In fact, if you take any young, sane kid and spend the next twenty to thirty years telling them they must do irrational things to make themselves happy, most likely, they’ll do exactly that. Not because they’re abnormal, but because normal people learn habits and beliefs from their environment. By the time those peer-enforced beliefs and behaviors become habits, the person doing them starts to feel like there’s something wrong with them because they can’t make themselves happy like “everyone else” can. So, how do you escape this socially reinforced cycle?
