Date: 31.01.2024

Can negative feelings be enjoyable?

Surely having a fight with your spouse doesn't qualify as pleasant - nor does dealing with a flat tire on a rainy day, waiting in long queues, or enduring a tedious meeting.

But when you think about it, we, humans, often pay money to experience negative feelings.

Yes, that's right.

We pay real cash to feel something different from joy.

Think I am kidding?

Let me give you a couple of examples:

• We pay to experience fear: thrill rides in amusement parks, horror movies, going to the dentist.
• We pay to experience sadness: romantic movies, novels, melancholic sound vibes.
• We pay to experience discomfort: visiting the gym, trail races, getting a tattoo.

When we are watching a movie we know will make us cry or scare us, we don't consider this as a bad emotion. The fact that something is scary or something is sad is not ruining our lives. Quite the opposite, the net result is a positive sensation. As strange as it might sound, we end up feeling good for feeling bad in the first place.

And while we are typically wired to avoid pain and make choices that create or increase pleasure, our ecosystem can also find joy in negative experiences. We can simply start using this embedded system - engaging in "negative" experiences that eventually lead to positive results - to our advantage.

Or what I want to say is that pain and struggle are not necessarily bad. We can struggle while doing something, but the struggle will be totally worth it when we are working towards obtaining a meaningful goal.

A lot of times, observing and discussing the behaviors of others can encourage us to reflect on our own decision-making processes. Thus, identify any biases or tendencies where, we, ourselves, tend to avoid discomfort to experience short-term pleasures.

From my desk:

• Against Normalcy: Why Being Normal Can Be Dangerous: "I was considered normal for a large part of my life. I fitted in. I mimicked the behaviors of the people in my group. I had plenty of friends to mimic, and invitations to go out never stopped. All seemed good. But gradually..."

From around the web:

• 72-Hour Rule: How to Stop Impulse Buying? "We all are victims of marketing strategies deployed by various companies that force us to buy things that we really do not need."

Let me know what you think about this newsletter (just hit reply). I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Regards,

Ivaylo Durmonski