Most people are capable of weighing the respective value of options in the big picture. Where they struggle is in translating these valuations into the daily scope of life. It’s as if we have different equipment to make big picture decisions than we do the daily ones. For example, one might clearly prefer the welfare of their child to their own, but they might make regular choices day by day that contradict that ordering.
By default, our daily actions will tend to focus on the most obvious short-term benefit. What requires a longer or more intense sacrifice will always be out of bounds to those who never develop a way to sufficiently prioritize what yields greater long-term benefit. Often it’s because it typically isn’t the most obvious, fastest, or most pleasurable thing we could be doing.
By default, humans attempt to maximize present pleasure and this is the opposite of what maximizes joy. The path to maximized joy requires the adoption of thoughts, feelings, and actions that tend to be quite different than what people will choose by default.
The daily choices that maximize joy run contrary to human nature:
- By nature, people prefer short-term benefit. Joy is maximized by choosing what provides the greatest benefit over the longest time, and this tends to be opposite to what provides the greatest immediate pleasure.
- By nature, people prefer what is easy. Joy is maximized by choosing what is best, which will always carry a high cost.
- By nature, people prefer what looks good right now. Joy is maximized by choosing what has the most enduring value, and this tends to be anything but obvious. Long-term value can only be learned through wisdom and experience, neither of which are common or easy to obtain.
- By nature, people prefer choices that reduce their awareness of needs. Joy is maximized by increasing value, and this typically increases the sense of needs by creating new, previously ignorable problems rather than assisting in hiding those already known.
- By nature, people attempt to minimize suffering. Joy is maximized by finding greater meaning, even if it requires dramatic increases in suffering.
In choosing to counter human nature, you may feel you are engaging in some pious sacrifice. The truth is, you are just rationally seeking what is obviously best for you. You aren’t giving up anything. In fact, you are maximizing everything of worth. As amazing as it may sound, in all of these things, optimizing the latter in the short-term always maximizes the former in the long-term.