Do you feel restless in life? Here's how to break your routine and find joy again: NPR

A new job, apartment or relationship can all come with a rush of excitement. But that shine fades after a while. And everything seems a little more boring.

There is a term for that phenomenon, says Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: habituation. It is “our tendency to respond less and less to things that are repeated or constant.”

The evolutionary purpose is to help us adapt to our environment so that we can be alert to new threats. But it can also affect our creativity and affect our stress and happiness levels.

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So how do we add that sparkle back to our lives? In a new book, Look again: the power of noticing what has always been thereSharot and her colleague Cass R. Sunsteinprofessor at Harvard Law School and expert in behavioral economics, discusses how offto get used to. That means making changes “that allow us to feel joy again from the same things around us,” Sharot says.

Sharot spoke with Life Kit about how to break your routine, get out of your rut, and breathe new life into your life. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In your book you refer to one episode of The Twilight Zone. In it, a criminal is killed during a robbery. In the afterlife he gets infinite access to money, cars and women. It's great at first, but in the end he's not happy. And surprisingly, you find out he's in hell. What lesson can we learn from this?

The main takeaway here is that even the great things in your life, if they are always there, don't get you that excited. They don't bring you much joy.

I worked with a tourism company who wanted to know when people are happiest on holiday. We went to different resorts and interviewed people. We discovered that the happiest vacation day was 43 hours. After that, happiness slowly started to decline. People were still happy on day 5, 6, 7, 8 – but not as happy as on day 2. That's habit. They became accustomed to the wonderful things around them.

And that's what happened in that episode of The twilight zone. The crook had everything he thought he wanted. But it wasn't as good as day 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 as day 1. Usually at that point you're looking for something else.

Are some groups of people more sensitive to habit than others?

One thing we think matters is age. There is a famous one U-shape of happiness in life, where happiness is relatively high among teenagers and children; then it goes down, down, down, reaching an average low point in your middle age. Then it starts to rise again.

So why are we having this low point in middle age? One of the reasons is that we have a lot of equality. Midlife is a time when most of us have been in the same situation for a long time: maybe [staying] in the same place, in the same job, with the same partner for a long time.

These things can be good. But if you stay in that position for a long time and don't make any progress, people tend to feel a bit down. Because what people like to do is see themselves moving forward.

What steps should you take if you are in a colorless gray rut?

Take breaks from good things. Withdraw from that environment or situation for a period of time — and then come back. You'll be better able to notice things that are great. For example, people who go on business trips often find that when they return they suddenly appreciate their comfortable home, their loved ones, and the view from their window.

You can also take this pause in your mind. Close your eyes and imagine that you have no home, no family, no job. Try to imagine it vividly and in detail. When you open your eyes again, there is some withdrawal, a feeling of gratitude.

Don't forget the variety. It puts you in a state of learning. This could be something big, like moving to a different place or taking a new job. But it can also be smaller things, such as learning a new skill. Learning is something that truly brings the most joy to people.

The changes you are talking about here are experiential. You can't buy your way out of a rut, right?

When you buy a new car, outfit, phone or whatever, you tend to get used to it quite quickly. But when it comes to experiences, such as a concert, a lecture or a night out, if the experience was good, you tend to recall it in your mind every now and then, and there is still quite a large amount going on joy associated with it. That's one of the reasons why many findings show this Experiences give you more joy than material things.

Besides bringing joy back into your life, are there any other benefits of detox?

One study has shown that after people move from one country to another for a short period of time, they do so better at solving problems. It could be because everything is new: the language, the way things look, the people, everything. Their brain is 'on' in a different mode, a way to absorb information and think about things differently. So they become better at solving problems.

Another interesting study has shown that if you change your environment in a very simple way – for example if you leave your office to work in the kitchen or in a cafe or go for a walk – you become more creative. Now the creativity boost you get from simply changing your environment only lasts about six minutes. However, those six minutes can be quite important. That could be the big eureka moment. So it's definitely something I recommend every workday. Don't sit in the same place; try changing your environment slightly.

The digital story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We would love to hear from you. Leave a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.

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