I am beginning to see the relationship between happiness, anticipation and dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is responsible for reward-driven behavior and pleasure seeking. ( Psychology Today ). When we get a hit of dopamine, we feel good!
Anticipation is the simple act of looking forward; usually to a pleasurable experience but it could also be negative.
In my previous post about Proven Ways to be Happy Again , I mentioned this thing called hedonic adaptation. Basically, we get used to novel things and return to our normal level of happiness. And through reading the books Genius Foods, I learned that the building blocks of dopamine are already present in your body unless something is chemically wrong (malnutrition). So the only way to get a hit of dopamine is to perform something novel and have a pleasurable experience.
So here’s the connection:
new experience –> pleasurable anticipation –> dopamine –> happiness
So by this logic, any new experience that has a pleasurable anticipation will likely give me a hit of dopamine (assuming I actually follow through), which will then give me that feeling of happiness.
By this logic, I should focus my time only on experiences that I feel a pleasurable anticipation for.