Why Athletes Feel Worse When They Chase Happiness

We talk about why chasing constant happiness sets athletes up to feel broken on perfectly normal days. We connect authenticity, social media comparison, and sports culture to a practical mindset shift: “okay” is a valid place to live while you keep training. 

• Oliver Tree as a reminder that truth beats performance 
• the expectation of happiness as an impossible standard 
• the hedonic treadmill and why humans return to baseline 
• highlight reels and upward comparison on social media 
• emotional granularity and naming feelings precisely 
• athletes trapped by two scoreboards: results and mood 
• practical resets: drop the false bar, get specific, let okay be enough, audit inputs 
• resilience built by accepting the full emotional range 

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Transcript

Welcome And A Tragic Reminder

Coach B 0:01

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Plan B podcast. I'm your host, Coach B, and welcome to the Summer Edition. I hope you're all having a great summer here in the US. I wanted to throw in this bonus episode only because it coincided with the tragic death last week of the alternative music artist, Oliver Tree. And if you don't know who that music artist is, that's okay. Okay, he was a little bit out there. I first found him in 2018. I wasn't a massive fan, but I did respect and appreciate his authenticity. So for those of you who don't know, the artist Oliver Tree, he was a musician. He was from Santa Cruz, which is about two hours from me. He was 32 years old. And he was killed in a helicopter collision in Rio de Janeiro last week while he was on tour. It's very sad. And listen, I'll be 100% honest. I wasn't someone who'd been like super following his music closely. I didn't know he was on tour, but he was. But when he died, I did what a lot of people do when an artist passes away. You start re-listening to their music. Like really listening. And here's what I discovered. Well, already knew this about him, but this really enforced the topic that I'm talking about today. And today's podcast episode is entitled The Expectation of Happiness and how, as athletes, that can really impact how we feel about ourselves, our result, our performance, our training, when those expectations are unrealistic. So this is why I tied it into this artist. So this alternative US music artist, Oliver Tree, was completely unapologetically himself. Bowl cut, massive jeans, outrageous outfits. He looked like he walked straight out of 1994. And he didn't care what anyone thought about it. He used to rate himself, his looks, his whole thing, really low. He called

The Unrealistic Happiness Standard

Coach B 2:02

himself ugly. And then he goes on and he names his biggest album, Ugly is Beautiful. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check him out on YouTube. His songs were funny, but underneath the funniness, there was something really real and authentic about this artist, which is what I'm launching from today. He talked about not fitting in, being on the outside, being laughed at, loneliness, depression, feeling like you'll never measure up to whatever the world tells you you're supposed to be. He didn't perform happiness, he performed the truth. And people loved him for it. And that's actually what today's episode is about. It's not about Oliver Tree, the artist specifically. But the last thing that he was doing was that he was refusing to pretend. And I feel in our society, in our community, in our culture right now, we have a serious problem with pretending and with what we expect happiness to look like. And I think that expectation is unrealistic. It's an impossible standard that is setting a lot of people up to fail. So here's where I want to say up front because I think it's important. I'm not here to tell you, this would be completely irresponsible, to tell you that mental health isn't real. It 100% is. Some of the athletes that I work with are dealing with genuinely serious stuff and some, you know, serious matters. But I think we've gotten confused about something. We've started treating every hard feeling that we ever feel, whether it's in sport or outside the sporting arena, like a crisis. Every bad day, oh, might be a disorder. Every dip, like something's broken. And I don't think that's helping anyone. My actual argument for today is this the expectation of happiness in life is way too high. And when the expectation is too high, you're always going to fail at it. Not because you're broken, not because you're not good enough, but because the bar was never realistic to begin with. So let's think about your own week that you just had. Think about the last time that you just felt, you know, okay, not great, not terrible, just fine, average, a normal Monday. And did you sit with that? Or did you immediately start wondering, hey, is there something wrong with me? And if you did, boom, that's the problem right there. Where does this expectation come from? Because nobody sat you down and said you have to feel amazing every day. Nobody gave you a manual that said that. But somewhere along the way, most of us, I'm saying myself included, absorbed this idea that happiness is the default. Okay, that we're just supposed to feel happy. And if you're not hitting it, then there's something off. Maybe it's a mental health problem. And I think a massive part of that comes from what we're looking at every single day, what is being projected at us. Because it wasn't all Oliver Tree, okay? Authentic, you know, self-deprecating, funny film clips. There's a well-known concept in psychology called the hedonic treadmill. The idea is that humans have a happiness baseline, a level that we naturally return to no matter what happens. Now, these studies are not new, guys. They go all the way back to the 1970s when they found that lottery winners and people who had serious, life-threatening accidents, okay, and survived, within a few years roughly drifted back to the same happiness level as before either the lottery or the life-changing event happened. They didn't change forever, okay, in either direction. They didn't get happier, they didn't get sadder, they just returned back to a normal feeling of a normal baseline,

The Hedonic Treadmill Explained

Coach B 6:03

no matter what happened in their life. The science says sustained permanent happiness was never the human design. We were biologically built to come back to a middle ground. That's normal, that's human. But you wouldn't know that today when you open Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, TikTok, X, whatever you're on. What do you see? You see a tiny glimpse, a highlight reel, a a curated format of the best moments, the best angles, the best day filtered, optimized of life. And without even realizing it, as a society, we start comparing our whole unedited life to someone's greatest hits package. Okay. And it's fake. It's false. I'm not saying that the incident, the the photo that they just posted isn't real. It probably is, but I'm saying that that's the highlight. That's the peak. That's not the normal. But we are comparing how we feel on an everyday basis to images being projected at us constantly, which are or only ever highlights. The 2026 World Happiness Report found that teens using social media for more than an hour a day showed lower well-being. But the main driver wasn't just the screen time. And hey, I'm not disputing you look at, you know, all neuroscientists talk about the effects of brain chemistry. I'm not denying that that's not there. It is. But what has had an even greater impact is the upward comparison, the habit of measuring yourself against people who appear to be doing better. What researchers call a positivity bias. The feed skews towards the good stuff. And over time, that trains you to think the good stuff is norm. It's not norm. For anyone, including the people posting it, that's a highlight. Okay, that's their bonus for that's had their bonus moment that they had in their life and they decided to post it. I've done the same. So I would just want to say something plainly. And I really want this for our athletes, I really want this to sink in for you. It's okay to feel sad. It's okay to feel angry, flat, bored, frustrated, lonely, irritated, or completely just. None of those feelings automatically mean that there's something wrong. It doesn't mean you're having a mental health condition, crisis problem, whatever you want to call it, glitch. That's the full human emotional range, and that's what we are supposed to feel, all of it, on any given day. What I believe has happened is we've collapsed the whole range into only two areas, happy or broken. And there's no space in the middle. There's no space for an off day or just a day to be nothing. There's no space for a hard week to just be a hard week. Everything gets classified into warning signs. Psychologist Lisa Feldman-Barr Barrett, Lisa Feldman-Barrett, has done extensive research on what she calls emotional granularity. Wow, it's a mouthful. The ability to name your emotion with precision instead of just labeling everything as good or bad. So this psychologist in her research, in this emotional granularity, says that people who can identify what they are feeling specifically, not just bad or good, but actually specifically saying that that bad feeling equals I am disappointed, or the good feeling equals I am overstimulated. When you're able to specifically name how you're feeling, you can cope better,

Social Media And Upward Comparison

Coach B 9:46

recover faster, and are less likely to develop anxiety and depression. The naming of the feeling itself is

Name The Feeling With Precision

Coach B 9:52

a protective. So instead of asking yourself, why am I not happy right now? Try getting a little bit more specific. Are you tired? Are you just frustrated because you're tech you're not getting your technique right? Are you just overstimulated because you've just been super busy and maybe been on your screen too much or maybe been thinking about too much? Or are you flat after a big effort, big weekend? Did you just have a crappy night's sleep? Because all of those things are completely different. And they all have completely different solutions. But if you just lump them all into I should be happier than this, you're gonna keep failing. And you're gonna keep failing a test that doesn't actually exist. Okay, so for my athletes, athletes listening right now, I'm gonna talk directly to you for a second. Because you guys, like me, live inside a results culture. Win, lose, make the team or don't, hit the time or miss. Your sport is already telling you constantly whether you measure up. Now, Leia, I should feel happy, and I don't, on top of that. And you've basically added a second scoreboard, an emotional one, that you also think that you're expected to win. Okay, so you're supposed to win in the results and you're supposed to win in how you're feeling. That's exhausting. Nobody wins two scoreboards at once, okay? Not permanently, not consistently, not every single day. Can you see what I'm saying

Athletes And The Second Scoreboard

Coach B 11:17

about how the expectations do not align with actually the human physiology, biologically, how we were made. We were meant as humans to feel a wide range of emotion, not just feel brilliant and amazing every single day. And here's the trap. When you fall short on the happiness scoreboard, what happens? Okay, well, we often we panic and we go looking for what's broken, what's wrong with me, the training, the coach, the teammate, body, mindset, just me. You start treating a normal Monday like evidence of a problem when actually it's just Monday. You're tired, the seasons long, you've had relatives in town, you've been busy, you had a bad night's sleep, so why? That all is completely allowed. So, how do we deal with all this on a practical sense? Well, first of all, drop the bar that has no measurements on it. If you can't tell me what happy enough would even look like for you, on what day and by what marker, stop using it. Stop using it as a daily report card. It's not a real instrument, it's false. And you're measuring yourself up against false expectations. Number two, let's get specific about what you're actually feeling. Not something's wrong with me. Try to be specific, like I'm feeling flat today, maybe because of my diet, or let's analyze some let's be really analytical, just like you are with your performance. Maybe I'm feeling

Practical Ways To Reset Expectations

Coach B 12:51

frustrated about training because I can't hit a specific target. Or I'm just tired because my cat was whacking my head all night. Like specific is useful and vague can cause you to spiral. Third, please let okay be enough. Okay, okay is great. A day that is just okay is at not a day that you failed at. Most days, guys, are normal days. That's true for every single person, including whoever is on your feed looking fantastic. Okay, just remember that was a that's a highlight. Okay, that's a one-off moment that they've that they've curated, they've snapshot, they've highlighted, they've they've filtered and they then sent it through to your feed, and you're seeing this over and over and over and over and over again, and you're thinking, hang on, my days don't look like that. Well, nobody's does. So stop. Stop comparing. And forth, this is how we get to the stop comparing. Let's audit what your brain is consuming. If something is constantly leaving you feeling like your real life doesn't stack up, okay, that's just data. That's data that you are feeding yourself. It's not information about you. Okay, listen to that again. It's data you're feeding yourself. It's not data about you, it's data about the input. So here's what I want you to walk away with today. When the expectation of happiness is set too high, you are always going to fall short of it. Not because you were failing, but because the expectation was wrong. It's distorted, it's false. Happiness is not a constant state. It never has been. We're built to return to a baseline. Just remember what I said about the lottery winners and the people who had the near-death experiences. They may have had a bit of a rise after that, but then they return to a baseline. You do not live at a permanent peak. The goal is not to feel amazing every day. The goal is to feel what you actually feel and be okay with it. Honestly, with judgment, and trust that those feelings will move through you because

The Takeaway And Oliver Tree’s Legacy

Coach B 14:58

that's what feelings do. Sad is okay. Flat is okay, angry is okay, and guess what? Just okay is okay. You are not failing at a happiness test. The test was never real. So Oliver Tree, God rest his soul, an alternative US music artist who died tragically in a helicopter accident last week. He felt his entire career on non-conforming, being authentic. He didn't pretend. He showed up exactly as he was. Weird, self-deprecating, honest, funny. I've gotta say, I really liked him. And thank God we still have his music. And he gave people permission to do the same. Rest easy. Jam. But everybody listening, all the athletes, you have exactly the same permission. You have permission to feel just okay on any s other day, any every other day, for for however long it is, and there to be absolutely nothing wrong with you. That is life. That's normal and that's human emotions. Let's remove the expectations that get put on us from looking at other people's images and from the expectations we put on ourselves around happiness. Happiness is a feeling, it's not a constant state. It doesn't mean that you're in it 24-7. Using, being just aware of this, guys, is so important when it comes to just to deciphering how training went and how your performance went, because I need you to embrace and accept that not every day is going to be amazing. And when you are able to sit with that and accept it, guess what? It's able to, you're able to keep going, move through, and you can be more resilient and handle those days better. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this summer edition. I hope it landed for you. And if it did, share it with someone who you feel needs to hear it. I can't wait to bring you more athletes in the fall, and that's what we're planning on doing. And I will be from a new location too, so that's exciting. And I'll bring you up speed on more on that later. But guys, be kind to yourself. Level those expectations. Level those expectations around performance, around result. But most importantly, level your expectations around how you should feel every day. Establish that baseline, and then we can move forward from there.