Whenever we are not happy about something in our lives, we are generally faced with two choices. Whether the unhappiness is with a spouse’s behavior, with the way we look, or some aspect of our career, we have a choice to change the environment or change ourselves (“our look” here is also classified as the “environment”, yes it’s weird, shut up).
The natural disposition of people seems to be to change the environment. People think they’ll be happier when [insert external change]. Reality teaches us that we often overestimate the amount of lasting happiness we will gain from an environmental change. Fortunately is it also true for the opposite case – we overestimate the loss of happiness due to negative events. This is commonly referred to as the Hedonic treadmill.
To address this realization, many movements adhere to focusing on altering your perception, instead of the environment. You should learn, they claim, to accept people, accept yourself and find joy in what you do. While this is definitely the better answer in some cases, I do believe it’s not always the case. I believe there are changes you can do to your environment that would make you live truly and deeply better. In the long run.
I claim that the skill to differentiate the cases where you should change your environment and where you should change your reaction to it, is an extremely important and all-encompassing life skill. This skill is very hard to master and requires both a deep connection with your own emotions, together with a high competency to simulate, by thought, a changing environment and your resulting reaction to it. Not many people possess this combination of high emotional and cognitive intelligence.
-Nivge