Table of Contents
C. How to come out of the rat race and become more satisfied?
We must have often felt that even after setting and achieving higher goals, you are not getting any satisfaction. Success is an emotion, achievement is a feeling, and satisfaction is the higher and more stable emotion.
Satisfaction creates stronger memory and whenever we recall that memory, the hormone serotonin is released. The more satisfied we are the more Serotonin is released.
Serotonin receptors are highest in the pre-frontal part of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is also our conscious brain, as well as the major decision-making executive center. So the more satisfied you are, the better decisions you make. The more conscious you become, the less and less risky options and goals you choose in life.
Serotonin has a much higher lifetime than dopamine, and therefore after achieving few goals, many try to find satisfaction, rather than success.
Why satisfaction becomes elusive?
We discussed above that setting higher goals and achieving them become a habit, and it is extremely hard for the brain to come out of a habit and something that it has been doing over and over again, even though one looks for satisfaction, the brain still pushes one to set one last higher goal. Then again when you want to search for satisfaction, your brain again tricks you to set a goal one last time.
Therefore the more goals one achieves and the more success one sees, the less and less satisfied one will be. Paradoxically, if one achieves no goal, one would still be unsatisfied due to unfulfilment of the Biological need of Thriving.
Satisfaction ∝ (Σ Achievement)/Time of life invested to get the achievements
Equation (1)
Achievement is the increase in the dopamine level after you reach your goal, and success is the emotion, which is the entire journey that includes effort, roadblocks, preparations, challenges, and everything from setting the goal to achieving the goal.
Therefore it is quite clear from equation(1), that if your achievements are zero in life, your satisfaction will be zero. When you set a small goal and achieve it, your satisfaction will be lower, but not zero. As you keep achieving more but more time in life has gone by in achieving them, then again Satisfaction starts falling down.