By Madeleine Ortiz
Remember first getting your driver’s license? You likely felt pretty nervous every time you sat behind the wheel of the car. You would double check your seat belt and triple check your mirrors. Everything on the road felt new and a little bit scary. Now? You’re an old pro at driving. You can merge onto highways with ease and whip into parking spots in one fell swoop. It’s all second nature!
Driving probably isn’t the only time this pattern has played out in your life. Perhaps you switched jobs and started making a little less money. You weren’t sure you would survive the decrease in pay, but after a while, living on the new salary felt pretty normal. Parents undoubtedly felt overwhelmed the first days with their newborns, but eventually settled into their roles as mom or dad.
People have an incredible ability to “get used to it” – and it’s not just our imagination. It’s science. Hedonic adaptation is the tendency of humans to quickly return to a general level of “normalcy” and “stability” despite major changes in their lives… and it doesn’t matter if the changes are viewed by the person as positive or negative.
A recent survey asked individuals to name something they thought they could never get used to, but is now routine, and people eagerly offered examples. Many of the responses given had to do with changes in health habits. One person mentioned “waking up early enough to work out at 5:30am,” and another said “eating vegetables every day.” This is great news when it comes to changing our habits! It means that things you might think you could never get used to can become second nature if you put them into practice for a couple of weeks.
So take advantage of hedonic adaptation to start some new wellness habits. Drinking 8 glasses of water a day, eating dessert every other night instead of everyday, walking thirty minutes, or replacing soda with soda water might sound impossible now, but before you know it, it will be as instinctive as putting your car in drive.
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This article was sponsored by Novo Nordisk Canada. All content is created independently by My Weight – What To Know with no influence from Novo Nordisk.
