — once they became famous, it’s not what they expected. When you’re struggling and don’t expect any fame or success, a bone thrown in your direction feels amazing.
The numbers…don’t actually matter.
We only care when something is different than we expected it to be.
And when good things start to happen — say, you make more money than you’ve ever made before, or live in a nicer house than you’ve ever lived in before — the bar has moved. What was exciting yesterday is now no longer enough.
There’s an interesting concept called the hedonic treadmill (I wrote this article about it for CTEDU) that poses that no matter what good or bad comes our way, human beings have a tendency to float back to a “baseline happiness.” Good events or circumstances do give us a temporary high but rarely leave us there.
Just like the title of Housel’s book, “Same As Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes,” it is worthwhile to take stock of what in your life never changes. What is true about you that never changes? What do you want to be true about you and your life, regardless of circumstances?
A meaningful life comes from closing the gap.
If you have no idea where to begin with this practice, you know where to find me to chat.
(p.s. yes, I am an amazon affiliate. Clicking links in this post might feed my family!)