![\"You](\"https:\/\/healthtrekker.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/man-on-mountain-sun.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\nPhoto: Pablo Heimplatz, Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n The problem with junk food is that it can look pretty attractive and get pretty addictive. <\/p>\n You have a little bit just for fun, and next thing you know you\u2019re obese and hating yourself. <\/p>\n Leading a life that way with your actions can turn out just the same. <\/p>\n So then if The Pleasure Principle is supposed to rule everything that\u2019s alive and aware, <\/p>\n Why does the \u201cfeel good right now\u201d series of life-choices turn that into a contradiction? <\/p>\n An SFU research team set-out to find out why and where it ultimately leads\u2026<\/p>\n Read on to find out the details\u2026<\/p>\n So the popular version of success usually contains a few silly ideas. <\/p>\n Work, save, invest, maybe trade or build a company, get rich, buy expensive things. <\/p>\n Then retire early to Margaritaville and spend the rest of your life getting wasted. <\/p>\n But some entrepreneurs can\u2019t stop creating companies. <\/p>\n And that might not be as much of a sickness as it sounds.<\/p>\n So in a study of more than 1200 UK & Canadian adults aged 18-80, researchers from Simon Fraser University looked at Life-Satisfaction. <\/p>\n All of them were given surveys based on the core-principles of Self-Determination Theory. <\/p>\n The three building blocks there are: They were also surveyed on general positive and negative emotions in different parts of their life. <\/p>\n And after examining the last 4 weeks of their lives for these answers, the result turned out to be strange. <\/p>\n Even though it\u2019s associated with better health and longer-life<\/a>, Relatedness did not score highest on life-satisfaction!<\/p>\n After untangling and filtering the results, a few other things became clear. <\/p>\n Feelings of relatedness & competence were more-or-less interchangeable with any old feelings of positive emotion. <\/p>\n They didn\u2019t even predict life-satisfaction. <\/p>\n The team found that positive-emotion didn\u2019t predict life-satisfaction, either. <\/p>\n It seemed to run only one way in that regard. <\/p>\n People who had life satisfaction already, seemed to have more positive and less negative. <\/p>\n But running things the other way around did not produce the same result. <\/p>\n So, \u201cJust Stay Positive\u201d may not be as nuanced a piece of advice as it may seem.<\/p>\n Nope. After all that, it turns out Autonomy<\/strong> was the one factor consistently associated with life-satisfaction. <\/p>\n Positive emotion may come later, but autonomy beforehand was the best indicator. <\/p>\n Now, any of our Founding Fathers from the recently-passed July Fourth holiday would agree with that. <\/p>\n They might even say it\u2019s obvious. <\/p>\n But we might try looking into a blacker-mirror for some help.<\/p>\n The Whitehall Study<\/a> was a look at British civil servants and their health. <\/p>\n What it found was 2x increased-levels of Heart-Disease risk for people who had lower rank, more long-term unresolvable Stress, <\/p>\n And \u2026 Less autonomy. <\/p>\n This held for subjects as young as 20, and did so even when controlled for things like smoking & drinking. <\/p>\n So there\u2019s your key negative reference point to bookend this SFU work.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not the only one to say Stress Is A Killer<\/a>.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s where we depart from the study to tie in some other evidence. <\/p>\n Because if we think in ways similar to those who fought for our independence 250 years ago and ask a good question, <\/p>\n It\u2019s probably: \u201cWhat is Autonomy?\u201d<\/p>\n Come up with your own guess that might include throwing tea in a harbor, <\/p>\n But the basics are probably something like Autonomy = Authenticity + Action. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a good question to ask, because if you follow it, you might just end-up at Meaning<\/a>. <\/p>\n And that tends to be associated with all kinds of health benefits. <\/p>\n Starting out with some great ones like: -The rest of which, you can catch over in the Meaning Superpost<\/a>.<\/p>\n Quite-weirdly<\/a>, one of the main study authors even agrees with a pretty old idea in philosophy. <\/p>\n He said that even something as painful & effortful as going to the gym could still increase life-satisfaction. <\/p>\n Because it relies on voluntary choices that are based in autonomy. <\/p>\n Both Albert Camus and Mark Manson take that idea further. <\/p>\n Albert advises us in the area of meaningful work and chosen-suffering that, \u201cYou have to imagine Sisyphyus as happy.\u201d<\/p>\n And Mark suggests that we shouldn\u2019t just think of goals and desires in life, but to identify and decide-on just how much of, and what type of pain, suffering, and crap we\u2019re willing to put up with in order to get where we want to go.<\/p>\n The power of autonomy goes so far, it has freaky results in, \u201cVacation By Diagnosis<\/a>\u201c. <\/p>\n For instance, the people who go someplace and then do almost nothing are the ones who report the highest satisfaction.<\/p>\n No group-excursions, no souvenir shops, no coerced-consumption, barely any photos, no red double-decker tour buses. <\/p>\n Imagine your balcony in Antibes. Doing nothing but staring at the Mediterranean and Just Being<\/em> for two weeks.<\/p>\n Even with the potentially topless beaches just a stone\u2019s throw away\u2026<\/p>\n Although some of you actually are in Antibes right now, I thought it might be interesting to note two much more serious examples. <\/p>\n Both Viktor Frankl and George Washington showed what cast-iron Autonomy was at different extremes. <\/p>\n At one, you have Viktor at the complete \u201ccrush depth\u201d of the soul,<\/p>\n Where everything you could possibly imagine had been taken away, yet he still found his famous insight:<\/p>\n \u201cEverything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one\u2019s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one\u2019s own way.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, George Washington was pressured from every possible quarter to become America\u2019s king at the end of The Revolution. <\/p>\n But that invites a very Fate-like riddle: <\/p>\n What kind of monster does a person become when every single human constraint is removed and they instead face an infinite vacuum<\/em>? <\/p>\n Napoleon? Stalin? \u2026 -Mad King Ludwig? <\/p>\n George looked into that void and found what both Albert and Mark have been hinting-at. <\/p>\n Voluntary-sacrifice. <\/p>\n Where Viktor discovered, \u201cI cannot be reduced to nothing.\u201d George refused to end the war by restarting the problems that caused it. <\/p>\n He found, unlike Napoleon, \u201cI cannot be inflated into being everything.\u201d<\/p>\n And that Authenticity + Action had him refuse unanimous demands to be made king, thus forfeiting an entire empire. <\/p>\n Twice.<\/p>\n PS: That all puts George, Viktor, Mark, and the SFU team in some very good company. <\/p>\n Because, \u201cThe man who figured-out everything\u201d, Aristotle himself said pretty much the exact same thing:<\/p>\n ~You cannot achieve Authenticity+Action (Flourishing) by chasing pleasures you didn\u2019t choose, for reasons you didn\u2019t examine, toward someone else\u2019s cartoon of happiness; and without an ounce of unvarnished sincerity.(Hedonism) <\/p>\n -Just a short 2400 years ago. <\/p>\n Sounds like the study figured that out, too.<\/p>\n \u2022 Sources: SFU<\/a> | U.Toronto<\/a> Photo: Pablo Heimplatz, Unsplash A \u201cKid In A Candy Shop\u201d Eventually Gets Existential Diabetes: The problem with junk food is that it can look pretty attractive and get pretty addictive. You have a little bit just for fun, and next thing you know you\u2019re obese and hating yourself. Leading a life that way with your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7029066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166099,12226,109288,113016,11947,99440],"tags":[61138,15261,19387,4651,20940,25893,312,1682,48159,1108],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7029065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grit","category-happiness","category-meaning","category-mind-brain","category-psychology","category-purpose","tag-autonomy","tag-captain","tag-grit","tag-happiness","tag-meaning","tag-psychology","tag-purpose","tag-puzzle","tag-solves","tag-soul"],"yoast_head":"\nA \u201cKid In A Candy Shop\u201d Eventually Gets Existential Diabetes:<\/h2>\n
The Short Answer:<\/h2>\n
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> Show\/Hide Table Of Contents
\n<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
1)<\/strong> Relatedness. Ie: High-quality social networks, connectedness, and belonging
2)<\/strong> Compentence. Ie: Being knowledgeable and affective.
3)<\/strong> Autonomy.<\/p>\n
1)<\/strong> Lower Stress
and
2)<\/strong> Less Inflammation<\/p>\n
\u2022 Source Study: J.PosPsy \u2013 Beyond hedonism: life satisfaction requires autonomy independent of affect<\/a>![\"autonomy](\"https:\/\/healthtrekker.b-cdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/man-on-mountain-sun-pt.jpg\")
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