PRACTICE: Aligning what you say you want with what you really, actually want
Plus: how to avoid getting trapped by the arrival fallacy
Burnt Out? Stuck? You're Not Broken
–
Find Your Discernment
–
Click Here To Work With Me
–
Burnt Out? Stuck? You're Not Broken – Find Your Discernment – Click Here To Work With Me –
RECAP: Here’s what’s happened at Solving for Why® this month.
I started by telling you about a dream job that turned into a nightmare—and how there were very specific cognitive blind spots I had. Those blind spots led me to choose a “dream job” that wasn’t based on my actual dreams, but instead on the dreams I told everyone—including myself—I wanted.
And then, last week, we talked about the science behind those blind spots. We discussed the arrival fallacy and the mismatch between what economists call “stated preferences” and “revealed preferences.”
Before we continue: are you facing a consequential life decision? Let’s talk!
Click the button to book a free 15-minute call ↓
As a quick refresher:
If you’ve ever said to yourself, “When I finally achieve X”—get married, have kids, send my kids to college, get that promotion, finish grad school, retire—“then I’ll be happy,” well, you’ve just fallen into the arrival fallacy. It’s a fallacy, for sure, but it’s also a protective mechanism. It’s part of a psychological immune system that gets activated during hard times. The arrival fallacy helps us slog through hardship, all for the promise of a brighter future.
The problem is, it’s still a fallacy. Because you get to X—you marry the right person, you have kids, you get the promotion—and the happiness ends up being fleeting. And soon you’re on to the next X.Preferences are weird things. They can be “stated” (what you say you want) or “revealed” (how you actually act). The two don’t always align. In fact, they only do so 80% of the time. And that’s got implications. One in five times, what you say you want and what you actually want are not the same thing.
This post, let’s talk about what you can do about these blind spots.
Arrival: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
People love writing about the arrival fallacy, it turns out. Seriously: Google “how to avoid the arrival fallacy” and you’ll get tons of hits. Heck, even Calm (the app) is in on the game.
Unfortunately, the most common advice in those hits is, “enjoy the process.”
And you know what? That’s BS.
I mean, we can, and absolutely should, be more attuned to the day-to-day; we should look for the joy in the journey.
But telling me to find joy in the journey is a cop out. It’s basically saying, “You can avoid the arrival fallacy by just stopping caring about arriving.”
That’s like telling an anxious person they can cure their anxiety by worrying less. It’s ineffective, infantilizing, and cheap. If you didn’t care about arriving, why would you have started out in the first place?
So sure. Find joy in the journey. Full support.
But also, let’s actually subvert the arrival fallacy.
The way to trick your brain out of the arrival fallacy is by giving it lots of arrivals to focus on. You are more than one thing, so let’s use that to your advantage.
In other words, distribute your eggs across multiple baskets. Set arrival goals across work, school, personal life, home, dating, hobbies, and so on.
So, for example, instead of putting all your future hope into the end of grad school, put some eggs also into finding a lovely person to date (if that’s your thing), another few eggs into perfecting your mitre cut in the wood shop, another few into saving enough money for the vacation you’ve been dreaming of, another few into finishing the nine-part book series you’ve been reading, and another few into getting a whole week’s worth of eight-hour sleep per night.
This works because the biggest problem with the arrival fallacy isn’t that we aren’t happy when we arrive. We are. It’s just that the high is never as high as we think it is, and it never lasts as long as we hope it does (by the way, I’ve written a lot more about how terrible we are at affective forecasting here).
What that means is if every egg is in a single basket—no matter what basket that is—then you’re setting yourself up for a sadness omelet.
Instead, prime your happiness system with more than one happiness hit. That way, the inevitable crash afterwards will be bolstered by the next hit.
Photo by Land O'Lakes, Inc. on Unsplash
Preferences: The Peak Experiences Exercise
Alright, that’s the arrival fallacy. Let’s now talk about the mismatch between what we say we want (our stated preferences), and what we actually want (our revealed preferences).
Honestly, when I first learned about the difference between them, my reaction was, “Why do stated preferences even matter?” Right? I mean, it doesn’t matter what people say…it matters how they act.
I was convinced that revealed preferences were people’s “real” preferences. Who cares if toddler parents said they would buy green wagons if what they actually bought were red ones?
Turns out, human beings are complicated (who knew!), and revealed preferences aren’t any more “pure” than stated ones. After all, if they were, then advertising wouldn’t work!
Our choices are just as malleable as our statements, because those choices are made in a context, and that context can be influenced through absurdly simple things. Where the wagon is on the shelf, how the choice of wagons is framed, and how recently parents have seen an advertisement for a red wagon all influence which wagon they end up putting in their cart.
When my clients start working with me, I have them go through something I call a Peak Experiences Audit. Here’s how it works. (It takes about 15 minutes to do, so you might want to bookmark this post and save it for when you’ve got time!)
Think back over the last 10-15 years, and find six peak experiences—six very salient events that happened in your life. Three of them should be positive, and three of them should be negative. In other words, three high Highs and three low Lows.
For each of the high Highs, ask the following questions
What made that High meaningful?
What possibilities became visible to you, that weren’t before?
What values and capabilities were you using at their maximum?
For each of the low Lows, ask the opposite questions
Which values were being violated?
Which of your capabilities were you unable to use?
What doors did you feel close?
And then lastly, ask yourself, are there common elements across the Highs and the Lows? What patterns emerge?
Are there skills, capabilities, or values that appear in each of the three Highs?
Are there values that are consistently compromised, capabilities consistently quashed in the three Lows?
The reason we go through this exercise is because our peak experiences teach us a lot about what we actually value, free from the confusion of what we “should” value.
Their wisdom comes from the fact that when we’re in flow, or when we’re in the dumps, we’re out of our heads. What’s revealed in those times is often the truest to our deeper natures.
Try these exercise, and let me know what you find out! Leave a comment below, send me an email, find me on social media…they all work!
And that’s it for this month. No blog post next week, but come back in April to learn how to measure happiness, what to do when you’re not sure about future happiness…how that influences how (and who!) you date!
And in the meantime…
There’s a lot more these exercises can do for you!
Consequential decisions aren’t easy. The good news is, you don’t have to navigate them alone.
Work with a discernment coach who knows how to guide you to a life you’re madly in love with again.
→ Check out my packages here. They range from 4 weeks to a year, and they take you from “what the heck do I do next?” all the way to clarity and a step-by-step plan that honors both your calling and your right to thrive. Click here to apply!
→ Want more FREE weekly content about making consequential life choices with confidence and clarity? Join my mailing list!