Do you “just want to be happy,” but feel like something is always missing?
Do you feel like you’re sprinting towards a rest that never arrives?
Do your highs never last as long as you’d like?
You might be stuck on what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill.
There are two bits to the treadmill. The first is homeostatically protected mood. Our high-arousal states, whether positive (joy) or negative (sadness), tend not to last. We return in short order to a mildly positive, low-arousal state.
The second is always being able to see ways that life could be better. For example, in our research interviewing people about how they report their life satisfaction, many say they would never give more than 8/10 because they wouldn’t want to say that they are completely satisfied.
One respondent who was 8/10 said: “If I’m really honest, I think ‘what could make my life better?’ I don’t actually know. I really have no clue.”
But they were still adamantly 8/10.
The hedonic treadmill has evolution’s fingerprints all over it. If we were always ecstatic or depressed, we wouldn’t prepare for the winter so industriously. If we weren’t on the lookout for ways to make things better, we’d eventually be overwhelmed by parasites and predators or outcompeted by rival tribes.
Why fear the treadmill?
Historically, we invented social technologies for dampening the effects of the hedonic treadmill. For example, most religions have gratitude practices that make us mindful of the good things we already have, like mealtime prayers.
Recently, though, the materialistic, competitive, and hierarchical culture of capitalism has encouraged us to lean into the treadmill. You could always have a fancier car, or a further promotion at work.
This makes us miserable. As the adage goes, and as scientific research shows, “comparison is the thief of joy.”
People exhausted by the treadmill have recently revived many ancient techniques for getting off it. Buddhism argues that desire is the root of all suffering and teaches charitable giving as a way to quieten the desire for more. The Stoics advise mindful attention to present experiences, as Marcus Aurelius writes: “each day provides its own gifts.” Epicurus counsels us to take joy in what we have already achieved: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Such insights should form a core part of your well-being practice, but in my book Beyond Happy I suggest a different overarching paradigm: Make the treadmill a place you want to be.
The treadmill is biological reality. Gratitude and related techniques can help you slow down and notice life’s delights, but you can’t stand still.
So you need to organize your life so that its dynamism isn’t nauseating and it continuously generates pleasant, fulfilling, and valuable experiences.
You’re not trying to get ahead, but you enjoy moving.
This dynamic cuts out the relentlessness of the treadmill and keeps you focused on what’s good in your life. There’s no attention left over for dissatisfaction. It also generates new experiences so that you’re regularly up from the homeostatic baseline. With a bit of training in how to savour positive moods, you’ll reverse the misery vortex of the treadmill into a good-life vortex.
How to escape the grind
So how do you do this? The short answer is self-actualization.
You need to learn to listen to your emotions, understand your values, be extremely mindful of your motivations, and articulate the reasons why you live the life you do.
You then need to make all that coherent and internally consistent. This is a long and iterative process of refinement that I call the coalescence of being. Coalescence begins by turning inward. You cannot identify your intrinsic motivations or ground your values in what makes you indignant or gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling without first gaining some distance from the social influences conditioning you in their preferred direction.
After self-discovery comes self-creation. You need to experiment with the identity that inspires you and see if it’s a good fit. Introspecting on the emotional and social feedback you get along the way will help you make refinements and recalibrations. You might love ballet, for example, but after a few years in the community you find you much prefer making the costumes to dancing.
The final stage is turning outwards to find your tribe. Well-being is something we do together. Those pleasant, fulfilling, and valuable experiences that make the treadmill a place we want to be often come from other people, or things we achieve with them. It’s rewarding to stitch a tutu, but even more so when we see it worn in a production of Swan Lake, contributing to something meaningful for the whole group.
Hedonic Treadmill Essential Reads
There are other key techniques for managing the treadmill.
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Don’t set targets that are essentially limitless or subject to very strong comparison effects, like “getting rich.” Focus instead on qualitative goals, like the strength of your relationships and the success of community projects.
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Don’t confuse self-actualization with self-optimization. Growth is about becoming our full self, not our most competitive or optimized self.
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For some people, like professional athletes, winning is an authentic need. But for most of us, a fixation on being “better” just accelerates the treadmill or puts it on an incline. A balanced life working on shared goals will provide more opportunities for pleasure, fulfilment, and purpose.
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Finally, stay mindful. It’s easy to slip back into trying to outpace the treadmill if you don’t pay attention to all the great things that are already happening every week.
