The journal of great expectations
Happiness wasn’t always discussed so fervently. Since 2000, the word “happiness” has increased in usage by about 300% according to Google’s ngram. There are books about how happiness gives you an edge professionally, how there may be an equation for happiness, or adventures in forcing happiness to happen. We are drowning in a chorus of happiness. If you’ve come here for an answer on how to be happy, I don’t have it (sorry), but I did want to reflect on one pattern that I have noticed in myself over the past decade; I get excited for something thinking that it will change my life, only to be let down when the event occurs. Formally known as hedonic adaptation, we always seem to adjust to whatever our circumstances allow. What if we kept better track of that phenomenon? Perhaps we wouldn’t get so surprised the next time something disappoints us, or learn to more accurately forecast just how happy some future event or thing may make us feel. The journal of great expectations is a technique/tool to do just that.
The constant cycle of expectation, realization, then disappointment gets a bit of an unfair rap. If we didn’t adapt and set further goals, we would risk never striving for anything again. For this reason, this post isn’t about throwing out goal setting entirely. Rather, we should set goals that lead to outcomes that do actually improve our lives in meaningful ways. Of course, there are countless books and articles also telling us what those sort of goals should be, but what makes you happy. Even more importantly, what do you consistently think will make you happy?
Setting up the journal
The journal of great expectations has one purpose; to document how our thoughts about happiness differ from our experience with happiness. It is not organized by date, rather it is a simple two column list. In the left column, you make a note whenever you are waiting for something to happen (an event, a purchase etc). In addition to what it is, you jot down how you think it will make you feel when it arrives. For example, I might think a raise is coming next month, and so I would write something like the following:
When I get a raise next month, I’ll feel so much less stressed about money. I’ll be happy when payday arrives because I’ll have more money to save, and will feel accomplished and worry less about comparing myself to my peers. It will be more of a joy to go to work because I’ll feel like I am accomplishing my goals faster.
Between the time that you write that expectation down and the time the event arrives, you will likely expect countless more things, and have those written down too. The journal is a bit asynchronous, the left column will always be ahead of the right.
When an event does arrive, the right column is used to record how you feel the moment that it happens. An entry for the previous example may look something like this
When the raise was confirmed today, I felt thrilled for about an hour, then I got stressed about a deadline approaching on Friday. On payday, I didn’t feel any differently, the difference in saving a few hundred more didn’t really matter, it was just a slightly bigger number. My friend also got a raise, and so now I feel like mine wasn’t good enough.
Over time, there will be a growing list of examples across a wide range of topics.
How the journal can help understand the past and the future
The next time that I am expecting a raise, I can look back to the examples of when similar things have happened and how it affected how happy I felt. In a way, it is my past self informing my present self not to get too caught up in wild expectations that something will be life-changing. Over time when writing a new expectation on the left side, I have a better understanding that what I am expecting may be unrealistic or even absurd. A new water bottle is unlikely to change anything, and if not for the water bottle ad I probably never would have wanted a new one in the first place.
There will be examples in the journal that did live up to their hype. Perhaps one of the future events is joining a local basketball team, and after joining I made some new friends and feel a lot better about being more active (reality exceeded expectations, and this resulted in a lot of happiness). This is informative — joining new sports teams was a worthwhile goal to set, and I should seek to do similar things again. What works will be unique for everyone, and the journal can help separate what works for you, versus what we are told should work.
A side effect of the process is that the future suddenly doesn’t appear so different from the present. This can help to live in the moment, and prevent living for the next vacation. Through dissecting the commonalities between goals that did and didn’t work out, we can create themes. Here are a couple of mine
- Things that involve being around people tend to be a lot better than solo adventures.
- The best purchases are ones that solve a real painpoint, expensive things tend to have a lot of buyer’s remorse.
- Vacations are often more fun to reflect upon than experience (flights can be a real drag!)
If you do try this out, even for a week, would love to hear how it worked for you!