Life on Ten
Dr. Vanessa Walker and Angela Trapp discuss how to live your life to your fullest and various issues that may get in the way of living a Life on Ten.
Life on Ten
Chasing Contentment: Why We're Never Satisfied
Angela and Vanessa explore why humans struggle with feelings of perpetual dissatisfaction despite living with unprecedented comfort and abundance. We dive into the evolutionary psychology behind our restless minds and why contentment feels so elusive in modern life.
• The evolutionary advantage of dissatisfaction: it drives innovation and progress
• Research showing people would rather electrocute themselves than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes
• The four psychological components of dissatisfaction: boredom, negativity bias, rumination, and hedonic adaptation
• Why external achievements and possessions rarely create lasting happiness
• Finding contentment through internal peace rather than external acquisition
• The relationship between purpose, interconnection, and meaningful satisfaction
• How helping others and standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves brings deeper fulfillment
Live your life on 10, your 10.
Hello and welcome to Life on 10. Hello, friends and family, it's Angela and Vanessa. Hey everyone, it's still summer.
Speaker 2:It's still summer and you know, I mean, as long as I'm not as much of a loser as I tend to be with posting our episodes it will still be summer when you hear this.
Speaker 1:Hopefully it will not be Hopefully it's not. Hopefully we're not going to go.
Speaker 2:Welcome to our latte pumpkin spice latte after that. No, I hope not, you won't. I promise, I promise, I promise audience.
Speaker 1:We'll get you. Hey, you know what Someone I promise I promise audience. We'll get you. Hey, you know what Um someone um heard our uh podcast on menopause. A couple of women reached out. Oh nice.
Speaker 2:I actually had someone talk to me about it too. Really. Yeah, I was like that's so cool. I'm so happy that we were able to share that information.
Speaker 1:Um, and yeah, it's always nice when people reach out and say, hey, I listen to you guys. Yeah, one of our doctor friends listens to every podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh really.
Speaker 1:Gwaine, oh I love this. When I see him, he's like and you and Vanessa were talking the other day about ADHD.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I had daughters, it's all just posted.
Speaker 1:And I was like, yeah, that's right, we were, so I love him. And I was like, yeah, that's right, we were. So, I love him.
Speaker 2:I love him for listening, thank you. Thank you, gawain. Yes, yeah, the Green Knight. He does a blog post called the Green Knight. I need to read his post. Yeah, reciprocate.
Speaker 1:We need to reciprocate, we need to be better.
Speaker 2:I need to, and he and the other. Dr Vaughn also has. They have their podcast. Not podcast, but I bet you they have a podcast. I think he has a podcast too, but they have their YouTube channel.
Speaker 1:They do lots of stuff for their Auburn medical group. That's an amazing practice.
Speaker 2:It is Everybody's looking for a doctor in that area, that's right in that area.
Speaker 1:They're awesome, so we shout them out Boom free advertising. Yeah, look at that.
Speaker 2:Doctors Awesome, so we shout them out Free. Free advertising, yeah Look at that.
Speaker 1:Doctors Vaughn, there you go, you're welcome. Okay, what are we talking about today? This is a topic that Vanessa has some, some feelings about. She has some feelings.
Speaker 2:I just I, I you know part part of Angela and I, you know decide what we want to talk about based off of just things that we see, we, we, someone says something to us, we read an article that's interesting, and the reason why I want to talk about this was because Robert told me I'm bored and it just made me think about, like the concept Poor Robert.
Speaker 1:Poor Robert's bored. I throw him under the bus, putting, putting Robert out there.
Speaker 2:Putting Robert, he's bored you know, but it just made me think about you know, he just said it the other day he's like I'm bored, and I went into a tirade about all the things that he could do to not be bored, and we're going to leave that alone, but it made me just think about the concept of boredom, right.
Speaker 2:And and then I also started thinking about, like the idea of you know, like wanderlust people who want to, you know, who want to go and travel and see new things, because, like they, just they never want to sit still, right, right, they're like constantly on there. They're the nomads in the, in the vans, across country or whatever. You know, those types of people Like I was thinking about them, like this, giving you my train of thought folks, okay, okay, I was thinking about them. And then it made me wonder about, like why do they do that? Are they? Are they chasing something? Like what are they looking for and do they ever find it? And then it made me just think about satisfaction generally, like with your life, and there are people out there who are just not satisfied, right.
Speaker 1:No matter what no matter what.
Speaker 2:And I thought about my life and how it's. A lot of physicians are like this because you, everything is always the next step. So you're like I'm in, I'm in high school, and now I want to go to college, and now I want to become a medical student. So then I do this, and now I'm a medical student, and now I'm going to try to get into residency, and now I go through the match and now I'm a resident, and now I'm going to become a fellow and I go through that. So there's always this next thing. Okay. And I found that when I became and I left fellowship and I became an attending physician which means I'm no longer training that it was a little hard for me at first because it was the first time in my adult life where I had not had a next thing to go to. It was done, I was, I was at the thing that I had worked so hard to get to and I'm like, well, shit now.
Speaker 2:I'm here, um, and it took me. It just took me some time to just get used to that, that and, like Robert and I had moved every few years we were moving. So then we bought our first house and then it felt weird because after a few years I was like, well, I want to buy another house again, right, because I'd always just we had just moved, and so it felt weird. And now here I am, like eight years in this house, and it just feels weird that this is the longest I've lived in one place since I was a kid and, um, I just so it made me just think about that. Like what, what is satisfaction? Like what? What is it? And why do some of us feel just restless and just never really quite happy Nothing, nothing really fills us up, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you're just still so.
Speaker 2:I was doing some research about it, like trying to find, you know, like what, what is that? And I found this really awesome article from psychology today where they're talking about, um, just throughout history. It's not unusual for people to just not be satisfied, but that it has actually some reason why we're not satisfied.
Speaker 2:And part of it is because contentment is not terribly inventive, right? If you're content, then you really have no reason to change Like. Why do I want to change this wonderful feeling I have? Because I'm good, right. Like I'm good, what do I want to do anything differently? And so I think it has served in an evolutionary standing, like an evolutionary purpose to drive us to do man, I'm really tired of it being cold all the time. Well, I'm going to figure out a way to heat. I'm really tired of living in the dark all the time. How do I get this stupid candle to be on all the time and then, boom, electricity.
Speaker 2:So innovation innovation stems from not being satisfied with the status quo, yes, with what things are now and constantly. So I, I thought that was interesting, like that was the concept of it's a necessary thing, and to be dissatisfied, no, and I think that I think that that is the extreme of it. Okay, right, like there's the not necessarily to be fully satisfied, like, just hey, how can something be different? Okay, how can something be improved? How can we do? How can we change to? To just then, then to just feeling dissatisfied, right, like, uh, I think that's like the I'm not going to say it's pathological cause. I don't know enough about it to say that, but I feel like that is the negative aspect of that. Like everything has a good and a bad right and that constant need to change and improve and to do and to invent. The negative side of that is never sitting and being content with what you have.
Speaker 2:Yes, so there were in this the things that they brought up. This was a great study about boredom. Okay, shockingly and I'm pun intended on this humans do not like being bored, right? I think we all could say that, and there was a study published in 2014 in science that observed participants who were asked to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. That's all they had to do is sit in a room, I know, just think. For 15 minutes the room was empty, nothing in it except for a device that allowed the participants to mildly but painfully electrocute themselves Right? And when asked beforehand, every participant in the study said that they would pay money to avoid being shocked. Oh that they were like. No, I would not want to be shocked.
Speaker 2:But when left alone in the room with the machine and nothing else to do for 15 minutes, 67% of the men and only 25% of the women which is interesting shocked themselves, and many did so multiple times. Oh my God, because they just could not handle the boredom, right. Oh my God, because they just could not handle the boredom, right. Yep, and so I just I thought that was a rather hilarious thing that we did that. But the other thing that was driving part of the reason why another psychological factor that like it's kind of like that drives us is something called the negativity bias, and it's defined as a phenomenon in which negative events are more salient and demand attention more powerfully than neutral or positive events. Yes, so it's as a pervasive fact of psychology that bad is stronger than good, and so you know that you can.
Speaker 1:You can all test this theory yourselves. If somebody said and they, somebody says something very positive to you oh, that's a beautiful dress You're like, thank you. Someone says, my gosh, what do you have on? That's horrid. You're going to remember that all day long.
Speaker 2:All day long, you're going to ruminate over it, so ruminate over it. So, yes, yeah, we focus on that Exactly. So I think that's part of the dissatisfied part is. One of the driving things is that we, we don't remember all the good stuff about what's going on and we ruminate sometimes on the negative things and so, um, with that, that was kind of like the. These are the some of the main reasons. So that first factor is negative, or, I'm sorry, the first factor was what we talked about as boredom. That's one of the four components of dissatisfaction. Boredom is one. The next one is negativity, bias, which we just talked about. You know, you're it's kind of like a pessimism thing. You remember the negative, um and, but that was apparently. That has a good point, because if you know what's bad, you know what to avoid. So, once again, an evolutionary thing. It is an evolutionary thing. We really want to remember the berry that killed my buddy or the plant that poisoned us right, your brain protecting you.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. It's all rooted in in um, in evolution. The third factor is rumination, our tendency to keep thinking about bad experiences, right, um? And then the fourth factor which I love is hedonic adaptation or hedonic adaptation, I don't know how to say it right guys, the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction, no matter what happens to us in life. So it says hedonic adaptation is mother nature's bait and switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don't, or at least not for long. And it's totally true, like you think about.
Speaker 2:For me, the quickest thing I can think about is food. Yeah, yeah, oh, my God, that's how I got so fat. Right, like a hundred percent is that I wanted the food. I wanted to feel it, it tasted, and get it there. But, my God, as soon as that donut was gone, it was gone, and so that was actually one of my weight loss tools. Was that when I would want to eat something very sweet? And this is after the weight loss surgery and all that, because that was what I really needed.
Speaker 2:But the thing that has helped me keep the weight off is that when I have a severe craving for something, I say to myself, you're going to feel like this. Like the way you're feeling right now, you're going to feel like this as soon as you're done eating that. And so I tell myself that over and over again, to just kind of like remind myself like it's not worth it. Literally as soon as you're done eating that, you're going to feel just the same way you do right now. It's temporary, it's very temporary. So I, just to me, I thought about the concept of dissatisfaction and or just not, why, why are some people not satisfied? And that's what I read and I thought I found it to be super interesting and in general, I'm actually a quite satisfied person.
Speaker 1:You're weird. No, I'm a super weird. Yeah, you're, you're one, but I'm not inventive either?
Speaker 2:ah no, not at all, I'm not creative or inventive at all.
Speaker 1:I'm good. I'm not innovative at all when you were a little girl you didn't do like projects and yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm no, I. I like talking to people. I would like put on plays for my parents, but it was more performative. I like to perform, I like to entertain, I like people to look at me and talk to them Like that's what I love, but that's, I feel like that's.
Speaker 1:That is being creative. You're, you're performing, you're acting.
Speaker 2:That's being creative. It is, but I'm not like I is, but I'm not like I said I'm not innovative. I don't think of new things. Okay, I do not think of those things. Yeah, yeah, very robert is super innovative.
Speaker 1:He is, he is, he is. So when he said that he was bored, what was your?
Speaker 2:I'm curious well, that's a whole other conversation okay, right, like you know, I'm sitting there going like what are you bored about?
Speaker 2:we have all this stuff. Look at this, amazing, you could do this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And I just start naming all the things that he could do, which is probably not helpful, because I feel like I think he already knew those things that he could do. So there's another reason why he's bored, and he'll have to figure that out. I don't know, you know that's he's going to have to work on, I don't know Right, yeah, um, but I do think that a lot of people in our society are just generally not satisfied with their life for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, and it's interesting because I think it we can go back to our other podcast. I don't know which one you're doing. First is the gentleman that your driver and how he was content. Yeah, with so little you know. Compare what I'm saying, so little compared to what you know the average American have over here. So I have some thoughts about that whole thing, about being bored and not satisfied. All the things that you read from the research is true. I mean that's why we're here today, how we survived and evolved. That dissatisfaction and also that negativity, bias, it all. It kept us.
Speaker 2:we, our ancestors, were like save her to tiger run, okay.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's why we're here. The thing is that there there are no others. Save, save. We're not running from a tiger anymore, but the brain has not changed that much Totally and so small things could seem as a threat. Yeah, yep, and insult could be a threat, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Finding someone gossiping about you. So your brain is responding the same way. That's that. But the other part of that is the boredom and the what's next? I need something next. I need something next. You're never going to feel that, because it is some beliefs. Is that what you're looking for is not outside of you, exactly, it's an inside job. What do I mean by that? You can take a look at certain celebrities, certain very wealthy people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and see that they are unhappy.
Speaker 2:They have everything.
Speaker 1:They have it. And that's one of the things, like when someone unfortunately, you know, sadly take their life or they're on drugs or they're doing all of this crazy stuff, you're like what is wrong with them. Oh my God, if I had all of that money, I'd be great, I would be so happy. Well, there's a reason for that. Yeah, there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that disconnect. Anytime something happens to you know some known person and they're very successful and they have all this wealth. It just reminds me that all of the things, the things, the things, the things, it's not the answer Exactly. It's what's going on inside. Yeah, it's being happy with being you. It's that appreciation that that gentleman, tom, said to you hey, I, I have a mango somebody else has a banana, exactly share is.
Speaker 1:He didn't even like. I wake up in the morning and I go fishing. Yeah, I find my food. Yeah, it's that thing right there, and I feel like we are. So we are at a loss because we live in supposedly the richest country in the entire world, yet we are the most unhappy. Yeah, there's a reason behind that that it's because we chase things. We chase things outside of ourselves, so it's like what is going on with me? I need to be happy with angela. I need to appreciate just freaking, being alive, being a human being, appreciating family, appreciating what we're doing right here Simple things, it's the simple things.
Speaker 2:And not blaming or displacing the things that, because a lot of times people will feel bad about their situation or something and they don't understand that they have a big part of it or that they have control over it, but they reach out and they blame it on people who they think that. I mean, that's what we were seeing, unfortunately and I know we're trying not to be super political, but that's what we're seeing with our immigrant population right now. The reason why you're not making enough money and the reason why cost of living is high is the reason why X, y and Z is not because of your immigrant picking olives or picking um, you know pistachios, shaking pistachio trees, right, though those people are not the problem. No, they are not the cause of all of the societal ills and what's bothering you.
Speaker 1:They are the scapegoat, yep, and the thing about it and we're not going to be political, but I feel like I don't care, because I have to be very honest for me. I struggle when people say things like oh, I can't. I just can't look at it. It's too much for me. Oh, I can't, I can't. I feel like, how could you not? How could you not? Do you have no heart? Do you have no soul? How could you turn it off like that? These are human beings. And what happens?
Speaker 1:When all of that is turned around and it's towards you, towards your family member, towards your children, you would want someone standing up and fighting for you. You would pray that people were not putting their heads down looking the other way. You would want somebody to fight for you. So that is like my I have zero tolerance for those people, zero, zero tolerance. But back to what we were saying about it's an inside job. So, no matter how big the house is, how many cars you have, how many, whatever it is, it's about finding the purpose, meaning of life, and I think that purpose is to be here to help each other, to live fully, enjoy it and also also, most importantly, to know that we're all interconnected and we have to support and stand up for each other. So, finding that peace within, for me, the peace within comes when I'm hey, I'm standing up for those who can't stand up for themselves.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't need all of the things I don't need all of the things.
Speaker 2:I agree. I agree and I think that's where that's where I was kind of was my take home with all, with a lot of this, was I need to start focusing on the, the what I do have, and not necessarily what I don't have 100.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, um, as always, friends and family, live your life on 10, your 10. Bye.