Manufactured Happiness and Stockholm Syndrome
A very curious effect happens to people in bad situations. They tend to rationalize that the world around them is actually not bad at all. Moreover, they will honestly, authentically believe that they’re better off because of the adverse position they’re in. There’s a fascinating TED talk about this concept of “manufactured happiness”: a true sense of satisfaction in a situation that any outsider will call straight-up terrible.
For example, someone who’s been on a powerful senator for 30 years, got publicly discredited in a scandal and lost it all, and now lives a quiet life. Or, someone who lost all their limbs in an accident. Someone who spent most of their life in jail unjustly, only to be released in old age with an apology. They all proclaim – in a very honest, deep way – that they’re truly happy that these events happened to them.
You can argue that all of these are examples of nature’s coping mechanisms that are hard-wired into our brains. When we feel that there’s no choice, no exit from a bad position, we give up and start truly believing that it’s all good.
Here’s a problem, though: the world is not black and white. Particularly at the workplace, there is no single situation that is so unchangeable that you have to put up with it. Your brain, however, will be tempted to play that same trick: it’ll try to convince you that it’s all good.
Wait. That person that just yelled at you for an hour – that’s objectively not so good. The fact that your startup sank millions in VC money and still has no idea how to make money – that’s not quite so good. All your coworkers left – hmmm… The product captured 10 times less market share than you expected.
You’ll be tempted to rationalize, every single time. You’ll keep telling yourself that this is just a part of life, and it’ll all get better.
Stop.
There’s time to press on, and there’s time to step back and think. Ideally, your thinking will be reinforced by an external mentor, someone who isn’t intimately involved in your day-to-day tactics. Evaluate the crap you see at your workplace in objective terms. Not in the context of subjective spin created by “intellectually shallow PowerPoint BS artists” (hat goes off to WhoDaPunk for this expression).
My brilliant friend and mentor once likened the “stuck in a crappy work environment” situation to the Stockholm Syndrome: the victim of a kidnapping falls in love with the kidnappers. You fall in love with the crap that’s falling on you. It’s normal, that’s how it’s supposed to be… And then, three years later, you look back at that mess and think: “why did I put up with all that? Why didn’t I put up a good fight, or find a better place to work?”
Another great mind suggested that it’s very difficult to objectively judge whether the situation you’re in is good – tolerable – and temporary, or not. All you know is where you are now. You also have a few experiences from your prior life. You know that switching to another line of work, another company, whatever – that has cost, too. You start from scratch, and like any optimization algorithm that employs random jumps to get rid of the possible local maximums, you risk to wander forever.
Don’t sacrifice a moment of your life. Take some time to reflect regularly – and do it with an outsider friend.