As an alternative of fats financial savings accounts of Oscars, Pulitzers, and Nobels, Brooks thinks what we actually want is a “happiness 401(okay),” a plan for locating and cultivating ongoing, sustainable happiness, the sort that comes from understanding what actually brings enduring that means to your life, not simply the momentary states of being glad, full, proud, pleasured, or admired.
There’s nothing improper with setting objectives or having ambition so long as you perceive that you simply received’t discover enduring happiness in reaching these objectives. So many people make the error of pondering that after we simply do X, then we will probably be completely happy. After I lastly purchase a home, I’ll be content material. After I lastly get tenure, I can loosen up. After I lastly make 1,000,000 {dollars}, life will probably be good.
There’s a reputation for this tendency people need to run from one pleasure or aim to the subsequent: the hedonic treadmill. The issue with the hedonic treadmill is its basic precept: that you simply at all times return to your baseline happiness. You might develop into the top-paid influencer on the earth, and that will really feel actually good for some time, however then you definitely would go proper again to being as completely happy or sad as you had been earlier than. Besides now, you’ve gotten just a little dopamine hit and you’ll’t wait to leap proper again on the treadmill and discover one other excessive.
This occurs with cash, fame, success, admiration—all of the idols. They offer us a bump of happiness, however it by no means lasts. And we at all times need extra. Nothing will kill your pleasure sooner than persistent dissatisfaction.
