Happiness Archives - Farther to Go!

The Cosmic Gift & Misery
Distribution System

February 28, 2025 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Yesterday morning I looked out onto my patio and discovered a red Mylar balloon in the shape of a heart lazily floating to and fro in the breeze. Today it’s gone, carried away by a gust of wind.

This is New Mexico, after all: the wind giveth and the wind taketh away. The wind routinely creates “fugitive dust,” for which there is a system of warnings in place. The wind is at the top of my list of things I dislike about living here. The light is at the top of my list of things I love.

Sometimes delivery people drop off food I didn’t order, leaving it on the mat outside my front door because they only notice the letter designation of my apartment and not the number of the building. There’s no one to call, no indication of who the food was meant for. Rarely, do these delivery people ring my doorbell or knock on the door, so I have no idea how long the food has been there. I carry it across the parking lot and deposit it in the dumpster.

According to one of the articles I read on developing a gratitude practice, life owes me nothing and all the good I have is a gift.

When I entertain this notion, I’m faced with a disquieting cascade of questions I’m sure philosophers, ethicists, and religious scholars, among others, have been ruminating over for centuries.

I tend to imagine a couple of possible general scenarios. One is that someone or something is determining how “the good” should be parceled out to living creatures. (I include animals here, as it’s obvious the circumstances of their lives vary as greatly as do the circumstances of humans.) Someone who enjoys more good circumstances than bad might find this notion comforting. They wouldn’t question it, thus avoiding looking a gift horse or force in the mouth. They might feel deserving, as well as “blessed.” Maybe their good circumstances make them feel kindly toward those less blessed. Maybe they don’t.

Perhaps kindliness is what a gratitude practice is meant to foster, but there’s no indication that the extremely fortunate comprise the target audience for lessons in gratitude. In many cases it appears that the better one’s circumstances are, the less likely one is to want to share and the less grateful one is. There’s a belief, especially among the most materially fortunate that they alone are responsible for their success. So this method of distribution does not seem to be an overall plus for humanity as a whole—at least if the distributor (let’s just call it that) or distributing force might be expected to have an attitude of good will or good faith toward earth’s living creatures.

The other, equally dubious, scenario is that someone or something is indiscriminately tossing around Mylar balloons or take-out food or IQ points or loving parents or stock dividends. Maybe this distributor or distributing force isn’t paying close attention to the delivery address and isn’t concerned about whether the recipient of such a “gift” wants or needs it; what anyone ends up with is entirely random. This seems less inherently comforting than the first notion but a lot more in line with both experience and observation.

The most relevant definition of gift seems to be this one: something bestowed or acquired without being sought or earned by the receiver.

Gifts, by nature and by definition, are in the control of the giver not in the control of the receiver. We are wired to want things: that’s the definition of motivation. So it’s no easy task to persuade people to be satisfied with their lot in life—not just satisfied, but also grateful!

It’s quite natural that we would want to try to game this system. What can we do to get more gifts? If we can influence the distribution of gifts to get more, are they technically still gifts? Is this a zero-sum game or are there an unlimited number of gifts to be bestowed?

While I agree we aren’t owed anything in particular, it doesn’t then logically follow that all (everything good) we have is a “gift.” First, if this is true for one person, it’s true for everyone: everything anyone has is a gift. So: so what? Presumably everyone gets something. This is just the way the system works. We didn’t set it up and we don’t operate it. It’s literally out of our hands.

The Misery

Second, if this applies to “the good,” it must also apply to “the bad,” unless that’s a different distribution system. What, then, is the appropriate response to the bad that has been delivered to us? There’s a fad in some circles to look at difficult circumstances as “a gift,” too, but those advising us to do so are usually not the ones upon whom such misfortune has been bestowed. I think it requires a certain amount of both privilege and ignorance to adopt this attitude, and espousing it for others seems rather callous.

Yes, each of us may have our personal misfortunes to deal with, but no one reading this is hungry and tired, living in a crowded, torn tent in the winter amid rubble, dead bodies, and unexploded ordnance, wary of snipers trying to shoot us in the head should we venture out to find food for our family.

Are we supposed to be grateful for that? And if we are, what are the ramifications?

One more gratitude post to come.

Chronic Happiness
Is Not Good for You

July 22, 2022 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

I recently came across a video of a mental health professional disparaging the brain’s default mode network (DMN). The loudest contingent of the DMN-bashing bandwagon tends to be the mindfulness folks, but it’s not an exclusive club.

This particular person cited a study I’m familiar with and have mentioned previously. Researchers contacted study participants at random times to ask them (1) what they were doing right then and (2) how happy they were.

The results supposedly revealed that people were happier when their attention was focused on what they were doing (accessing the brain’s attention network) than they were when their minds were wandering (accessing the brain’s default mode network).

My first question now would be who were these people? Specifically, I would want to know something about their personalities, given that we are all so dissimilar from each other. That is just one of many reasons why you cannot simply lump a group of people together, average their responses to some questions, and come to a sound conclusion about…anything.

Happiness was, in fact, the subject of the research, so I can’t fault the researchers for asking people to evaluate their level of happiness. But I question the ability of people in general to gauge their degree of happiness or of any other emotion. And I definitely can fault the assumption that happiness is a worthy topic of research.

The study in question was really focused on transient happiness—or acute happiness, if you will—which most people experience to a greater or lesser extent, anyway. By that, I mean we don’t all experience an equal amount or intensity of happiness. And who knows if what I label happy is the same emotion you label happy.

An inability to experience any happiness is definitely an indicator of a problem; the inability to be happy all the time—not so much.

The Pursuit of Happiness

A recent Facebook post advertising a Buddhist-oriented program asserted that anger is a “delusion” and it’s bad because it makes us unhappy. This is both simple-minded and wrong. The relentless pursuit of happiness is far more delusional and destructive than the experience of anger.

I have a handout with a list of 136 positive emotions (along with a similar list of negative emotions). Happy is but one of them. Yet somehow people have gotten the idea that it is the best or most important emotion. And somehow people have concluded that a steady state of happiness is both desirable and achievable. (This seems to be a peculiarly American take.)

One of the other emotions on the list is excited, which is far more appealing to me than happy but far less acceptable to pursue. For one thing, people who pursue excitement are often advised that it is just a poor substitute for happiness. Pursuing excitement is also associated with novelty-seeking and risk-taking.

In the Five Factor Model of Personality, it’s related to extraversion and openness to experience. (Full disclosure: those are the two factors I always score highest in, in that order.) Introverts and ambiverts tend to view extraverts with some degree of suspicion if not outright aversion, so the negative association to excitement is not surprising.

The short-term side-effects of excitement (acute excitement), however, include anticipation, alertness, increased energy, and motivation. Good stuff! But the side-effects of attempting to maintain a constant state of excitement—chronic excitement—are altogether different: impaired concentration, sleeplessness, restlessness, elevated blood pressure, increased adrenaline and noradrenaline, racing heart. The body would react to a constant state of excitement essentially the same as it would to chronic stress.

Furthermore, one would have to continually up the ante, so to speak (seek more novelty, take greater risks), to maintain the same level of excitement. Someone who was chronically excited would likely become a source of annoyance to friends, family, and coworkers.

Chronic happiness is no better for us than chronic excitement. Here’s why:

Sometimes things are not going well, there is a real threat, and vigilance is required.

If someone offers you a pill that makes you happy 100 percent of the time, you should run fast in the other direction. It’s not good to feel happy in a dark alley at night. Happiness is a noun, so we think it’s something we can own. But happiness is a place to visit, not a place to live. It’s like the child’s idea that if you drive far and fast enough you can get to the horizon. No, the horizon’s not a place you get to. —Daniel Gilbert

Pursuing happiness is likely to keep you stuck on the hedonic treadmill, where you’ll need to keep moving to acquire more and more of the things or experiences you think will bring you pleasure—to each of which you will adapt surprisingly quickly.
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Happiness won’t increase your lifespan. In the final analysis, death comes in equal proportion to the happy and the sad. The result of research conducted by Oxford University with nearly 720,000 women is that “happiness and related measures of wellbeing do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality.”
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If you’re simply here for the party, you should be aware your body processes “empty positive emotions” the same way it processes chronic adversity, which is by activating the pro-inflammatory response to prepare for bacterial threats. (Inflammation is associated with many major and minor diseases, including heart disease, various cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.) A diet of too many empty positive emotions seems to be a lot like a diet of too many empty (sugar-, salt-, alcohol-, or fat-laden) calories.
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Happiness may make you feel good in the moment, but pursuing it by avoiding negative thoughts and feelings and difficult or painful situations can stunt your personal development. That can lead to decreased resilience, greater susceptibility to stress, and reduced creativity and problem-solving abilities.

You’re less likely to become depressed if you regularly experience a range of emotions instead of aiming exclusively for the positive ones.

Research indicates that if you pursue happiness, you may get it (just not all the time), but you’re not likely to feel satisfied. On the other hand, if you focus on meaning, instead, you’re extremely likely to feel satisfied and you may also get happiness as a bonus.

Books to Change Your Mind,
Your Brain, and Your Self

September 8, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Here are brief summaries of a dozen books I consider foundational for understanding brain, mind, and behavior. Most of them were published between 2010 and 2012. There are plenty of books that have been published since then—and a couple I’m eagerly awaiting that will be out later this year—but these remain the most salient.

If you were to read all of them, you would see that some cross-reference each other in one way or another. That repetition is extremely useful! You would also get schooled in the extent to which we are wrong, which is also extremely useful.

Each summary includes a quote from the book, my take on what the book has to offer, and a link to a related blog post on my website. The books are listed roughly in order of importance.

Incognito | David Eagleman | 2011

Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the conscious mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it.

It’s silent and dark inside the brain. So what happens in there to give us the rich visual and auditory perception of the external world we seem to have? How often do we mistake illusions for reality? Is the brain even focused on attempting to accurately represent reality or is it actively making things up? To what extent can you trust your sense of time? Is time real? How confident are you in your answers to any of those questions?

This was the threshold book for me: the book that didn’t just show me why and how the way we think about things is wrong, but also opened up so many possibilities. It left me with a big question: what is the best use of consciousness and conscious attention?

Blog post: Z Is for Zombie Systems

Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 2011

A mind that follows WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) will achieve high confidence much too easily by ignoring what it does not know. It is therefore not surprising that many of us are prone to have high confidence in unfounded intuitions.

Here’s everything you wanted to know about System 1 (the unconscious) and System 2 (consciousness). I sometimes refer to these two parts of the brain as Smart Hamster (S2, the slow thinker) and Strong Hamster (S1, the fast thinker). Kahneman details the benefits and shortcomings of both types of thinking.

He also explains the basis of intuition and when it is—or is not—likely to be reliable, as well as some of the many cognitive biases System 1 uses in order to arrive at its quick judgments and conclusions. Overall assessment: mind-boggling.

Blog post: Intuition: Knowing Without Knowing How We Know

Self Comes to Mind | Antonio Damasio | 2010

The narrative of mind and consciousness that I am presenting here does not conform to the requirements of fiction. It is actually counterintuitive. It upsets traditional human storytelling. It repeatedly denies long-held assumptions and not a few expectations. But none of this makes the account any less likely.

Many of the books on my list contain what’s known as troublesome knowledge; Damasio admits upfront that his is one of them. He takes us on a trip from single-celled nonconscious organisms to us: many-celled conscious organisms with a sense of self and multiple selves.

I put off reading this for a long time, but it was worth the effort to get through the science to get to the issue of what it’s like to live with consciousness. As Damasio says, our conscious deliberation is circumscribed by numerous unconscious processes, some of which we can affect and some of which we can’t.

One surprising conclusion is that the unconscious is capable of making much higher-level decisions than we give it credit for—that is, if we have trained it well.

Blog post: Are You a Fictional Character?

The Ego Trick | Julian Baggini | 2011

The self is a construction of the mind, one flexible enough to withstand constant renovation, partial demolition and reconstruction, but one that can be brought down if the foundations are undermined.

Baggini, a philosopher, tackles a big question: If each of us has an enduring essence that makes us the same person throughout our lives (or even after), where and what is it? He attempts to answer the question via philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality.

He says that the self is an illusion but that he does not mean it isn’t real, just that it isn’t what we think it is. That is the so-called “ego trick.” If there is no “true self,” we can, to a certain extent, create ourselves. His emphasis on action and agency make this a must-read, I think, for anyone interested in transformational change.

Blog post: Time to Let Go of the Myth of the True Self

What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite | David DiSalvo | 2011

I believe that the new wave of cognitive research actually undercuts a great deal of self-help advice, and will continue to do so in the years ahead by showing just how vacuous, groundless, and fraudulent much of that advice really is. We do not need more self-help—we need more science help.

The brain is “happy” when it is avoiding loss, lessening risk, and averting harm. While these protective tendencies can be quite useful, they can also get in the way of creativity, innovation, and living a satisfying and meaningful life.

The brain is also happy when it can connect the dots, whatever those dots may be: experiences, symbols, words, images, sounds. It does not like randomness, but it does like patterns. It doesn’t like questions; it likes answers.

As Disalvo says, we have a big brain capable of greatness with hardwiring for survival. And as I’ve said, learn how to use your brain instead of letting it use you.

Blog post: Are You Living the Good Life?

Stumbling on Happiness | Daniel Gilbert | 2006

Because it is so much easier for me to remember the past than to generate new possibilities, I will tend to compare the present with the past even when I ought to be comparing it with the possible.

We are really bad at affective forecasting (predicting how we will feel in the future or about a future event).

For a variety of reasons, making decisions about what to pursue in life based on what we think will make us happy in the future is largely a recipe for unhappiness. Where and how do we go wrong? Gilbert might say, Let me count the ways. In addition to exposing our wrongheadedness about happiness, he relates a considerable amount of research about a myriad of things we take for granted—and about which we are also wrong.

Note: You can skip the last chapter.

Blog post: Miswanting: The Problem with Affective Forecasting

The Storytelling Animal | Jonathan Gottschall | 2012

We are the great masterworks of our own storytelling minds—figments of our own imaginations. … And like a novel in process, our life stories are always changing and evolving, being edited, rewritten, and embellished by an unreliable narrator.

Stories permeate both our waking and sleeping lives. We are so addicted to stories that, even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night telling stories. Why do we find stories so compelling that we easily suspend disbelief? Why are we so compelled to turn everything into a story? And why should we question our—and others’—stories far more than we do?

Gottschall provides many fascinating stories about stories, including the stories of our lives, which are based on that most unreliable source of material: our memories.

Blog post: Consciousness Is a Narrative Process

The Hidden Brain | Shankar Vedantam | 2010

Nearly all our social, political, and economic institutions are based on an assumption of how human beings behave that is at best incomplete and at worst fundamentally wrong. The mistakes are so fundamental to the way we think about the world that we have enshrined them in international treaties and in constitutions.

What are the broader-scale effects of our assumptions, cognitive biases, and other errors in thinking? How do they affect our interactions with others and the ways in which we set up and run our social institutions, such as the criminal justice system?

Vedantam, who is the host of The Hidden Brain podcast on NPR, describes how our erroneous beliefs about the way we operate contribute to so many of the problems in the world. By becoming aware of them, we can begin to mitigate some of their negative effects.

Blog post: Success: Is It Random or Predictable?

On Being Certain | Richard Burton | 2008

To be effective powerful rewards, some of these sensations such as the feeling of knowing and the feeling of conviction must feel like conscious and deliberate conclusions. As a result, the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren’t.

As far as the brain is concerned feeling right is identical to being right. And we are persuaded by feelings more than we’re persuaded by facts. We don’t like being or feeling wrong—or being or feeling uncertain. This matters because the more certain we feel, the less likely we are to question our beliefs, judgments, or conclusions.

Among many other things, Burton talks about how feeling certain might, in some cases, serve an evolutionary purpose, what rewards have to do with certainty, and how seeing—or experiencing—should not equate with believing.

Blog post: I Could Be Wrong

Mind over Mind | Chris Berdik | 2012

Exploring the vast influence of expectations brings up humbling, even frightening possibilities. We might discover just how little contact we truly have with bedrock reality, and how much of our time, effort, and emotion we devote to watching and worrying over shadows. On the other hand, the power of expectations makes our reality coherent, meaningful, and open to the possibility of change, if we put our minds to it.

We can’t not have expectations, although we have often been advised to try. One reason is that our brain is in the business of predicting what’s going to happen next, and we have no control over that. We just go along for the ride.

Berdik explains what expectations have to do with—among other things—the placebo effect, addictions of all kinds, and athletic performance. Not surprisingly, the brain’s reward system plays a significant role in our responses to what are, first and foremost, our brain’s expectations.

Blog post: X Is for eXpectations

The Power of Habit | Charles Duhigg | 2012

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.

From the brain’s perspective, habits are an energy-saving device. Duhigg tells us everything we need to know about them from the science behind them to practical application.

There are three parts to the so-called habit loop: a cue, a routine (the behavior), and a reward. Once a habit gets created, we can’t just eliminate it, but if we identify the cue and the reward, we can change the behavior. Similarly, if we want to create a new habit, we also have to determine what the cue and the reward will be.

Blog post: Is There a Blueprint for Habit Change?

Brain Rules | John Medina | 2014

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion.* I call this the brain’s performance envelope.

Medina does in fact provide “rules” (which are more like recommendations) in 12 different areas: survival, exercise, sleep, stress, wiring, attention, memory, sensory integration, vision, music, gender, and exploration. He supports his recommendation with lots of data and examples.

In the chapter on wiring, he states that every brain is wired differently, but goes on to talk about what’s so for everyone (the “experience-independent” parts: much of the structure and function) as well as what’s so for individuals (the “experience-dependent” parts that are unique to each person). Our wiring is altered by what we do and what we learn.

*The book would have made my Top 12 list for this quote alone.

Blog post: 31 Ways to Be Good to Your Brain

Stressed? Try to Avoid Future Life Crises*

October 3, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Stress is not a useful term for scientists because it is such a highly subjective phenomenon that it defies definition. —American Institute of Stress

In 1936, Hans Selye, the so-called “father of stress,” defined it as the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.

It didn’t take long before Selye’s definition expanded to include any unpleasant situation a person was exposed to, their physiological reaction to the unpleasant situation, and the long-term consequences of these reactions (such as an ulcer or a heart attack).

In a 1951 issue of the British Medical Journal, one physician commented that “stress in addition to being itself was also the cause of itself and the result of itself.” Selye himself said that “everyone knows what stress is, but nobody really knows.” And that is pretty much where things are at today.

What Is Stress?

The Global Organization for Stress provides six different definitions of it:

Worry and Anxiety: the worry experienced by a person in particular circumstances or the state of anxiety caused by this. (the Kernerman English learner’s Dictionary)

Bodily or Mental Tension: a physical, chemical or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation…and a state resulting from a stress is one of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent equilibrium. (the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Strain and Overwork: strain felt by somebody: mental, emotional, or physical strain caused, e.g. by anxiety or overwork. It may cause such symptoms as raised blood pressure or depression. (the Encarta World English Dictionary)

Mental or Emotional Disruption: a mentally or emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influences and capable of affecting physical health, usually characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability and depression. (the American heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Threat to Well-Being: stress is a term that refers to the sum of the physical, mental and emotional strains or tensions on a person. Feelings of stress in humans result from interactions between persons and their environment that are perceived as straining or exceeding their adaptive capacities and threatening their well-being. The element of perception indicates that human stress responses reflect differences in personality as well as differences in physical strength or health. (the Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders)

Emotional or Physical Threats: stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined; the autonomic response to environmental stimulus [that] includes a state of alarm and adrenaline production, short-term resistance as a coping mechanism, and exhaustion. (Wikipedia)

Getting Closer…

And a seventh definition from Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biological Sciences and Neurology at Stanford University and author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers:

If you are a normal mammal, a stressor is a challenge to homeostatic balance—a real physical challenge in the world—and the stress-response is the adaptation your body mobilizes to reestablish homeostasis.

Only Sapolsky’s definition of stress connects back to Selye’s: the stress response is your body’s reaction to change and its attempt to return to or preserve homeostasis—the physiological equivalent of the psychological status quo.

Although “everybody knows what stress is, but nobody really knows,” we think we know enough to be able to measure it.

The most commonly used measure of stress (the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale) doesn’t distinguish between negative stress (distress) or positive stress (eustress). It lumps all stressors together, assigns them a value, and provides you with a numerical score that is supposed to indicate how likely you are to become ill. As I am finding myself saying more and more these days, yikes!

More on stress next time, specifically the difference between negative and positive stress, how we experience stressors, stress and change, and how knowing what you want and developing a reliable sense of personal agency may be your two best defenses against the potential ravages (which are very real) of your body’s stress response.

As you consider all the different definitions of stress, think about how you would define it.

*Non-ironic advice from a stress-reduction website.

Will Satisfying Your Needs Make You Happy?

July 18, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

The happiness industry wants you to believe you can attain a steady state of happiness and that satisfying your needs will take you there. But happiness is ephemeral and transient, which means you can’t be happy all the time no matter what you do. And if you elect to chase happiness, you might find yourself running faster and faster on the hedonic treadmill.

In addition, humans are demonstrably poor at being able to predict how we’ll feel and what will make us happy in the future (affective forecasting). Thus the phrase it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Certainly happiness feels better than sadness, anger, or unhappiness. But feeling better isn’t the point of getting happy. Happiness is supposed to be good for you, leading, for example, to better health and a longer life. That puts it in the same category with other things you “should” be doing, such as eating more fruits and vegetables, stopping smoking, and getting regular exercise—which sucks all the pleasure out of being happy.

But there’s no indication happiness will increase your lifespan and some indication the opposite is true. In fact, research reveals that the bodies of happy people are preparing them for bacterial threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response.

And per BBC Future:

Good moods come with substantial risks—sapping your drive, dimming attention to detail and making you simultaneously gullible and selfish. Positivity is also known to encourage binge drinking, overeating and unsafe sex.

A Hierarchy of Pseudo-Needs

Satisfying your needs is not guaranteed to make you happy—or at least consistently happy. And it’s definitely a less direct path to feeling good than simply pursuing what you want. At first glance, though, it seems more legitimate and less self-centered. You’ve heard the question and maybe even asked it yourself—of yourself: Do you really need it or do you just want it?

I place a lot of the blame on Abraham Maslow, whose hierarchy of needs has wormed its way into nearly all aspects of modern Western culture even though there’s surprisingly little validation of it. He didn’t have access to the information we have available now about how the brain works—but then neither did William James, who was born 66 years earlier and got far more right than he got wrong.

With the help of Maslow’s hierarchy—and perhaps out Puritan heritage—we have turned all kinds of desirable states and situations (wants) into needs. Just like turning happiness into something we should have because it’s good for us, turning what we want into something we need sucks the joy out of it.

System 1, the unconscious part of the brain, treats needs a little differently from the way it treats wants. Its primary goal is survival—and you do need certain things in order to survive, such as food, water, shelter, and social/interpersonal connection. But like the rest of us, you’ve probably convinced your brain you have a host of other needs that also must be satisfied.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Since System 1 isn’t good at making distinctions, it treats both actual needs and pseudo-needs as if they are essential to your survival. As an example, here’s what happens if you convince your brain you need respect.

If you don’t have respect, you’re not OK. (If you become dehydrated, your brain and your body are not OK. They are in distress. It wouldn’t bode well for your survival if you weren’t sufficiently distressed to turn your attention to seeking water. If your brain perceives respect as a need, you experience distress when you don’t get it.)
It’s the job of the people around you to give you respect—and they’re wrong if they don’t.
Your brain will be on red alert looking for any evidence of disrespect because it represents a threat to your survival. It won’t just notice instances of disrespect; it will divert attentional resources to seeking out such instances. And it generally finds what it seeks.

If, however, you recognize that respect is something you want:

If you don’t have respect, you are still OK (not in distress).
You’re likely to take appropriate action to generate respect, activating both wanting and liking chemicals in your brain. But whether or not you succeed in getting it, you’re still OK, and you’re much less likely to make others wrong if they don’t give it to you.
Since your brain isn’t looking for evidence of disrespect, it won’t be overly reactive to it, and you will have more attentional resources available.

How Do You Want to Proceed?

Your brain is an insatiable wanting machine.

If you identify what you really want, you can activate your brain’s reward network to help you get it. Unless you’re a horrible human being, that’s a win situation for everyone—you and the people you are close to or interact with.

Your brain is also an excellent threat detection device.

If you are focused on getting your needs met—both your actual needs and the wants you have turned into needs—your brain will be on the lookout for anything it identifies as a lack. That’s a lose situation for you and the people around you.

While it may seem as if satisfying your needs is less self-centered or narcissistic than pursuing what you want, it isn’t. It’s more underhanded, and it keeps your attention focused on you.

Do you want to keep your brain’s threat detector set at red alert or do you want to harness the power of your brain’s reward system?

The answer seems like a (sorry!) no-brainer to me.