Addiction is a progressive narrowing
of the things that bring you pleasure.
Happiness is a progressive expansion of the things that bring you pleasure. The former emerges passively.
The latter takes work.
Addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. Happiness is a progressive expansion of the things that bring you pleasure. The former emerges passively. The latter takes work.
As a clinician later described it to her, addiction always ends up as a “narrowing of repertoire”: life contracts to a fixation on what you can’t live without, and the rhythms of a day, a life, are engineered to secure this thing that never satisfies, is never enough.
James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
As a clinician later described it to her, addiction always ends up as a “narrowing of repertoire”: life contracts to a fixation on what you can’t live without, and the rhythms of a day, a life, are engineered to secure this thing that never satisfies, is never enough.
James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
The point is, true happiness has nothing to do with pleasure, because the reliance on feeling good from such intensely stimulating things only moves us further from real joy.
Joe Dispenza • Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One
sari added
It has been my experience that rebelling against the forces of attachment within my own heart and mind has been the most revolutionary thing I’ve ever done. We are addicted to pleasure, in part because we confuse pleasure with happiness. We would all say that deep down, all we want is to be happy. Yet we don’t have a realistic understanding of what
... See moreJack Kornfield • The Buddha Is Still Teaching: Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom
Certainly, these are incredible and exciting life milestones, but as sure as you are human, your level of happiness regressed to baseline after the initial buzz wore off. This “tolerance” to dopamine, especially when achieved by any short-circuiting of the stimulus/reward pathways in the brain, can result in “anhedonia,” or a pathological inability
... See morePaul Grewal • Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life (Genius Living Book 1)
With repeated exposure to the same or similar pleasure stimulus, the initial deviation to the side of pleasure gets weaker and shorter and the after-response to the side of pain gets stronger and longer, a process scientists call neuroadaptation. That
Anna Lembke • Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Your psyche demands novelty for progress, but most people get theirs from the endless sources of instant cheap pleasures. Exploring the unknown is how you live in accordance with nature.