Instead 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 which means to your life, not simply the momentary states of being glad, full, proud, pleasured, or admired.
There’s nothing unsuitable with setting targets or having ambition so long as you perceive that you simply received’t discover enduring happiness in reaching these targets. So many people make the error of considering that once we simply do X, then we will likely be comfortable. When I lastly purchase a home, I’ll be content material. When I lastly get tenure, I can chill out. When I lastly make one million {dollars}, life will likely be good.
There’s a reputation for this tendency people must run from one pleasure or objective to the following: the hedonic treadmill. The downside with the hedonic treadmill is its basic precept: that you simply all the time return to your baseline happiness. You might turn out to be the top-paid influencer on this planet, and that may really feel actually good for some time, however then you definately would go proper again to being as comfortable or sad as you have been earlier than. Except now, you’ve gotten slightly 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 give 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.