Reference points are irrelevant standards against which our minds constantly compare things, affecting our happiness judgments even without our conscious awareness. Since these comparisons are automatic and unavoidable, strategies are needed to “reset” them.
Key Strategies to Reset Reference Points
Several strategies are proposed to reset detrimental reference points, many of which also help thwart hedonic adaptation (getting used to good things):
- Concretely Re-experiencing
- Find a way to go back and re-experience your old, less desirable reference point.
- For example, if you got a dream job, literally go back to your old, “crappy job” location, or take time to concretely imagine and write down what your life or lower salary was like before.
- This habit of re-experiencing the “before” state helps you appreciate your current good circumstances more.
- Concretely Observing
- Find a reference point that is not as good as yours and concretely observe what that life or situation is really like.
- For example, if you fantasize about a different life (“if only I had X”), going out and observing it can make the fantasy come into reality, showing you that the “other half” might have the same problems, thus resetting your comparison point to be more accurate.
- Avoiding Social Comparisons
- Other people are often the “worst kinds of reference points,” especially when seen through social media, leading to unhappiness.
- The Stop Technique: Catch yourself making a comparison (e.g., while scrolling social media) and literally say “Stop!” out loud to interrupt the habitual thought process.
- Practicing Gratitude: Gratitude “kills envy” by consuming your limited attention, making it harder to simultaneously engage in social comparison.
- Curating Your Information Feed: Be conscious of the comparisons you let in (e.g. social media). Actively switch to campaigns and feeds that provide more accurate, healthier, and representative reference points.
- Delete Social Media Accounts/Apps: The most extreme, but suggested, strategy is to remove social media, which provides a powerful mechanism for “yucky” social comparisons that don’t make you happier.
- Interrupting Your Consumption
- Forcing an interruption in a good experience (e.g., pausing a favorite TV show) and coming back to it later re-boosts enjoyment.
- The break changes your reference point (from having the good thing to not having it), overcoming hedonic adaptation.
- Even commercials in a TV show, though predicted to lower enjoyment, actually provide a sustained “blip” of happiness when the show returns, resulting in higher overall enjoyment.
- Corollary for Bad Things: Conversely, to quickly adapt to bad things, squish them together (don’t take breaks). Interrupting a bad experience, like a horrible problem set or disliked exercise, will make it feel bad every time you return to it.
- Increasing Variety
- Routines lead to adaptation and a boring reference point. Switching things up and doing different things every time breaks adaptation and changes your reference point, making subsequent experiences feel better.
- Spacing out good things relatively infrequently (e.g., big stuff of gifts shipped separately) can make you enjoy them more by increasing variety and moving your reference points further away.
- Experiences are better than stuff because they are dynamic and change over time, unlike possessions which remain the same and are easily adapted to. Making your stuff “dynamic” is key to enjoying it more.
Sources: The Science of Well-Being course by Yale University on coursera.org
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