Why You'll Never Be Happy

You wake up in the morning and go to work. You spend 8 hours typing away at your desk on a job you once loved but now kind of just tolerate. Once it's 5:00 p.m., you go home, make dinner, and watch TV, only to do it all over again the next day. You play sports or catch up with friends at a local bar on the weekend and life’s good, but you still feel like something is missing. You were excited when you got the job you loved, finding new recipes to cook every evening, and catching up with friends on the weekend, which used to be your favorite pastime.

But over time, these things that used to excite you have become stale, mundane, and boring. You think to yourself, if I can just get a big enough raise to buy a new car and go on this extravagant vacation, then I'll be happy. Now imagine you get that well-deserved promotion and a healthy raise, and suddenly you're going on those vacations you once dreamt of, driving a nicer car, and receiving more status and respect in the workplace. Your quality of life has been significantly upgraded and finally, you feel like you're fulfilling your potential.

Fancy restaurants, rubbing elbows with influential people—your life feels new and almost foreign compared to where you came from. Yet in a year or so, your once brand new Porsche just becomes your daily driver. All the imported sushi starts to taste the same, and while you still frequent white sandy beaches and pristine ski slopes, these places have lost their allure. You've completely changed your life, but you're still in the same position you were before you got the promotion. Those things that used to excite you have become stale, mundane, and boring.

This is hedonic adaptation—the reason why you'll never be happy. Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a base level of happiness, even when undergoing profound periods of positive or negative change. Life is like a treadmill; things are always moving. Children are born, loved ones die, you buy a house, you lose a job, yet despite all these changes, you stay in relatively the same place, never moving significantly forward or backward.

I think we've all heard the phrase "more money, more problems," and to an extent, this is true. Think about the casualness with which the Uber-rich fly private and outsource their domestic labor to a fleet of assistants and personal support workers. While these might seem like luxuries to you and me, they quickly become the norm to someone whose daily life revolves in this sphere. According to hedonic adaptation theory, we adjust to the changes that happen to us quite quickly, incorporating them seamlessly into our everyday life.

And it doesn't matter whether you're rich, poor, healthy, or sick. Everyone, for the most part, has a relatively stable emotional state. It seems logical to assume that those with more resources are those who lead more adventurous, thrilling lives and should be happier. Likewise, those who are disadvantaged in life should be unhappy. But that's not the case, at least not according to the psychologists David Brickman and Donald Campbell, who popularized the theory of hedonic adaptation.

These researchers studied a group of lottery winners and asked them to assess their happiness levels. They did a similar survey for people who were recently seriously injured. The lottery winners claimed to have a spike of happiness when they initially won, and not surprisingly, the injured people reported a dip in happiness when they were first hurt. What was surprising, though, is that both groups had comparable baseline happiness levels over time.

These findings suggest that dramatic life changes, good or bad, don't significantly improve or diminish your overall happiness level. Life's new reality forces you to establish a routine, and your happiness level adjusts accordingly. Now, that's not to say that these peaks and valleys don't affect you. Your baseline of happiness can shift up or down, suggesting that your happiness is somewhat in your control. The more your life improves, the higher your baseline becomes, and big positive life changes, like marriage or having children, can make your day-to-day brighter. Advancing in your career, committing to volunteer work, or getting a pet can have a similar effect.

The inverse is true for negative experiences. Developing a chronic illness, experiencing the death of a loved one, or a divorce can change your life forever and sometimes for the worse. You can see a distinct separation of your life and a significant difference between before and after the event. Trauma and grief color your once happy life in shades of gray. Though you're not as happy as you once were, things do even out over time. You've adapted to your new circumstance and can make it through your day without wallowing in despair. Even though your overall happiness has diminished, hedonic adaptation teaches us that your baseline happiness will never match those extreme highs and lows.

Instead, it might increase or decrease in increments, just barely. The shifting of your baseline of happiness suggests that, to some degree, your happiness is within your control. While much of your happiness is determined by circumstance, you can make choices that affect your baseline. This requires some self-honesty and evaluation. You must pay close attention to what in life spikes your happiness. Is it when you spend time with family or when you travel?

The more complicated part is confronting and changing negative patterns that could prevent you from having a higher baseline level of happiness. Maybe you have a toxic friendship or you're burnt out at work. Everyone's situation is unique, and I know it's not as simple as snapping your fingers and fixing your life, but you do have some power to raise your happiness levels. You can end bad relationships and work towards changing careers. It can be challenging to figure out what's wrong with you emotionally, and trying to work on fixing it all by yourself is an uphill battle.

This is what therapy is for. You get to speak with a professional who can help you better control the highs and lows of life. But therapy can be expensive, which is why I've partnered with BetterHelp, the sponsor of today's video, to help out. BetterHelp's mission is to make therapy more affordable and accessible for everyone. Just answer a few questions, and BetterHelp will match you with a professional therapist in as little as a few days.

One of the reasons I never went to therapy is I was always worried about finding the right one. I didn't want to be stuck with a therapist who didn't understand me. BetterHelp completely solved this worry by allowing me to switch to a new therapist pretty easily without having to worry about who will accept my insurance, who's in my network, or anything like that. Getting started with therapy is now super easy. All you need to do is click the link in the description or go to betterhelp.com/aperture to get 10% off your first month so you can connect with the right therapist for you.

Thank you again, BetterHelp, for sponsoring today's episode. When stuck on the hedonic treadmill, it can feel like nothing will change, that you're doomed to be running in place forever. And in some ways, that is true. But when you make decisions with your baseline level of happiness in mind, your time on the hedonic treadmill is not such a slog. Also, just because you're generally happy doesn't mean your life won't feel boring.

It's not like people with high baselines of happiness always jump out of bed every morning rejoicing in the thrill of being alive. In fact, the higher your baseline, the more difficult it is to experience those immense periods of happiness. Peaks of joy aren't so steep when you live a relatively privileged and fulfilled life. An income raise might mean little to you if you're already making lots of money. If you travel a lot, seeing a new city might not seem that exciting. You could be stuck in a cycle in which you're numb to all external stimuli. It's not a bad problem to have, as it's a symptom of a good life, but still, it's surprisingly easy to become bored and unhappy with a perfectly satisfactory life.

Melancholy might persist, which leads to persistent pleasure-seeking. Unfortunately, our culture facilitates the constant pursuit of ultimate happiness. Advertising, social media, and video games flood our brains with dopamine, gluing us to the screens and our attention devoted to our devices. Our happiness levels are distorted. While scrolling, we experience a constant peak of synthetic happiness. But when the shopping spree or the Netflix binge is over, we crash back down onto our hedonic treadmill, and our everyday lives start to feel lackluster.

Pleasure-seeking isn't a negative impulse. We can't have an enjoyable life without pleasure; it motivates us, boosts our mood, and allows us to enjoy our lives. But often, the joy readily available to us is like candy—overly sweet and lacking substance. Experiencing substantial pleasure is about exercising control. You might have a favorite snack or TV show; dedicating a time and place to indulge makes those sweet things you love about life even more pleasurable.

If you had your favorite snack every day, you might come to take it for granted. It becomes part of your routine and incorporates into your baseline happiness level. This is why rituals and traditions are so important. They're special pockets of time allotted to enjoying and celebrating life. When you feel like you're in a rut, thinking back to how you felt when you had that significant life change is a great way to be more appreciative of your current norm.

Practicing gratitude is another great way to dampen the effects of hedonic adaptation. It might seem cliché and cringe to some, mainly because gratitude is wedged in with the sometimes problematic categories of self-care and self-help. There's a whole video about the complexities of toxic positivity and self-help, which you can check out after this. But I think the trick to doing it well is expressing gratitude in a way that works for you. Maybe that's meditation or journaling; it could be cooking yourself a nice meal or watching a sunrise.

It can happen in a small amount while on your commute or waiting for the kettle to boil, where you pause and just reflect on how lucky you are to have the life you have. You can also do a little thought experiment with yourself every once in a while to check in. Where were you five years ago? Six months ago? Compare your past self to your current self. How has your life changed for the better? Has anything happened that has made life more challenging?

By its nature, hedonic adaptation blinds us from reflecting on change. We adapt and move on without significantly noticing how we grow and shift throughout life. But when you put your past and present in comparison, you can see the patterns. You can feel proud of where you came from and see what you could do better about your current situation. Comparing your past and present is a really great way to step off of the hedonic treadmill for a moment and assess your life for what it really is.

You'll quickly see that regular days lead to profound change over time, and a stagnant, emotionally stable life can still be one in which you flourish. Coming to terms with this allows you to accept your life despite its mundaneness. The very normalness of your life is what makes it livable. Think about how exhausted you would be if you were constantly experiencing the peaks and valleys of human emotion. It's a kind of blessing that nothing happens most days.

Hedonic adaptation helps us confront and accept the fleeting nature of life. Appreciating our adaptability is essential in reassuring, even when life feels tumultuous. While you might not always feel your absolute happiness, you can build a life where you enjoy living day in and day out. Our lives weren't meant to feel like roller coasters. The traumas of highs and lows are unsustainable. Maybe life was meant to feel like a slow-moving train, peacefully chugging along in a loop.

At this pace, it's easy to appreciate the scenery around you and where you are in life, even if you're not moving anywhere significant. Hedonic adaptation gives us this gift amid melancholy or boredom. It can be challenging to see it as such, but in those quiet moments, indulging in life's mundanity is important. Find beauty in stagnancy and consistency so that when a peak of happiness comes, you can enjoy it to the fullest extent.

Hedonic adaptation teaches us to embrace boredom, but today's society seems to overindulge in overstimulation. Watch this video to find out why that's dangerous.