Why You're (Still) Not Happy
The Race With No Finish Line
Hedonic Treadmill:
The human tendency to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness (or sadness) despite major positive or negative events or life changes.
This phenomenon is a feature of how our brains evolved.
The hedonic treadmill keeps us motivated to seek out new opportunities and challenges rather than resting on our laurels.
From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense: being content for too long might mean missing out on chances to improve further.
While this constant adjustment helps us stay sharp, it also means that long-lasting satisfaction from any one achievement is hard to come by.
You can see the hedonic treadmill in action all around us.
Think about people who achieve something great, like a big promotion or success in a competition.
At first, it feels amazing, but after a while, the excitement wears off, and they start thinking about what’s next.
Even celebrities and top athletes have often pointed out that reaching the peak of their careers didn’t bring the lasting fulfilment they thought it would.
Andre Agassi recounted how, after winning his first Grand Slam at Wimbledon, he thought, “I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing.”
It’s called Gold Medalist Syndrome.
When you finally reach that lofty goal you set for yourself (a gold medal for example), after a few days you don’t feel any different.
You wake up the next day and you’re still ‘just you’.
You convince yourself that you have to do it again, and again, and again.
But the race just keeps going. There is no finish line.
This week’s mental model was kindly brought to you by Professor
, Director of the Centre for Unified Behavioural and Economic Sciences at the University of Queensland — and author of .He recently appeared on the Modern Wisdom podcast and spoke at length about the hedonic treadmill in a fascinating interview that I’d highly recommend watching.
Click here to watch the full thing.
If you enjoyed this short essay, consider subscribing for more.
It’s free, but all paid subscription revenue in 2025 will be donated to the Against Malaria Foundation — so please do consider upgrading if you can afford it.
Paid subscribers can expect exclusive visual book summaries, special subscriber-only posts, and some other benefits further down the line.
Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts using the buttons below.
P.S. I’d also love to hear your suggestions for future guest posts too.
 | A guest post by
|
Superb!!! Restack!..
So familiar and the perfect illustration.