How Doing What We Love Can Lead Us to Collapse
Most of us want the same thing: to feel good, to be happy, to enjoy life as much as possible. Much of what we do each day, whether consciously or unconsciously, is driven by that desire. When something feels off, we naturally seek out activities, people, or experiences that restore a sense of comfort and control. We reach for what we’re good at, what comes easily, what others admire in us, or what has reliably lifted our mood in the past. And we gravitate towards people in our lives who make us feel loved, respected and accepted.
In the short term, this strategy works. Enjoyable activities restore energy and offer welcome relief. But there’s a hidden cost when we over-rely on them. If our entire wellbeing strategy is to chase what feels good while neglecting what feels hard, we quietly set the stage for imbalance and even crisis. Our well-intentioned efforts to pursue happiness can, paradoxically, make our wellbeing more fragile if they cause us to ignore what most needs our attention.
The Slow Burn of Neglect
This erosion doesn ’t happen overnight. In fact, it often looks like self-care at first. We may feel proud of leaning into our strengths, pursuing passions, or investing in enjoyable hobbies. We train for that marathon, dive into our book clubs, join a sports league with our friends, spend time at the pub, or whatever makes us happy. But while we’re focused on these parts of life that provide immediate reward, other important areas such as our health, relationships, family, work, or sense for meaning, can slowly erode from neglect.
Meanwhile, a psychological process known as hedonic adaptation causes us to grow accustomed to what once made us happy. The joy of that morning run, that creative project, or that weekend getaway gradually diminishes as our minds normalize and come to expect it. To feel the same level of satisfaction, we need more intensity, more novelty, or more repetition. Meanwhile, the neglected parts of life worsen with inattention. Over time, the positive boost from enjoyable activities no longer offsets the growing costs of neglect in other parts of our lives, leaving us vulnerable to a sometimes sudden disruption of our life.
How We Contribute to Our Own Crises
We like to believe that crises like a job loss, illness, or divorce only come from the outside. As a protective response, our minds try to shift blame onto others or factors beyond our control. In reality though, we often unknowingly help create painful crises for ourselves.
Consider what happens when discontent arises in one part of life. Instead of addressing it directly, we often double down on areas that feel good. If our marriage feels distant, we might throw ourselves into work or spending time with our friends. If work feels draining or unrewarding, we may escape into exercise, travel, or other hobbies. In the moment, these choices provide temporary relief but over time allow the underlying dissatisfaction to fester.
The danger compounds because enjoyment fades faster than neglect resolves. We quickly begin to get less and less enjoyment from these distractions while the neglected areas of life worsen at an accelerating pace. Eventually, the pursuit of more immediate joy isn’t enough to counterbalance the distress arising from unattended problems. At that point, the imbalance tips toward crisis, often in midlife but sometimes in quarter-life or later life.
These crises can be triggered by a sudden change in life circumstances that kicks away the “crutch” we’ve been leaning on. Focusing on narrow sources of happiness leaves us fragile when external events strike. We get fired from our job and need to face our marriage. We get injured or our health declines so we can no longer escape to the gym or golf course. The last child grows up and moves away, leaving us searching for meaning. Or we move cities and lose our reliable circle of friends. Without diverse sources of resilience, these shifts can devastate not just one area of life, but the entire foundation of our wellbeing.
The Hidden Risks of “Doing What You Love”
Modern culture frequently encourages us to “do what you love.” This advice resonates for good reason. Research shows that engaging in enjoyable activities increases positive emotions, motivation, and even physical health. Passion fuels performance, pleasure sustains engagement, and supportive relationships are essential for wellbeing.
But this advice can mislead us if followed exclusively. When “do what you love” turns into “do only what you love and avoid difficulties,” we risk mistaking distraction for development. The neglected parts of life that require vulnerability, discomfort, and effort often matter most for our long-term wellbeing and resilience. Healing family conflict, supporting your companion even when times are hard, facing loneliness, setting boundaries, or grappling with identity and life purpose may not be fun, but they are essential at different points in life. Avoiding them in favor of easier pursuits can feel harmless in the moment, while becoming a subtle and unintentional form of self-sabotage.
Psychologists describe this imbalance as the asymmetry of emotional investment: we overinvest in areas of ease and underinvest in areas of difficulty, even when the latter ultimately shape our deepest satisfaction. At its simplest level, it’s easier to reach for the dopamine hits from our phone than to sit quietly, let ourselves get bored and begin to ask deeper questions of ourselves. More precariously, we want to spend more time with that co-worker who openly admires, flatters and validates us and less time facing the responsibility, obligations, difficult conversations and hard work of making a serious relationship flourish long-term.
Left unchecked, this imbalance erodes wellbeing, not through sudden catastrophe but gradual neglect. We reach for the distraction of our phone at the slightest hint of boredom or unease, missing opportunities for new growth experiences or creating new connections, and keeping us in an endless loop of dissatisfaction. We go out with our friends or coworkers rather than face the growing resentment of a dissatisfied partner or conflict with a teenage child. Sometimes our need to escape grows so large that we reach for relief from addictive substances, which only compound the foundational sources of our unhappiness.
The False Comfort of Balance
In the early stages, it may seem like things are working. We feel good and gain energy from our favorite pursuits, and for a time that energy can mask discontent elsewhere. We stop arguing with our partner because it’s just easier in the moment to go along with them. Or we leave work early and unfinished to spend time with our friends. From the outside, life may look vibrant and relationships strong. Friends, colleagues and companions might admire how engaged we seem.
But beneath the surface, the structure of our wellbeing can be quietly eroding and becoming more fragile. What feels like balance, or just “blowing off steam”, may actually be what psychologists call compensatory coping: over-functioning in one area to make up for neglect in another. This strategy creates a fragile equilibrium. It holds together as long as nothing shifts, but when stress increases or external events intrude, the imbalance becomes starkly visible.
Imagine someone thriving in their career while ignoring their health. Success at work, and the financial and social rewards this brings, seems to validate the approach, until a medical scare forces an abrupt reckoning. Or picture someone with an active social life who avoids deeper questions of meaning or identity. The social energy sustains them, until loneliness creeps in during quiet moments and the unresolved void becomes undeniable.
The danger is not that doing what we love is bad, but that it can mask where we most need to grow or rebuild. We end up in a place where we feel that something in life is just off or missing. And we usually can’t see what or why, especially because we’re doing everything we can to “be happy”.
The “Crisis Cross”
At some point, the imbalance reaches a breaking point. The joy curve, once rising from enjoyable pursuits, begins to flatten or even decline due to adaptation. Meanwhile the rise of the distress curve from neglected areas of our life accelerates. Where these two lines cross – when our distress can no longer be offset – a crisis of our own creation is upon us.
At this crossing, the happiness we once relied on no longer compensates for the discomfort we’ve ignored. We may feel inexplicably drained, irritable, or unable to enjoy the activities or people that once energized us. Confusion and self-blame often follow: “Why do I feel so unhappy?” or “What’s wrong with me?” These questions miss the point. Nothing is wrong at the core of who we are. The imbalance itself is the problem.
Often the resulting crisis forces us to face the parts of our lives we have neglected, whether our partner, our family, our friendships, our career, or our mental or physical health. We can no longer ignore the disfunction and pain resulting from our neglect. In extreme cases, especially against a backdrop of traumatic experiences, we can suffer complete mental breakdown and inability to function. Throughout, our instinct is to place blame on others, despite undeniably playing a major role in our own relationships, health and how we apply our strengths and skills.
Like tectonic plates shifting beneath the surface, these pressures may build silently for years before erupting. The midlife crisis, so often caricatured, is often the natural outcome of this dynamic: years of neglected needs colliding with diminishing returns on joy. The lesson is not that crises are inevitable, but that many might be preventable – or at least more manageable – if we recognize the patterns early and take continuous steps to rebalance. Even if the ultimate outcome is the same – for example, that a major life transition like a divorce or job change is needed – proactively and incrementally attending to the challenging areas in our lives, rather than ignoring them, can make these transitions less pain for everyone involved.
Building Resilience by Doing the Hard Things Too
Human flourishing is multi-dimensional. It is not just about feeling joyful and pleasurable (“hedonic”) but also about meaning, engagement, accomplishment, connection, and vitality (“eudaimonic”). A resilient life has breadth as well as depth – a mosaic of pursuits that together provide stability when one part falters. Over-investing in one domain, such as career, relationships, or physical performance, means that a setback in that domain can trigger collapse across others.
By maintaining balance across many domains, we create buffers. When one area falters, others help us stay grounded. So to create wellbeing resilience, we sometimes need to engage with things that feel difficult. This might mean repairing – or leaving – a difficult relationship, tending to long-avoided health habits, tolerating uncomfortable emotions, or pursuing goals that take time to pay off. These tasks often feel more like work than joy, but they build the infrastructure of a resilient life, so our wellbeing doesn’t collapse when challenges strike.
Preventing Crises Before They Demand Attention
You don’t need to give up on joy to prevent life crises. But we need to balance pleasure and fun with attention to what feels less rewarding in the short term and is vital in the long term. The ongoing path to prevent life crises is to regularly recalibrate and restore balance before neglect turns into crisis.
So ask yourself, without judgment:
What parts of my life feel undernourished right now?
Are there areas I’m avoiding because they’re difficult, not because they’re unimportant?
Am I mistaking immediate pleasure for sustainable wellbeing?
Through conscious reflection, we can redirect energy toward neglected areas before imbalances grow. This self-reflection helps us remember that flourishing isn ’t the absence of discomfort but the integration of joy with challenge, ease with effort, and pleasure with purpose. When we rebalance in this way, crises become less likely, less devastating, and more manageable should they come. Instead of being caught off guard by disruption, we can meet life’s shifts with readiness and resilience.
Doing what we love is a beautiful part of being human. It connects us to passion, flow, and vitality. But when pursuit of immediate happiness becomes our only strategy, our lives can become fragile and overreliant on these sources of happiness. Neglect, especially when left to accumulate quietly, creates conditions where crises eventually erupt.
The key is to complement joy with awareness and courage. Awareness of how we’re choosing to spend our time and why, so that we can recognize areas we’re neglecting. Courage to do the hard things, to face discomfort, and to nurture what feels less rewarding in the moment but more sustaining over time.
In this way, we build a foundation of wellbeing strong enough to weather disruption and broad enough to hold us steady through the inevitable changes of life. Instead of accidentally avoiding crisis by chance, we intentionally prevent it by choice. And those choices, made consistently and consciously, will transform a life from pursuing fleeting happiness into finding lasting flourishing.
