Why is it when we don’t have something, we want it badly, but when we have it, we take it for granted?
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Tlwr: You produce more dopamine anticipating the pleasurable experience than the moment you’re actually having it.
There was an experiment done somewhere sometime (I don’t remember) about the dopamine levels.
It goes like this;
1. An experience gives you good feelings (stimulates your brain’s reward mechanism) and it’s recorded as a pleasurable memory and thus dopamine is secreted.
2. You’re withdrawn from that experience for a while. Brain is able to compare the dopamine levels from before(now) and (expected) after.
3. The idea of that experience is introduced again, which causes your brain to expect that the reward mechanism will be triggered again. At this point you start producing dopamine like the doors of a dam opened.
4. You experience the experience in real time. The dopamine levels still high but somehow not as high as it was in the anticipation period.
5. Reward mechanism activated. Now your brain thinks it’s safe and it can do whatever.
It’s a psychological thing. Reminds me of “Keeping up with the Joneses,” the idea that you have to have the same nice, fancy things as your neighbors. We take the things we have for granted because we’re already searching for the next nice, fancy thing our neighbor just got.
This is a big question, as humans, we have desires, and almost like kids, as we get what we want we get bored and want something else, bigger and shinier, this is a wheel, that never end
If you cant be happy with what you have, you will never be happy
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