The Pizza Theory

If you have most of the things you want in life and still find yourself chronically unhappy, this message is absolutely for you. 

I’m going to break down how our brains respond to the constant pursuit of comfort, and how to enjoy a pizza more than you’ve ever enjoyed one before. If you’re interested in learning how to get more happiness out of life, read on. 

Those who seek comfort live an uncomfortable life. Those who seek discomfort live a comfortable life. 

I read a book a couple of years ago called Dopamine Nation, written by Dr. Anna Lembke. Great book. I highly recommend picking it up if you want to read more on this topic, but I’ll sum up the important points here.

Lembke, a clinical psychologist and addiction expert, discusses the balance of pleasure and pain in our brains, using the analogy of a set of scales. Your brain is always seeking balance. Homeostasis. If you keep pushing on the pleasure side, your brain will push on the pain side to balance it out. 

For example, think of a drug addict. They try a drug for the first time, and it feels amazing. They want to feel that great all the time, so they do it again. And again. But they notice it doesn’t feel quite as good as the first time, so they do more of it, and they do it more frequently, chasing that original high. If they continue down this path, their brains respond less and less to the drug as time goes on, and they become increasingly miserable as everything in their life fails to compare to that euphoric high they felt the first time they indulged. 

This is because the brain is seeking that balance, and it applies to everything in your life that releases dopamine. Drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, video games, social media. And yes, sadly, even carbs. I’ll admit that I, like any red-blooded American, love me some carbs.

And the worst thing about this is that, as your scale gets further out of balance, it changes how you experience things. Your brain becomes LESS receptive to pleasure, and MORE sensitive to pain. Suddenly, all the carbs in the world don’t make you happy any more. And even the slightest inconvenience starts to feel like the end of the world. 

The Comfort Crisis

If you’re living in a first world country, there’s a good chance you’re comfortable most of the time. In a world where all of your basic needs are met, overindulgence becomes the easiest and most direct path to what seems like happiness. If we can tickle our dopamine receptors by doing something as easy as picking up our cell phone or flipping on the TV, why the fuck would we bother doing anything harder than that? 

Our society is in the midst of a comfort crisis. We’ve successfully eliminated pretty much every challenge we would have faced in the wild. Shelter, warmth, food, water? Check. Any predators banging down your door? Nope. Awesome, so there’s now no reason to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Ever. 

The hard reality that we have to face, however, is that comfort does NOT equal happiness. 

(Note: The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter, is another great book that discusses this further. No, I’m not getting paid to plug other people’s books. Just sharing some helpful resources in the hopes it’ll change your life for the better.)

So what’s the answer? 

Remember how we discussed the pleasure/pain balance earlier on, and learned that the pursuit of pleasure amps up our sensitivity to pain? Well, it turns out that the inverse is also true. 

That’s right. Seeking out pain will shift that balance back in your favor. Before you freak out, I’m not telling you to go put your hand on a hot stove or slam your fingers in a car door. For our purposes, discomfort is a more accurate word for what we’re looking for. 

Running sucks. Cold showers suck. Eating a salad instead of a delicious bowl of macaroni and cheese sucks. Sitting down and meditating instead of scrolling on Instagram sucks. 

At least, they suck at first. But the people who make these hard choices, Dr. Lembke found, ended up MORE receptive to pleasure and LESS sensitive to pain. 

It turns out that when we seek discomfort on our own, the inevitable pain and discomfort that comes up in our daily lives is a lot easier to navigate. When we do hard things willingly, we increase our ability to do hard things when they’re forced upon us. Pretty neat, right?

The Pizza Theory

Finally, I’m going to get to the point. 

I’ve gone through lots of ups and downs in my life. I’ve been a wide variety of people at different points in my existence. And I’ve experienced varying levels of enjoyment when I’ve eaten pizzas. 

On one hand, I’ve been someone who has been trapped in the cycle of overindulgence and diminishing dopamine returns. I’ve felt the pain of burning out my brain’s reward system by seeking pleasure constantly and avoiding anything even vaguely uncomfortable. I’ve lived the experience of ordering a pizza after a day of sitting around, smoking weed, playing video games, and watching porn. And let me tell you, that pizza didn’t bring me the happiness I was so desperately craving. It was just another unfulfilling pleasure stacked on top of a pile of unfulfilling pleasures. 

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve had the experience of ordering a pizza after getting home from a difficult mountain bike ride. It was late fall, and I had ridden over 20 miles. I’d pushed myself slowly up climbs that felt like they would never end, and fought to stay upright on downhills filled with roots and rocks and sharp turns. It was probably thirty degrees out. I’d been surprised to find a thin layer of snow on the ground above a certain elevation, because there definitely wasn’t snow on the ground in town. My fingers, despite my two pairs of gloves, were cold and numb by the time I got home, my legs cramping so badly I could hardly pedal. 

Pizza had been on my mind for miles by the time I got home. So I ordered a pizza, I took the hottest shower I possibly could, and I devoured that pizza. And you know what? That shower, and that pizza, felt like absolute heaven. I had never appreciated a shower that much in my life. And I had never enjoyed a pizza as much as I enjoyed that one. 

So that’s it. That’s the secret. 

You don’t have to go out and be David Goggins, forcing yourself into the most gruelling possible situations, to see these benefits. 

As always, I encourage you to start small. True change doesn’t come from big, grand, one-time triumphs. It comes from small tweaks to your life, practiced consistently, that compound over time. Start so small that you barely notice it. So small that the barrier to entry is astronomically low. So small that you’ll be able to repeat it tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. And, just as importantly, celebrate that win. Give yourself credit for doing something uncomfortable. Hype yourself up so much that the pride you feel in your accomplishment outweighs the discomfort of doing the thing. That’s how you start to move forward. 

So, if you are stuck in a pattern of seeking pleasure and comfort, and you want to make a change, my challenge to you is this: do one small thing today that sucks.