The Hedonic Treadmill
Why no matter how much you progress, you would eventually fall back to the same level of happiness
Day 153 / 365
I visited my college today after a long time. Sitting there I was reminiscing how much better life was back then. No stress about work, no worries about food or laundry or waking up early. What would I not give to get back all that?
But what struck me was that I didn’t appreciate all that while I was in college. Back then I was busy reminiscing about school days and how much better and stress-free they were!
It seems in life that we would always be stuck at a certain level of happiness (or sadness) no matter whether things get better or worse. This is what is known as a Hedonic Treadmill.
Hedonic means something related to happiness. The concept of a Hedonic Treadmill says that everyone has a set level of happiness that they will experience in their life. Despite what achievements of failures they have, they will soon fall back to that stable level of happiness.
Why the treadmill analogy? This is because the pursuit of happiness is like a guy running on a treadmill. He can keep on running, he can run faster or slower, but he would still stay at the same place.
This is the reason why people generally don’t see an increase in happiness with an increase in income. As your income rises, so does your needs and wants, and therefore your expenditure. The result is that you might still end up as satisfied (or maybe unsatisfied) as you were with a lower income.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing. At the face of it, this seems like quite a depressing conclusion. What’s the point of progressing if it is not going to get you any happier? I think the issue is that we keep projecting our happiness to the future. We say to ourselves, once this or that happens, I’ll finally be happy. If however, we can learn to appreciate the things around us in the present moment, that would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?
Of course, Life’s a climb, and the goal is to reach the top. But unless you learn to enjoy the climb, you would never be happy even if you reach the top.
So keep on running on your treadmill, fast or slow, but do so with a smile on your face.
This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog — Why rice fields are flooded with water