Today’s Topic: Hedonic adaptation
Today our friends from Atlanta, Chris and Matt, join us on the podcast. They’ve been staying with us this week in Florence so we wanted to ask them what they’re loving about Italy. Their top takeaway is the value of slowing down and appreciating the bigger picture.
We’re really enjoying connecting with them on a deeper level, which you get to do when you have a lot of time to spend with people. One thing that we’ve been discussing a lot this week is hedonic adaptation. This means that humans in general have a way of adapting to their environment, so that eventually something new, whether it’s good or bad, just becomes the norm. So if you buy the humongous house, within a couple months it’s just your home. If you buy the fancy sports car, at some point it just becomes your car and the means by which you get to work.
There are some things where the novelty never wears off and we never truly just take it for granted like a great conversation, a fantastic bottle of wine, a view of the Tuscan hills in the morning, oceans and sunsets.
We don’t think we would ever get bored living in Florence because it’s such an assault on the senses. But how do you prevent yourself adapting to your environment if you don’t live in Florence?
We think these ideas really help:
We’ll leave you with one of Matt’s favorite quotes from Anthony Bourdain. “Don’t tell me what you’ve eaten. Tell me who you ate it with.”
