A Million Ways to Live

The Deferred Life, Part 2: Deferred Happiness Syndrome

Chris Egan Season 1 Episode 9

Deferred happiness is the idea that you can't be happy until you reach some goal or hit some milestone in your life.

It's common to see people defer happiness until they make more money, find a romantic partner, finish school, move to a new city, or a million other scenarios.

Today we talk about this idea often called Deferred Happiness Syndrome. We talk about why humans are prone to it, what type of people are MOST prone to it, and how to break the cycle of deferring happiness with some very practical strategies and techniques.

This is our second episode in a series called "The Deferred Life"
The first one covered the idea of deferring life until retirement to work in a job that makes you unhappy.
Here's a link to that episode:
The Deferred Life, part 1, Retirement

Other Resources mentioned in this episode:
Happiful Article on Clive Gordon: https://happiful.com/could-you-be-experiencing-deferred-happiness-syndrome

A Million Ways to Live was produced By Chris Egan
For more information, please visit AMWTL.com

Chris:

Welcome to A Million Ways to Live. I'm Chris.

Chris:

I'm here as always, with my co-host, cassie, we're going to jump into, dive into, explore, dissect a million different ways to live a good life. It should be fun, the show and life. They should both be fun. Okay, cassie, hey, chris, welcome back. Thanks. So this is episode two on the topic of deferred happiness. Right, right, right. So last episode we talked about deferred happiness in retirement and how people often will work a job that is unpleasant to miserable in hopes that someday they'll retire and then they can be happy. Yes, today we're going just deeper on the entire idea of deferred happiness. So let's remind listeners what deferred happiness is. I am going to make you define it this time, okay.

Cassie:

Because I did last time, uh, putting off happiness until a later date or believing that you'll be happy when XYZ happens, but not really living for the moment and being present and enjoying the here and now, because you're focused on the next thing in the future that will bring you happiness future that will bring you happiness.

Chris:

Yeah, I mean it's. It's fairly uh, it's a very literal. It's defined in the term itself deferred happiness. It's kind of obvious. But people have also, uh, dubbed the deferred happiness syndrome, which is not a you it's not a actual psychological thing. But yeah, delaying happiness, joy, until you achieve something, reach some goal, change something about yourself or some milestone in life, yep. And so why is it a bad idea?

Cassie:

I think that's obvious, because you only you don't know if that present date will come. You don't know if that milestone will ever happen. You don't know if you'll ever get to that vision of yourself that you're imagining will be happy. So being happy now, or trying to be, is obviously the better route to me yeah, you may never reach the goal, yeah, yeah.

Chris:

So to put it in context here, I have a few common areas where people defer happiness. So you have career that we talked about. Well, retirement is really what we talked about, but in career, waiting for a new job, a promotion or reaching a certain salary level of income. Education putting off enjoying life until you graduate or get the education you're seeking? Yeah, relationships People think they can't be happy until they find a partner a spouse, a boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it may be.

Chris:

Lifestyle Think you can't be happy living where you are or until you move to a new town or get a bigger house or that kind of a lifestyle related milestone. And then just other personal milestones until you're older, until you retire or any other personal goal.

Cassie:

Lose weight.

Chris:

That's a common one. So people do this in all of these different areas. The other reason it's a bad idea is that it might not make you happy when you reach it. Yep, and that's what a lot of people don't know. You don't know if it's going to make you happy or not. There's no way to know it. You think it is, and a lot of things in our culture tell us that we're going to be happy when you get the big house, um, become a millionaire, whatever it is. Social media. Who do you think's prone to these kinds of things? I think this kind of thing well I think everyone is a little bit.

Cassie:

You know, I think everyone is prone to it. I'm definitely guilty of doing it throughout my entire life.

Chris:

In what areas?

Cassie:

Oh gosh, like all of them. So it was, I mean probably from middle school on, like, oh, I'll be happy when I get to high school, I'll be happy after high school. Oh, if I could just get a job and then, you know, finish college, then I'll be happy, I can get married, have kids. I've done, like all of the ones that we've kind of talked about um, have certain amount of money, weigh a certain amount, um, everything, it's always the next thing. Or if we even smaller, like sometimes, like, oh, if we can just get through winter, I'll be happy when it's spring. You know, I do it a lot. I think I'm really guilty of this whole thing and kind of thinking about it over the past week or two has put it in perspective and, like you know, logically. I know it's not the way to live life, but I think we all do it to some degree. But who's most susceptible to it? It's people that are unhappy.

Chris:

But are they unhappy because they're doing this, or are they doing this because they're unhappy Because they're doing this, or are they doing this because they're unhappy? So I think the note I have here is that high achievers, people that are highly ambitious, people that are always striving the next project, the next big thing, the next goal, the next there those people are, I think, prone to getting caught in that trap of thinking the next thing, or the success of the next project or the achievement of the next goal is when they'll finally be able to relax and be happy, because it's that's, it's more than just this feeling. Some people, I think, like, truly feel like they can't relax, like it's, it's a, it's a work thing.

Chris:

It's like they have to hustle and grind to get to the next thing or get to the end of the current thing before, and it's, it's almost like they just they can't like. This is what I know. I have to struggle right now. I don't get to be happy until until I do this thing. It's not even this, I don't know. It becomes, it almost becomes a conscious choice, like they recognize that they're deferring happiness and say, well, I know, because I gotta hustle and grind and get to the end of this project or reach this goal, and then like that's what I think is odd about it. It actually maybe starts as this unconscious thing that just people do. But for the higher, the high achiever, the highly ambitious type of person, I think it actually becomes this choice. Whether that comes from all of the hustle and grind type of people, that influencers and such that those kinds of people follow, or it's more innate, I don't know, but that seems to be. It evolves into a choice, I think for those kinds of people.

Cassie:

So I would say there's really kind of two kinds of people then, kind of the ones that you're talking about, that have just a lot of ambition and hustle and want to get there, and then, on the flip side, people that don't really want to take responsibility for their own happiness, in a way of like saying, once I get to there, you know, then I'll be happy, but not, uh, not putting it in their own court, like hoping that the universe gives them a partner or a promotion or the next thing you know, or if I win the lottery, then I'll be happy. You know, there's kind of, I think, that flip side to it.

Chris:

Is that? Are you describing like a victim mentality of people that say the world is put me in a bad position and I can't be happy until the world takes me out of this position?

Cassie:

Yeah, so kind of interesting. They're such similar things, but one person is trying their hardest to get there, while the other person is just waiting for fortune to happen to them.

Chris:

What do you think that does in a relationship to the other person? If there's two people in a relationship, there's one person who is has this deferred happiness syndrome and the other person is a little bit better at being content I think it causes a lot of stress in a relationship why are you smirking?

Cassie:

because I think we have a little bit of that. Uh, while I said I've gone through you know that a little bit of it, I'm much more content, I think, in the day to day, than my partner over there, which you know. I think there's, I think there's a good side to it too, like someone who's highly ambitious and wants to achieve things and has goals. That's all great, I mean, but the downside is the I can't be happy until I do those things, and I think sometimes, in a relationship especially, it's like, well, you got to figure out how to be happy now, because here we are.

Chris:

Yeah, it is great, I think, to have goals and ambition, but it doesn't they don't necessarily have to go hand in hand that while you, if you have ambition, you have to defer happiness.

Cassie:

Right.

Chris:

Those two things can be separated and you can abandon the deferred happiness idea and still be ambitious.

Cassie:

Definitely, but sometimes people don't do that.

Chris:

Right? Well, I've got a list of things we'll get to here in a few minutes on ways to do that, okay, but I wanted to bring a couple of resources in. So there's a guy in the idea of where does it come from? Where does this deferred happiness come from? And I found this guy named Clive Hamilton. He's an Australian author and he wrote about this a long time ago, 2004.

Cassie:

20 years ago. It was a long time ago. It was a long time.

Chris:

Years ago is a long time, it is a long time I saw a thing that said if uh, what's the movie? Um, dazed and confused. If they were to make a movie today.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Chris:

About a time long ago, just like they did in the nineties with dazed and confused.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Chris:

Then that would be like the early 2000s or something. It's crazy. Anyway, Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and he wrote that it starts with evolution. Humans are not designed to be happy, because then we wouldn't evolve. We're designed to progress and push forward, and to do that there's a dissatisfaction that often exists.

Cassie:

Makes sense. I mean to change. Why would you change anything if you were totally satisfied, you know. So having that element of dissatisfaction is what drives people to some degree.

Chris:

So I've been. That makes sense, but I've been reading a lot about work lately and truly a long time ago, hunter, gatherer societies. It was more of an egalitarian society where there wasn't hierarchies, there wasn't this societal need to progress and compare yourself to each other and say I need to this person's higher status, I want to meet their status, I want to raise my own status and become more important or more prestigious. It wasn't like that originally okay it.

Chris:

I guess he's right. It evolved into that, but I don't know if that is innate in humans or if that's something that our current culture is making us do. Is it unnatural or is it natural?

Cassie:

are you asking my opinion? I, I think I'm asking it out into the world. If you have an answer, feel free to I didn't realize that it hasn't always been that way. Frankly, I thought there was always some degree of wanting higher status, higher position in the tribe. Like you know, you have better chances of getting a partner of you know like it.

Chris:

I thought that was something that was kind of always a part of life I'm not completely schooled in that uh area of anthropology, so, but my understanding is that that is not a universal idea.

Chris:

It's not that all um small tribes and hunter-gatherer societies did not all have that hierarchy and many didn't. Um, he goes on to say humans navigate the world in relation to where am I in the hierarchy? And then an article talking about his paper. It says if you think about today and the group that we are in, if you think about today and the group that we are in comparison to, it's Hollywood stars and people who are genetically great in the gym. If we go back not that far, we would have had small tribes and we could be the best at something, whereas now we are comparing ourselves to people who are the best in the world, people who are in the 1% of the 1%, because we're-.

Cassie:

Exposed to it Connected.

Chris:

Everybody's connected to everybody on the internet, so we can see the best of the best, the 1% of the 1%.

Cassie:

Yeah, that's interesting. The best of the best, the one percent of the one percent? Yeah, that's interesting. I mean it just the comparison trap that people get themselves into. That didn't exist like not that long ago. So has deferred happiness always been such a thing, or is that a more recent phenomena, do you think, like with the introduction of social media and being able to see what everyone else is doing?

Chris:

I don't think it started with social media.

Cassie:

No, I'm not seeing it start. Do you think it has increased because of?

Chris:

oh surely, yeah, yeah, the the you know, they call social media people's highlight reel, because most people only show the good they don't. They're not posting about all of the bad times or the losses in their life.

Chris:

Most people or normal times or normal boring times. Yeah, so everybody, if you look at you know you've got that one family you always talk about on Instagram that's always taking amazing vacations. They're just always eating great food and traveling and they always look happy and their kids are great and they're pretty people and they're just this. It's the highlight reel of that family. They surely have bad times too, but they're not posting Instagram pictures of that, right? So that's what most people do and that's what we see.

Chris:

So it's hard not to think that we don't absorb that subconsciously and become feel inadequate and feel like we need to work harder to achieve things, and it forces us into this trap of not appreciating what we have. So, yeah, I think social media has made it a thousand times worse. I'm sure there's some statistics on that, but yeah, absolutely. So. How might people break the cycle? I've got a list if you would like me to jump in, unless you have some ideas of your own.

Cassie:

No, go right ahead.

Chris:

So I've got three categories.

Cassie:

Of how to break the cycle.

Chris:

Of how to break the cycle of deferring happiness. So there's some just general ones. There's a few that clive gordon, the australian author, had, and then, because we've done some other episodes on topics that I think are helpful, I've got some ideas from stoicism. Okay, all right. So some general ideas. We have what's to be expected to some degree. So mindfulness and meditation.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Chris:

So brings you back into the current moment. You have a set balanced goals how to pursue aspirations without sacrificing current happiness. Balanced goals. I think one way to look at that is to the the idea of setting out a process goal and an outcome goal. Okay. An outcome goal is I want to run a marathon. Process Goal is I want to run a four times a week okay. So that way, even you know your body might not let you on marathon day get to the finish line because an injury or you just run out of energy or what have you. So the things that you can't control in that situation might keep you from being happy if you don't set a process goal that you're a little bit more in control of. Yeah, celebrate small victories. So, along the path to whatever you're trying to achieve, celebrate the milestones leading up to that.

Cassie:

Okay.

Chris:

Clive Gordon has five ideas. It says do things that relate to your purpose. People who have a purpose will be happier. Do you have a purpose?

Cassie:

That's a big question. I don't know if I know my exact purpose.

Chris:

I bet most people don't have any idea what their purpose is.

Cassie:

Well, okay Then. No, I don't know my purpose do you know my purpose?

Chris:

no, do you I've always thought it was art artistic being artistic. I don't know that's right. I don't know if there is a right answer, but learn to live in the moment. So, kind of back to mindfulness and meditation. Number four at the end of the day, look for two things you did well and praise yourself genuinely. Learning to look for the good will help you to be happier and build a better relationship with yourself.

Cassie:

I like that one.

Chris:

Create your own sanctuary time. That one create your own sanctuary time. Uh, create your own sanctuary time in your week where you remove distractions and focus on doing things you really enjoy to nourish you in some way, shape or form. We will all have our own version of what this will involve. Do you have sanctuary time?

Cassie:

I do not, nope.

Chris:

Most of my life is seeking sanctuary time.

Cassie:

I know.

Chris:

Value sanctuary time.

Cassie:

I've never called it sanctuary time. I like the term, though. I think that's nice.

Chris:

So those are Clive Gordon's five ideas. Do things that relate to your purpose, learn to enjoy the process, learn to live in the moment. Look for, at the end of the day, two things you did well and praise yourself genuinely, and then create sanctuary time. Okay, stoicism. Stoicism tells us to focus on what you can control. So kind of back to the process and outcome goals. So a lot of these are similar ideas packaged a little bit differently. But yeah, stoicism is focused on what you can control and disregard the things you cannot control. There's no use wasting worrying energy over things you can't control.

Chris:

Live according to nature.

Cassie:

Okay, that would help with being present. Right To me it does.

Chris:

Live according to nature. Yeah, Be present. I think those are two different ideas, but they probably relate. So Stoicism I'll read what it has here. Stoicism teaches living in harmony with nature, including human nature. This involves accepting life as it unfolds and finding contentment in fulfilling your roles and duties well, rather than postponing happiness in anticipation of future achievements or changes. Number three practice mindfulness and presence. So that's come up really in all of these different categories. Uh, use negative visualization. Do you remember negative visualization?

Cassie:

I sure do that's one of the tricky parts of stoicism thinking about dark?

Chris:

yeah, it can be dark depending on the topic that you're visualizing.

Cassie:

Yeah, I just always immediately go to the worst possible thing when I think of that.

Chris:

So negative visualization is imagining the worst possible outcome for a scenario. So negative visualization for a career? Yeah, for a career. You know you get fired and can't find a job in your industry anymore and you have to start completely over. Maybe that's a visualization. And the point of it all is, if you visualize the worst possible outcome, you'll either find that it's not as bad as you thought or it will soften the blow if that should happen. So you're, you're preparing for that thing, you're mentally prepared for that to happen. Or a third option uh, you'll figure out a way to avoid it.

Chris:

Yeah, so can be dark because people think about I always just a lot of the death, and a lot of the examples are around death and losing somebody you care for and yeah, that's really dark and yeah I can understand how people don't want to do that right, but it's supposed to be helpful even in that area.

Cassie:

Yeah, I can see its value a lot more in the career or physical things.

Chris:

Losing something like your house or car. Yes, so stoicism. Recommendation number five is cultivate self-sufficiency. Stoicism teaches that true happiness comes from within, not from external circumstances or achievement. By developing inner resilience and self-sufficiency, you can enjoy life regardless of external conditions.

Cassie:

Appreciation yeah, the author. He said you know, recognize the two things that you did well that day. So similar to that.

Chris:

Number six acceptance. Learn to accept things as they come, without resistance or resentment. Number seven reflect on impermanence. Recognize the temporary, temporary nature of life and all its experiences. This recognition helps temper the desire to postpone joy until some future date, highlighting the importance of finding happiness in the now.

Cassie:

I think that's my favorite one, one of my favorites for sure. I think we could all benefit from that daily, knowing that this is not forever. Like how things are and you used to remind me of it a lot, I think, when the kids were little. Like they will eventually sleep, they will eventually eat on their own, they will get dressed on their own, you know, like all of the kind of hard the hard parts of life, like they're just not going to last.

Cassie:

I mean so nothing is forever, and sometimes that's bittersweet, but sometimes it's also like yeah, just you know, today might be terrible because of X, y, z, but in a month from now that likely won't be the situation.

Chris:

Yeah, somebody on another podcast, no idea when or where, but I remember they said the best parenting advice they ever got was on those days where it is chaos, you're trying to speak with your spouse and you can't because the kids are screaming, they're crying, they're fighting, they're spilling, they're breaking things, whatever Just the chaos, and you're annoyed, you're frustrated. Maybe you're trying to work, maybe you're trying to work, maybe you're on the phone, all those times where the tension is just rising, rising and you just want to explode.

Chris:

Yeah, just picture yourself 30 years later in a quiet house in a quiet house, and how much you would probably want that moment back and react in the way that that 30-year-older version of you would suggest you act.

Cassie:

Yeah, I thought that was good it is.

Chris:

So another very practical way to avoid deferring happiness, you know, avoid deferring happiness to when that life is not so chaotic. Yeah, so that's a big one. So have I uh missed anything that you came across?

Cassie:

no, I, as I was trying to kind of like listen or read, I kept coming across meditation, mindfulness, that was like a big thing, just, you know, working on being present. I liked kind of the the term, the when, then trap. I think that's a good way to what's that? When this happens, then I'll have this outcome. So I think kind of thinking not to fall into that trap of thinking when this happens, then I'll have this outcome. So I think kind of thinking not to fall into that trap of thinking.

Chris:

When this happens, then you know, yeah, yeah.

Cassie:

So that's something that I'll take away from it, kind of, and use.

Chris:

Well, two last things I have here. So we're really one, I guess. So I think what we're going to find after we do this podcast for another year, another two years, another 10 years, whatever it may be, yeah, that there's going to develop what I'll dub right now this tool belt approach to living a good life. Okay, because sometimes minimalism is going to be useful, like when clutter is getting out of control yeah, very obvious. But other times some stoic ideas are going to be helpful. Other times you just need a guide, somebody to kind of redirect you back into the right direction. Um, so that you know we did the, you know, finding a guru idea episode, and I think all of these different approaches while it's hard to say that one of them is ever going to be like that's the way to live life, but having all of these different things to pull out of your tool belt will be useful being able to pull one idea, negative visualization out of stoicism and use that when you're deferring happiness too much or worrying about the future.

Cassie:

Yeah, I think that's a really good way to look at it. I always feel like a few things stick with me each time, each topic, and I'm like that's really really useful, While none of them are the silver bullet, like you said, of this is definitely the right way. There's a lot of good elements that come from each of the topics we've discussed so far. Yeah, anything else, I don't think so.

Chris:

Okay.

Cassie:

Thanks, thank you, bye.

Chris:

Bye. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave us a review, and please tune in next week for another edition of A Million Ways to Live. Bye-bye, bye.

People on this episode