 Lately, I've been thinking a lot about human resiliency and our natural capacity to survive and thrive. A lot of us are adjusting to this new normal, and many of us currently feel or can relate to the feeling that life is giving us more than we can handle. But what does that mean? And how true is it? And what does psychological research have to say about this subject? For months now, the majority of us around the world have been on lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a situation that most people have never experienced in their lifetime, and it's been a massive change for all of us. Although some cities and states are loosening restrictions in an effort to reopen America and other parts of the world, there has been a lot of talk about what the quote-unquote new normal is. Some of the new normal talk revolves around health and safety measures. On May 15, 2020, the World Health Organization published an article that stated, with countries now preparing to transition towards a quote-unquote new normal in which social and economic life can function, continued whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach would be critical, said Dr. Ketropal Singh. As of this morning, the region has approximately 122,000 cases and 4,000 deaths due to COVID-19. Countries in the region are in serious transmission scenarios and the cases are increasing. In every transmission scenario, the core public health measures remain, rapidly detect, test, isolate, care, and trace contacts. The regional director said, adding that moving forward, we need to scale up these measures. Richard Hoads of the National Institute of Health addressed medical professionals, researchers, and trial participants in his article, COVID-19 Adjusting to the New Normal, where he said, the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly changed how we live, work, and learn. The new normal of this public health emergency coupled with the guidance around physical distancing also makes this a trying time for clinicians, researchers, and others who support our crucial science, including trial participants. While no one knows how long our current state will last, for now, I want the NIA community to know that much-needed help and flexibility is already in motion as you are feeling the impact in your lives and clinical trials. A term we've all become familiar with in recent months is social distancing, and Gregory Poland of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic said that this may become our new normal as well. I think that's going to become an inevitability. I think we may very well become a culture that, at least in the winter time when there are so many respiratory viruses circulating, that will be more like Asian cultures where they more readily wear masks when they're outdoors. I think we'll take more seriously in clinics and hospitals and nursing homes the respiratory diseases that circulate every year and which lead to hospitalizations and deaths, influenza being the exemplar. Aside from public safety measures that may become the new normal, the mental health of people around the world has been gravely affected. Because of this recording, we've reached over 40 million unemployed Americans. And in the last video, we discussed how this is affecting our mental health as we search for meaning, purpose, and stability. As Dr. Donna Matthews points out in her Psychology Today article, this is affecting people of all ages. Nobody is happy about this, but teenagers are having a particularly hard time of it. Their friends are essential to their health and well-being. They don't yet have the neurological maturity to maintain a healthy perspective and cope well with the uncertainty and isolation. Your tween or teenager is angry they can't see their friends. They're bored and frustrated. They have a hard time channeling their energy. They're banging about the house looking for someone to blame and they're filled with righteous indignation that you're policing the COVID-19 quarantine. Bestselling author of Start With Why and public speaker, Simon Sinek, also addresses how this is going to change the lives of employees as well as business owners. Like it's hard and it's difficult, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We're in darkness, but we know this comes to an end. We also know that life will not be the same afterwards. This is like World War II. It's like the way life was before World War II is not what life was like after World War II. The way that life was before this pandemic will not be what it's going to be. When we talk about going back to normal, there is no going back to normal. Right now there are millions of people, if not billions of people around the world asking themselves how they're going to get through this. How will we survive this pandemic? Will we ever bounce back financially? Does this new normal mean that I'm going to be depressed forever? All of these questions remind me of my early sobriety and headspace that I was in for a very long time. After almost a decade of destroying my life with drugs and alcohol, I lost everything. I lost friends, family, my job, my truck, my apartment, my money. And worst of all, I wasn't even allowed to see my son. Although I was able to get sober on my 27th birthday in 2012, I was absolutely miserable for a long time. I fell victim to the delusion of the common misconception that once you get sober, everything is going to be unicorns and rainbows. The reality was that even though the alcohol and drugs were gone, my life was still an absolute mess. I had nothing. Every little thing would set me off and the smallest obstacles felt like 1,000 pound boulders being added to my shoulders. During this period of my life, my only breaths of sanity came from going to 12 step meetings. In these meetings, they have cliche sayings that newcomers absolutely hate. With their bright and cheery faces, these sober people say things like one day at a time and do the next indicated thing. As someone who felt like my world was collapsing every minute of every day, the same that I hated the absolute most was when people would say, God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Aside from not being religious or believing in any type of higher power at the time, I'd become furious and scream in my mind. It sure seems like I'm being given a lot more than I can handle right now. After months of having this beat into my head, my life still wasn't all that great. And yet again, another stressful event happened where I felt absolutely hopeless. Then in my head, the words popped into my head. God doesn't give you more than you can handle. And again, I became even more upset. But then something happened. I had an epiphany by asking myself one simple question. What does it mean to experience more than you can handle? I sat and meditated on this question for a while. When a pandemic strikes or when we get a flat tire on an already bad day or that unexpected bill shows up in the mail, it's common to tell ourselves that we can't handle anymore. But what does that mean? I honestly asked myself this question. I asked myself, am I going to die from this? If one more thing happens, will I suddenly spontaneously combust or something? When I looked at it from this rational perspective, I realized that there isn't anything that I can't handle. It's been almost eight years since that epiphany. And not only did I survive that first year sober, but I've survived a lot more. I've become fascinated with psychology and wanted to understand more about the human condition and why we do what we do, feel what we feel and think what we think. Most of all, I want to understand what science has to teach us about how we can regain a sense of hope regardless of the situation. One of my favorite realms of psychological research comes from the studies that surround hedonic adaptation. Whenever I'm feeling hopeless, I turn to the evidence about hedonic adaptation and remember that we can get through just about anything. I was first introduced to the concept of hedonic adaptation when I read the book Stumbling on Happiness from the world-famous Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. The book dives deep into his research on why the majority of us are chasing happiness in all the wrong ways. And one of those reasons is hedonic adaptation. So what is hedonic adaptation? In short, hedonic adaptation is our human ability to adapt to any situation over time. And this is for the good as well as the bad. Imagine hedonic adaptation as like your resilience muscle. Without working out, how much weight can you handle? At first, you can't handle much, but as you continue lifting that 10-pound weight, it feels a little lighter because you're getting stronger. Then you move up to a 20-pound weight. You're lifting twice as much as before, and it's heavy at first, but just like that 10-pound weight, it eventually feels lighter because you're getting stronger and your muscles are adapting to the new weight. It's extremely important to understand hedonic adaptation because our brains are prediction machines and are constantly predicting how we'll feel based on different outcomes. Based on years of research in the field of psychology, we can say with certainty that most of us are absolutely wrong when we come to predicting how good or bad various outcomes will make us feel. For a moment, I want you to imagine two people. We'll call them Steve and Bob. For the sake of this hypothetical situation, let's say on a scale of one to 10, both Steve and Bob are at about a five when it comes to happiness. Life isn't terrible, but it's not amazing either. Today, Steve and Bob are going to have two very different days. Today, Steve is going to go out and find out that he won the lottery, but Bob is going to get into a terrible car accident and damage his spine. While Steve has just become a multimillionaire, Bob is going to become a paraplegic. With both of these men starting at a five on the happiness scale, do you think Steve will be more or less happy when he wins the lottery? And what about Bob? Will he be more or less happy after the accident? Now, let's fast forward a year. Compared to their original happiness, where do you think Steve and Bob will land on the happiness scale? Well, this isn't actually a hypothetical situation at all. In 1978, P. Brickman decodes an R. Genoff Ballman published a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled, Lottery Winners and Accident Victims is Happiness Relative. In their study, they took 22 major lottery winners, 22 controls, and 29 paralyzed accident victims. They wanted to test adaptation level theory, and in their abstract, they stated, adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. So what did they find? Compared to the control group, a year after winning the lottery, the lottery winners were no happier than the control group. What's even more fascinating is that after a year, both the control group and the lottery winners were only slightly happier than the paraplegics. Now, was that what you predicted when I asked you how happy you thought they'd be a year later? Like, how is that possible? Shouldn't someone with millions of dollars be far happier than a paraplegic? And compared to their peers, shouldn't the average person be happier than someone who has lost the use of their legs? Well, that's not the case. Although lottery winners experience an initial spike of extreme happiness and accident victims experienced a spike in sadness, these spikes went away in the coming months due to a hedonic adaptation. Over time, hedonic adaptation helps us adjust to the new normal. Something that's even more incredible is that you don't need to look far to find people with disabilities who are far happier than most of us. I will never forget during my first month's sober, I met homeless people in 12-step meetings that were way happier than me. I didn't get jealous, but admittedly, I was confused. Most of all, I was hopeful. If someone could seemingly have nothing and be happier than me, then maybe, just maybe, I could somehow become happy too. Another great study took place with college students and I wanted to focus on the pain of breakups. When we're head over heels in love and go through a break up, we feel absolutely miserable. These feelings are so powerful that we predict that we're going to be this miserable and lonely forever. But, as you now know, we're terrible at predicting our levels of happiness and sadness. A study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology titled Bouncing Back from a Breakup, Attachment, Time Perspective, Mental Health, and Romantic Laws found that it takes roughly 11 weeks to bounce back from a breakup. The researchers studied 1,404 participants between the ages of 18 and 25 who experienced the termination of a significant relationship in the last 12 months. The life satisfaction of these participants was measured in a longitudinal study and much like accident victims, there was an initial significant drop in life satisfaction but people returned to their original state. It's also important to note that some, not all of the resiliency is based on secure attachments developed with parents. As the researchers noted, the results of this study are consistent with the outcome predicted by attachment and object relation theories. Students with insecure attachments to parents and childhood experience significantly more distress when a romance ends in emerging adulthood. Insecurely attached students reported significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression, loss of behavioral slash emotional control and affect. Stated conversely, a secure parental attachment with either parent provides protection and leads to resilience in coping with the normal developmental stressor of a college breakup. This held true for both sexes and for both maternal and paternal bonding. So what does this mean? If you were raised with secure attachments to one of both caregivers, you're naturally going to be more resilient after a breakup. Those with insecure attachments aren't hopeless though. Personally, I had insecure attachment styles for many years, but through a lot of therapy and personal development, I've gained more resilience. If you've noticed that your breakup seemed to hit you harder than most, I highly recommend you check out the online therapy service that I use called BetterHelp and my affiliate link is always linked down in the description below. So what have we learned so far? Hedonic adaptation is a human capacity to return to our original state despite adverse life circumstances. We now know that after a year, lottery winners are only somewhat happier than those involved in a disabling accident, but you don't have to simply take the word of these studies. What I do regularly to remind myself of my own resilience is to look at my personal history and I highly suggest you do the same. For example, I grew up in beautiful Santa Barbara, California where the weather is perfect and I moved to Las Vegas in the middle of the summer. I was absolutely miserable and I thought I'd never be able to adapt to the heat. Today, I barely even noticed the heat because I dealt with it for so long. Have you ever started a new job and thought the work was too hard or you were out of your depth? I've been there too, but what happens? Over time, we learn about this new job, who we work with and how to solve problems and it becomes our new normal. I also remember times where I've had to humble myself and take low paying jobs or events happened in my life where financially I didn't have as much money as I'm accustomed to. Maybe you've been in a similar situation, but what eventually happens? Hedonic adaptation. We learn to adapt and adjust to our new financial situation and make things work. For years after getting sober, I lived in a low income apartment and I did all of my grocery shopping at the 99 cent store next door. I made it work and I'm sure you've done the same. Recently, one of my best friends was able to return to work for the first time since Las Vegas went on lockdown. During the time he was laid off, he was extremely depressed based on reasons that we discussed in the last video. After being back to work for about a week, I asked him how he was doing and how work was going. He told me that work sucks and is super stressful. So I reminded him that two weeks earlier, he was depressed because he wasn't working and that's why we must practice gratitude. After he agreed, he admitted that work's been difficult as they reopened to this new normal that we're all facing during the pandemic. He told me about how they're short staff and how they have to take all these extra steps as a way to keep staff and customers safe. Fortunately, I was in the middle of doing research for this very video, so I was in the mindset of hedonic adaptation. I told him that the reality is that this is going to be difficult and it's gonna suck for a while, but soon he's going to adapt. I reminded him that he's been through difficult times before and he adapted. Most of all, I emphasize that he's going to come out on the other side of this better and stronger than before. This doesn't mean that we should settle and never strive to improve our lives, but we make life much more difficult than it needs to be when we tell ourselves that we're not going to get through this. As we continue to look at our past and realize that we're resilient and learn to adapt, we survive each day and gradually improve our circumstances one step at a time. Hope is what moves us forward and prevents us from feeling helpless. As long as we remember the psychological benefits of hedonic adaptation, we realize we can get through anything. All right, everybody, thank you so much for making it all the way to the end of this video. I'm really having a great time doing research and doing these long-form video essays, discussing mental health and diving into all the little nooks and crannies and discussing some of my favorite psychological studies. And remember, make sure that you always check out the description down below. I personally use BetterHelp online therapy. If you think that your mental health would improve through therapy, go ahead and give it a try. It's affordable, and when you use my link, a little bit of it comes back and helps support the channel, all right? But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying the merch from the RewiredSoul merch store, as well as my books over at therewiredsoul.com. I appreciate you, all right? Thanks again for watching, I'll see you next time.