Welcome to the happiness podcast I'm Dr. Robert Puff. In the previous episode we talked

about hedonic or hedonistic adaptation and at its core it states that we have within us a set point to happiness.

We are going to be happy at a certain level throughout our lives, and that's not going to change.

So when events happen that are external to us, we quickly go back to our level of happiness that we're set at.

So for example, if we win the lotto or if we break our backs, within a few weeks or months, we're going to go back to our level of

happiness we are at prior to these events.

So basically, hedonic adaptation teaches us that happiness is within us. It really isn't in any way relevant to what's going on outside of us.

So how do we change it? How if we are set at a low level of happiness, how do we get it higher? Is there anything that we can do

to improve our lives and find ourselves living much happier lives because our set point

to happiness has been raised.

Well, that's what this episode is about.

Truthfully, it's really the premise of this whole podcast,

how do we raise our set point to happiness and have beautiful lives.

But in today's episode, we're going to explore a very specific technique that we can do,

and if we do it on a regular basis will raise our set point to happiness.

What is it?

It is called negative visualization.

Basically, it's taking a little bit of time every day,

imagining the things that you fear that could happen,

visualizing them happening,

and then saying, I can do that.

Because if we can imagine negative things happening, things that we fear, and be okay,

...