As a substitute of fats financial savings accounts of Oscars, Pulitzers, and Nobels, Brooks thinks what we actually want is a “happiness 401(k),” a plan for locating and cultivating ongoing, sustainable happiness, the type that comes from understanding what actually brings enduring that means to your life, not simply the short-term states of being glad, full, proud, pleasured, or admired.
There’s nothing unsuitable with setting objectives or having ambition so long as you perceive that you just received’t discover enduring happiness in reaching these objectives. So many people make the error of pondering that once we simply do X, then we will probably be blissful. Once I lastly purchase a home, I’ll be content material. Once I lastly get tenure, I can chill out. Once I lastly make one million {dollars}, life will probably be good.
There’s a reputation for this tendency people must run from one pleasure or purpose to the following: the hedonic treadmill. The issue with the hedonic treadmill is its elementary precept: that you just all the time return to your baseline happiness. You might change into the top-paid influencer on the earth, and that might really feel actually good for some time, however you then would go proper again to being as blissful or sad as you have been earlier than. Besides now, you’ve gotten a little dopamine hit and you may’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 provide us a bump of happiness, however it by no means lasts. And we all the time need extra. Nothing will kill your pleasure quicker than persistent dissatisfaction.
