According to the principles of Hedonic Adaptation (or The Hedonic Treadmill), anything that once gave us joy will cease to at some point in the future.

It might be within a relatively short period of time, too, which can come as a bit of a shocker when you feel you have stumbled across a significant piece of good fortune or have discovered an elixir of some kind.

It could be juicing, hiking, fasting - or it could be actually getting high. It's great at first but after a while, it becomes the new normal and in order to get that kick again, you need to amp it up a bit (and then again).

There are obvious downsides to this approach, particularly when it comes to substance use. But any kind of addictive behaviour - even "healthy addictions" like exercise can be, at their core, a need to get that original feeling of elation that came the very first time we did it.

This principle, that we adapt to our new states of being, even after they radically change, is applied to a well-known study of lottery winners, in the TED-ED video above. The point was to find out if coming in to such extreme levels of good fortune cemented their long-term happiness. Did their "baselines" of happiness change at all after coming into such a signficant sum of money?

They did, at first. But then after a while, participants, like elastic bands, snapped back in to place. They were about as happy as they were before they won the prize (and some, even less so).

The most dangerous aspect of unresolved feelings and unaddressed stuck emotions is that we believe whatever it is we are thinking.  We get sucked into a virtual reality that is utterly convincing. And the very idea that there is actually something within our control to take us out of it feels ludicrous if not downright offensive.

For us, this is real: the world is bleak, things are hopeless, we will never find anyone who gets us, we will never get ourselves out of the mess we are in (etc etc).

But the thing that actually sets us free is also the hardest thing to accept. Aside from when we are faced with serious, life-threatening illnesses and traumatic psychological conditions which require serious professional help, the day-to-day troughs, low spells and dour moods we all experience is totally within our power to eradicate.

It requires 3 steps:

Be Honest & Specific.
The first step is to ask ourselves how we really feel. Shit? Good. What is it specifically that is getting us down? Pick one thing at a time.

Ask If What We Believe Is True.
The second step is to break the grip this idea has on us. We need to challenge our assumptions, that's all. Is there a possibility that what we are thinking isn't actually true?

Take Action
As soon as have stepped out of the "virtual reality", admitted why we feel so bad and that maybe it's not based in reality, we are ready to work on clearing it.

Here are 4 techniques we can work with by ourselves:

1. Expressive Writing
This is ideal when we are stuck on Step 1. If we know we feel bad and we're not sure why, just ranting and raving on a piece of paper can begin to work wonders. It allows us to vent, which is cathartic in itself, but as we write we frequently begin to reveal to ourselves what it actually is that is bugging us deep down. ("....and my life is hard and I don't have any friends...")


2. The Work
This technique is worth trying if we are stuck on Step 2, as it is specifically designed to make us confront the beliefs we have about a given situation and ask ourselves if it is true. It basically involves asking ourselves 4 questions:

1. Is what we believe true?
2. Can we be absolutely 100% sure that it's true?
3. How do we react/feel when we think/believe that thought?
4. What would happen & who would we be if we didn't have that thought?

Sometimes, life is just shit. It's bleak. It's boring. It's repetitive, predictable, petty and small. It's going nowhere. And it's worse when we can't find any reprieve from it.

We can find umpteen motivational videos telling us that "We can be or do anything we desire!". We tell ourselves that we just lack confidence and are "afraid of our own power".  We are told (by therapists, life coaches, gurus, self-styled experts) that we just have to believe in ourselves, repeat mantras and visualise success (and nothing happens).

"Surround yourself with people you admire!", we are frequently advised.  "Find a mentor, then get better than them!".

But what if there aren't any? What if we are stuck in some godforsaken shit-hole in the middle of nowhere with zero opportunities to meet incredibly inspiring people who will take us on a magical journey to Wonderland? What, if we are neighbours with bin collectors, shop assistants and coffee shop baristas (not Tony Robbins or Richard Branson). What then?

After a while, all of these promises and pieces of advice can begin to ring a little hollow. And then, as a last act of desperation, all we can do is try to kick ourselves into a state of positivity, telling ourselves, "Stop being so defeatist", "Anything is possible, right?"

But frequently, it feels like all evidence points to the contrary. That no matter how hard we work, how much money we spend on therapy, life coaching and self-improvement programs, nothing changes.

How do we deal, then, when life has turned into one long shit-show and (to rub the salt in), the advice we are being given either doesn't fit our circumstances - or doesn't seem to work?

There are 4 approaches that run counter to the typical self-help mantras that might help shift things a bit. They work regardless of income, geography or social networks - not all will appeal but all have their place. And what connects them all is this: none of them are designed to drastically change your life - and that's kind of the point:


1. Amor Fati

This is the hardest one to swallow, so best to get this out of the way first. It requires a pretty sizeable amount of magnanimity which, when life is really tricky, is quite hard to say the least.  "Amor Fati" is a stoic practice that basically translates as "love your fate". It requires not only developing the ability to take misfortune on the chin but to actually become grateful for it, recognizing that hidden gems can lie in life's unpleasant moments. Robert Greene & Ryan Holiday explain all in the video above.

2. Radical Acceptance

If you are unable to get to that point, you could consider Marsha Linehan's technique of Radical Acceptance, where you actually fact facts. You don't sugar coat it, you don't pretend something shit is actually secretly a brilliant gift, but you just accept what has happened - and what is happening. As Linehan says in the video above, "You have to radically accept you want something you don't have and it's not a catastrophe." Anything less is living in denial and stretching out the misery you have found yourself rolling around in.

3. Intense Realism

In a similar vein, Intense Realism (as described in Chapter 1 of The 50th Law by Robert Greene) is the ability to accept reality as it is (and not as how we wish it was). And as Greene argues, it allows us to finetune skills we might not otherwise have learned. We have to be sharper, for example. We have to be better at spotting opportunities.

No-one likes bullies. But the worst kind, the most insidious of them all, live inside our heads. And the reason they are so powerful is because we don't even realise they are there. They are so deeply embedded in our thoughts, emotions, beliefs and knee-jerk reactions to situations, that we think they are us - and we think they're right.

These voices have lives of their own - and they began in the 'real world', before they leapt into our minds and started whispering in our ears.

The Critical Inner Voice, as it is known, typically gets created as a defense mechanism to a painful situation. It doesn't always require a direct criticism or scolding to develop (the growing pains of childhood inevitably spawn situations that leave us feeling inadequate) - but the negative feedback loop we get stuck in can inevitably be traced back to an individual or group of people whose words and/or actions impacted us deeply.

If we have ever been picked on, regularly criticized, felt the spotlight was on us for all the wrong reasons, the emotional charge of that event can get stuck. And the way we were treated at the time, the kinds of judgments/expectations that were made of us and the lack of care that was given to us all get internalised.

We start talking to ourselves in the way we were spoken to that we hated so much. And it becomes so natural to us, so automated, that we fail to realise we are even doing it. And before long, we end up doing the original critics' jobs for them.

Elise Ballard, who runs the Epiphany Channel, offers an anecdote from an interview she did with architect, Greg Schriefer, on a breakthrough he had during a therapy session. It was as astoundingly simple as it was effective.

What gets your juices flowing? What do you do regardless of reward or recognition? No-one's asked you to do it, no-one's paying you to do it, but you do it anyway, because it makes you happy.

If there is anything at all, you have hit the gold standard, you have nailed intrinsic motivation, a doorway to life satisfaction, meaning, purpose and flow.

The ability to be make ourselves happy, independent of anyone else, or any external factors (like wealth, geography, a network of contacts etc) is a bonafide superpower. It is perhaps the single most important skill we will stumble across in our lives.

It can give our lives meaning, when perhaps things aren't going our way - and give us the necessary fortitude and willingness to persevere, even if we are not receiving validation for our efforts.

It's the polar opposite of obligation. This is something we do purely because we want to, because there is something about this activity that means something to us, that has value.  It allows us to experience that feeling of autonomy in a singular area of our lives, even when we lack it in others. And it means we can actually have thrilling inner lives even if we appear to be living distinctly average outer ones.

Intrinsic motivation theorist Edward Deci first realised this as a kid, as most of us do (and as he discusses in the first video, above). He recognised that there were certain classes at school that gripped him, while others left him cold and no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't muster up the same levels of enthusiasm for them.

There's nothing as uninspiring as a blank page (metaphorically and literally speaking). Trying to figure out what to do next, whether that means writing, designing or making a life change, without actually doing anything (i.e. by just thinking about it) often does little more than keep us in a vicious cycle.

The more we try and think our way out, the blanker the "page" becomes; we try and think a bit harder - but the page never magically starts filling itself.

Aside from the odd lightening bolts, the only way out in any of these situations is through.

And therein lies the paradox. The only way to combat our blocks or resolve whatever is keeping us stuck in a situation is to start to do whatever it is we feel we can’t do.

In this vein, Seth Godin argues there is no such thing as creative block. Until you've dedicated thousands of hours to creating utter dross, he says in the video (top), you can't even begin to make such a claim.

The point being, just staring at a blank piece of paper / screen does not count as having a creative block. And the reality is, the "block" is typically good old-fashioned performance anxiety, anyway. It’s our need to be perfect that can keep us "blocked".

"That feeling that we have when we say we can't write is really the feeling we have when we say we can't write anything that's perfect," says Godin.

"We are certainly capable of writing poorly. Nobody has 'writing poorly block''."

Show me 50,000 hours of writing terribly, he says, and then, he might concede we don't have what it takes. But until that day, the block is a figment of our imagination.

Many workplace environments can be incredibly demoralising places for us to spend our time, providing us with a delightful daily cocktail of insufficient pay, bad management and stifling levels of box-ticking.

Feeling like a cog in a wheel is hard enough when this is a job to pay the bills (rather than a step towards something greater). It can become intolerable when we are perpetually undermined, given insufficient freedom to make decisions and are left feeling like a piece of meat (and let's not even get started on toxic peers).

For some, quitting isn't an option, which just compounds the misery we feel. We can't take action to rectify the situation and the feeling of helplessness takes root, with no visible remedy in sight.

This lack of agency, as Johann Hari explains in the video above, is a key factor behind depression and anxiety, according to scientific evidence:

"If you go to work and you feel controlled - you feel you have few or limited choices - you are significantly more likely to become depressed," he explains. "Or actually even more likely to have a stress-related heart attack."

The reason being, he says, is that we have a strong psychological need for agency, or the sense of being in control of the direction of our lives. And the answer? Not surprisingly, it is to take back control.

There are many ways we can do this. In one particular case that Hari cites, a woman quit her job along with her husband to run a bike shop together. Her husband had worked in one before but the act of being responsible for it themselves had the inadvertent effect of erasing their depression and anxiety.

It's not always possible to feel fired up. When it comes to the magic of motivation, the only thing we can actually rely on is the fact that we can't rely on it all.

Our enthusiasm levels fluctuate throughout the day, waxing and waning with our circadian rhythms. All being well, they run their natural course and we feel the fire in our bellies again.

Other times our "down" spells can go on for what feels like a lifetime. We stare at blank screens, with blank minds and zero idea how to get back to that place of inspired action we had before.

And this, says author Mark Manson, is where we can make a vital mistake.

Starting a new habit is hard enough, particularly when there is all kinds of resistance around it, based in insecurity, fear of failure, looking like an idiot... the list goes on. Maintaining that habit once you have actually mustered up the gumption to do the thing is another matter entirely.

While there are all kinds of psychological exercises out there to help us motivate ourselves to stick at whatever it is we have committed ourselves to, James Clear offers a simple yet effective technique that takes quite a bit of the effort out that's typically involved when we're trying to stick to habits.

The trick is to focus on something completely different instead.

Typically, we place so much energy on the thing we are actually doing that habits can become the big boogeymen, something we have to grapple with.

Ah, how nice it feels to achieve something -  anything, in fact. And how frustrating are the days when it feels beyond our reach.

We are just not getting anywhere, what previously enchanted us now irritates us - worse, it bores us stupid. And the panic sets in. Is it time to call it a day?

Well, yes, in a word. But quitting doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, as Veritasium explains in the video, right.

It turns out that when we hit a wall and enter that period of abject misery called apathy or boredom, it is actually a gift in disguise - as long as we resist the urge to distract ourselves from it.

The trick is to let it be, to soak it up to its fullest - and the payoffs are somewhat unexpected: