You're stuck with you... from now until the end.

📖📖 My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

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One of the driving forces, for me, in leaving London - a city I had lived in for 12 years over two spells - was the growing sense of isolation I felt in the city following the coronavirus pandemic.

There had been big changes in my life, with the birth of my first child, and big changes in the city. People had left, patterns had changed, my work had changed. And of course: not everything would go back to how it was.

Moving to a smaller community, closer to my wife’s family, near to two old and dear friends of mine, much closer to my parents in the north of England, and with space for guests we didn’t have in our London flat.

Strategically, moving promised a more connected, less isolated life.

And in some ways, that is what I found.

And yet - the sense of isolation didn’t disappear. In fact, three years on, I feel at least as isolated as before.

Which leaves me with a rather perplexing possibility.

You see, I remember what my friend, the Costa Rican coach Minor Arias told me when I interviewed him about his life and work years ago. He said he sometimes invites his clients to outline the three biggest problems in their lives. You can do this now if you want to.

Then to look at those three problems.

Then to try to identify what they have in common.

Here’s the punchline: one of the things those three big problems have in common is YOU.

And if I had moved hundreds of miles to a completely different type of community, and a completely different type of house, with possibilities for connection that weren’t available in London… but found the same sense of isolation… then what are the possibilities?

Well, it is possible that I might have just picked the wrong place. That we went too countryside or, for me, lived near the wrong family or friends.

But more likely is that unfortunately there was one thing I couldn’t leave behind in London: me.

No matter where I move, what I change, what job I do, what the qualities of my relationships are like, I am still around.

And no matter where you move, what you do, whether you quit that job, whether you start that business, whether you break off that relationship, you will still you around, too.

And so you’d better start getting to know yourself. Because you’re going to be around until the day you die… and maybe - depending on your beliefs - longer.

It reminded me of what I read in Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Happiness Hypothesis, years ago, about what we might call the Steady State Theory of Happiness (researchers call it the Hedonic Treadmill). That is: broadly speaking we all have a particular state of happiness. And no matter what happens (almost), nothing changes that: we will always return to our steady state of happiness.

Lottery winners are happier when they win… but not for very long. In the end, they return to pretty much how happy they were before the win… just richer.

Even more remarkably, people who become paraplegic in an accident also return to pretty much how happy they were before the accident. (Albeit with some very understandable variance before they get back there.)

This shows us the incredible ability of humans to adapt to changing circumstances.

We don’t really know what a person’s particular steady state level depends on: genetics, our environment growing up, the chemicals and structures in our brain.

But it does mean… you’re probably going to be about this happy for the rest of your life.

Incidentally, Haidt does raise some things which seem to materially affect people’s happiness - the one I remember most clearly is the length of your commute. Shorten it, you’ll probably get happier. You’ll have to read Haidt’s work to pull out some of the other ones.

There is both a bleakness and a relief to this.

I can’t really make myself happier. And I personally (despite appearances often to the contrary) am a melancholic human, deep down. Maybe I’ll always be like that.

So, with that in mind, what can I do?

Well, I’m here, so I might as well do something. I might as well learn about myself using ideas like the one in Chapter Three of The Power to Choose: curiosity is the antidote to contraction.

Maybe, if I know myself better, I can free myself from some of my sensations - perhaps this sense of isolation - even if I can’t really get much happier.

Maybe I can create connection.

Maybe meaning is a better thing to pursue than happiness anyway: maybe I can do more of what really matters.

Maybe joy is not happiness, and can be found in the small moments.

Maybe I can find the space to enjoy, indeed, the sadness and melancholy.

Maybe you can, too.

And maybe, if you know yourself better, it won’t be such a pain that you’re stuck with you, from now until the end.

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PS My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.