The Treadmill of Happiness

Here’s how happiness works:

You work.

You earn money.

You use that money to buy things.

Those things cost you money, duh. So you work to earn more money to pay off the things you’ve purchased (because obviously, you can’t really afford the things you want). You then want more things to make you happier and those things cost more money so you work harder to earn more money to buy those things. You buy the things that cost more money and sometimes live in those things or drive those things. Then you want newer, bigger, more costly things so you decide to work to earn more money. You buy those things and then…

Then…

THEN… you are finally happy.

Right?

RIGHT?

Nope.

It’s pretty fucking stupid when it’s written out like that. Expecting happiness to be the outcome of buying shit that we more often than not don’t need and definitely can’t always afford.

I have been conditioned to believe that these things should make me happy. I still battle with this of course, but every day I actively work to want less.

There’s this human tendency called the Hedonic Treadmill (or hedonic adaption). The basic premise is the more you have the higher your expectations rise, the higher your desires rise and the less likely you are to achieve the happiness that you believe is attached to the things you have to buy.

There have been studies done on lottery winners and people who have suffered some kind of loss or permanent injury and in both cases people in the study return to previous levels of happiness relatively quickly. I’m talking about weeks and months here, folks, not years and years. It’s mere months between buying that new house, moving in and treating it like the place where you’ve always lived with no more elevated happiness.

More stuff doesn’t mean more happiness. Sad but true.

Think about your own life and your path towards more. You had a small car and you were happy it took you places. You purchased a bigger, more expensive car and then… you were happy it took you places. That’s it. That’s the treadmill we need to step off of. The world we live in has tricked us into believing that our state of happiness is directly proportional to the things we can buy but the proof of this increase in happiness just does not exist. That’s why we need to buy more things or eat more food or drink more alcohol because we aren’t happier after buying a $500 pair of shoes. That becomes our normal and then we’re sprinting on that treadmill again.

More doesn’t mean happier.

I don’t know what makes everyone happier as a human race but I know what works for me.

I am happiest when I have the freedom to work on the things that inspire me.

I am happiest when I spend time with people who motivate, challenge and push me to be a better version of myself.

I am happiest when I’m not doom-scrolling through social media.

I am happiest when I’m not a slave to my email.

I am happiest when I’m reading my book or listening to music that I love.

Have you given any thought to what makes you genuinely happy? Don’t read past that question. I mean it. Have you actually thought about your happiness and how to acquire more of it?

Is it your new car or where the car is taking you?

Is it your newly laid lawn or what you get to do on the lawn?

Is it the money you spend on eating a ridiculously expensive dinner or the people who you share the meal with?

I don’t have the answers but I really wish more people contemplated the question.