I am writing this from my COVID socially distanced cave. Life seems so different from a couple of months ago. Honestly - this time has given me a chance to slow down, pause and re-evaluate my choices and priorities.

For example - I have wanted to write and focus on creative endeavors for such a long time - but man do I like to socialize and volunteer and attend meetings.

With all of these social and evening plans cancelled for the foreseeable future - I have gotten to spend some quality time with myself. This is a gift and sometimes a nightmare.

I have found myself on websites for clothing and shoes (that I will definitely not be wearing inside my house) and trying to buy and acquire aspirational groceries (I know I am not the only one) but as I peruse sites that used to make me happy or at least covetous - I find myself feeling…nothing.

I don’t want to add things to my cart. I’m pretty sure I have most of what I need.

I am relaxing into the sense that life can be a little slower and more simple. That I don’t need to fill every minute or space in my house with something to do, cook, wear, buy or talk about.

I have been noticing this in my social life as well. I am normally out there networking, attending meetings, trying to be INVOLVED.

Often it seems like my ambitious and achiever self is looking for the next challenge - the next level.

Sometimes it is a thrilling way to live and sometimes it is exhausting.

It it the rat race, the grind, the hamster wheel - THE HEDONIC TREADMILL.

I love that term - the hedonistic treadmill. It is evocative and sums up the hellish and Sisyphean task of trying to achieve “perfection” or “make it”.

What Is The Hedonic Treadmill?

According to Investopedia it is

A hedonic treadmill is the tendency of a person to remain at a relatively stable level of happiness despite a change in fortune or the achievement of major goals. According to the hedonic treadmill model, as a person makes more money, their expectations and desires rise in tandem. So the rise in income results in no permanent gain in happiness.

What this often looks like is - not understanding that we have a basic “happiness set point” - we search for external things to make us happier. One of the pivotal studies on the hedonic treadmill was about lottery winners - who despite getting life-changing money - ended up at the same level of happiness they had started at before winning the money.

Yet - we keep consuming, buying, searching for, trying to acquire or achieve the things that will “make us happy”

And it does not just apply to our wallets.

You may be familiar with these thoughts:

I will be happy when…

I will have made it when….

______ will make me happy…

Only to end up one week or month or year later - back to the same thought with a different goal.

It is fueled by fear of never actually getting “there” because “there” is constantly shifting.

How Does it Show Up?

For me - my hedonic treadmill is in full tilt when I find myself immediately discounting what I have done or have achieved by looking for the next thing to do.

It can look like pursuing a dream - only to achieve it - and then obsess over a bigger dream.

Some of this is good - some of this ambition, energy and hunger drive us forward toward growth.

Yet - sometimes, especially if it is driven by fear, shame or scarcity - it leads to burn out, exhaustion, debt (of time and money) and the hellish feeling that you are stuck in a never ending series of hoops to jump through.

This hedonic treadmill shows itself over and over in behavioral finance. Advertising is built on the gears of the hedonic treadmill. We are primed to buy the next big thing - the thing that - this time we promise - will make you happy if you buy it. But alas - next season or next year - it is just a thing you own and you want the next and trendier model.

As you can see so expertly drawn below:

Where do you see it in your life? It might look different - but I am sure it is there?

How Do We Get Off It?

Do not despair my fellow treaders! The hedonic treadmill is not all bad news.

In one foundational study - researchers found that after a paralyzing accident - that people who had lost use of their limbs had a dip into sadness, depression and grief but ended up back at their happiness set point after time had passed. This means that we are resilient and far less dependent on external sources and circumstances for our happiness than we think.

This means by focusing on our happiness set point - we can leverage the hedonic treadmill. We can make that existential grind work for us instead of against us.

If we know that no one thing will ever make feel fulfilled or completely happy - we can switch our focus to our own happiness set point.

Focus on Building Your Happiness Capacity - Not Finding Happiness

Happiness and fulfillment are inside jobs. They cannot be purchased. No one thing or achievement is going to catapult you into enlightenment. Instead of focusing on the external - focus on your ability to be happy.

This is a muscle you can strengthen. Happiness is a skill you can practice.

You can even take a class on it with a professor at Yale.

Start by focusing on what you are grateful for.

Savor when you feel happy

Focus on your strengths

Practice reframing experiences to see them in a positive light

Learn to be nicer to yourself

Go to therapy

It really is possible to raise your happiness set point. But it takes internal work - not external achievement.

2. Focus on Effort - Not Outcome

This is where you learn to appreciate the journey not the destination - cheesy? yes! true though? yes!

This is where you stop being the person on the treadmill for the number on the scale and become the person on the treadmill because - damn it feels nice to move.

The outcome is never guaranteed. The outcome is often not what you expected. The effort though? That cannot be taken away from you and that is you practicing who you want to be.

This is where ambition or growth can thrive - the people who love to learn - not for a diploma- but because they enjoy the growth. The growth for growth’s sake. The discipline or intuition of rising to the next challenge or writing the next chapter - knowing that there is no destination and learning to love the journey.

Focus on what you can do, how you show up and take pride in that - no matter what happens.

3. Focus on Creativity and Process not Consumption or Acquisition

One of the fastest ways off the treadmill is an embrace of process. The falling in love with the feeling of growing, moving, being and living. One of the best ways to experience that - is called Flow State.

Originally discovered by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - positivepsychology.com describes Flow State as

Flow is one of life’s highly enjoyable states of being, wrapping us entirely in the present, and helping us be more creative, productive, and happy.

It is when you are so immersed in an activity that you are almost beyond time and place.

No one lives in Flow forever - but it is in cultivating, practicing and savoring the moments of Flow that we have that we can begin to enjoy our lives as they are in that moment - not as we imagine them to be in the future.

Flow comes from engagement in the moment - you have everything you need - you are at one with yourself and the world and the challenge or opportunity in front of you.

Here your treadmill is not a hamster wheel to nowhere but the feeling of wings beneath as you experience the joy of moving.

Right now - you have everything you need to find meaning, happiness and growth.