The Greed Syndrome | The First Step Towards Disaster Is Often Success

Most of the time, the idea of progress is probably the enemy of actual progress, A few weeks ago I met a guy in my workplace who despite having a great personality, an awesome lifestyle and a great network of friends told me with a straight face that he was thinking of working with someone to help him “Reach The Next Level”. I was really surprised about this, and I asked him about this whole thing like what this next level was and he said that he wasn’t sure and that’s why he wanted to work with someone already successful, so they can mentor him and point out his blind spot and show him what he was missing out.

The guy was so enthusiastic and was ready to spend a lot of money to figure out what problem he had. And I stood there awkwardly for a minute and replied “What if there’s nothing to fix and there is no next level”

From my point of view, I consider that next level is just another fictional thought that comes up I out mind, wanting to know what is the next step in my life is good but what if you’re already there and not only by pursuing something more you’re preventing yourself from appreciating and enjoying it.

And his reply to my question was “I just like to find flaws in my and I need to always be improving myself”

Again from my standpoint that could be the problem.

Pat Riley one of the NBA’s hall of fame coaches coined the term “The Disease of more”  and he also stated why NBA teams who win championships are ultimately dethroned not by other teams but by forces within the team itself.

Players like everyone are humans and want more, at the start of their career the more was winning the championship. But once they achieve the goal of winning the championship it’s no longer enough the more changes to other things like TV commercials, etc.

As a result, what was once a group of an enthusiastic and cohesive group of hardworking men begins to strain.

Huge Ego’s get involved and the whole psychological composition of the team changes – what was once a group of enthusiastic players becomes toxic. Players often start to ignore the small things that they did to win the championship in the first place, having a belief that they don’t need to do it anymore. And the result of these behaviours leads to the team falling apart.

More isn’t better always

Psychologists didn’t study happiness, In fact, for most of its past psychology didn’t focus on the positives, but on what fucked with people like things that cause mental illness and could break people emotionally and on how they can their shit back together. It wasn’t until the last ’80s that people started to think okay let’s talk about things that make people happy and soon they had hundreds of dozens of “Self-Help Books” stocked in the bookshelves of the middle-class people with existential crises.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One of the things psychologists did to study happiness were they randomly selected a large group of people and gave them pagers remember this was in the 80s so no mobile phones, and so whenever the pager went off the subjects were supposed to write down 2 things

1. On a scale of 1 – 10 how good they fell, where 1 being the lowest.

2.      What was the reason for this feeling, like what’s going on now that makes you feel the way you do?

They collected a couple of thousand records from hundreds of people and were surprised with the reports.

Almost everyone wrote 7, like in all time no matter how they feel. Even for catastrophic events happened and the happiness levels would range from 2-5 for a short period and back to 7 again.

The reports fascinated the Psychologists, nobody was fully happy, on the contrary, no one was fully unhappy either. I feel like we hums have a constant state of mind that is mild but not fully satisfying happiness. Let me put it this way things are fine almost every time but they eventually get better.

This constant ‘seven’ that we’re always coming back to, plays a little trick on us. And it’s a trick that we all fall for over and over again.

The trick is that our brain tells us, “You know, If I had that, I’d finally get to a 10 and stay there”

Most people live most of their lives this way chasing imaginary 10.

You think to be happier, you need to get a new job, so you get a new job. And then a few months later, you feel like god If I had a better salary, So you work hard and get the increment you’ve always wanted and a few months later, you feel like you’d be happier if you had a new house. So you get a new house. And then a few months later, it’s an awesome beach vacation, so you go on an awesome beach vacation, and while you’re on the awesome beach, you’re like, “YOU KNOW WHAT I FUCKING NEED? A GODDAMN PIÑA COLADA? CAN’T A FUCKER GET A PIÑA COLADA AROUND HERE?” And so you stress about your piña colada, believing that your imaginary 10 is just one piña colada away. But then it’s a second piña colada. And then a third. And then the list goes on well, you know how this turns out. You wake up with a hangover and are at a 3.

But that’s OK. Because you know you’ll be back in 7 at no time.

Ever heard of a term called “Hedonic Treadmill”, psychologists coined this term for people who are constantly chasing pleasure. Or striving for a better life and sadly ending up expending a ton of effort only to end up in the same place.

But wait… I know what you’re saying:  Does this mean that there’s no point in doing anything?

No, it means that we need to be motivated in life by something more than our happiness. It means that we have to be driven by something greater than ourselves.

Otherwise, you will simply run and run towards some vision of your glory and improvement, towards your perfect 10, all the while feeling as though you’re in the same place. Or worse, like Riley’s championship teams, slowly undermining what got you there, to begin with.