I want X, then I will be happy. I get X, time passes, then I want Y, then I think I will be happy. Whether or not I get Y, I am never happy, the cycle continues. This is the hedonistic treadmill and we never get off. “Your conditions for happiness are the chains of your suffering.” You see, happiness is one of those tricky things where in order to get it, we have to be it. We have a base line level of happiness that we return to. We return to this baseline, regardless of the bad and the good that happens to us, see below.
In a prior post, I stated life is like the stock market, we have our ups and our downs, but we revert to the mean. So if we can make sure we are overall going in an upward trajectory, to accept the highs and lows as necessary and invest in the “index fund” of life. If we think our desires = happiness, we are mistaken, every single time. If it worked, you would have been happy a long time ago, when all you wanted as a kid was an ice cream cone. But guess what, times changed, so did you, and so did what would make you happy.
What would make you happy now? A bigger house? A Ferrari? How many Ferraris could you get before THAT was boring? 1? 100? Desire is an itch that cannot be scratched.
If i think a $100 million mega yacht will make me happy then I have 3 options: 1) I can never be happy if I don’t get it, 2) I get it, then something else will make me happy, or 3) my happiness had nothing to do with a $100 million mega yacht. Desire is a trickster, a magician, a liar that our brain gets tricked by every single time. More, more, more, never enough until like drinking alcohol, it’s more until too much.
So how do we get off the treadmill? “Conscious appreciation.” There is no scarcity, except in your mind. You are enough. You have enough. Your level of happiness is what you are and will be, regardless of the good and the bad things that happen to you. practice gratitude for what you are and what you have, that person is what a past you would have dreamed of being. Conscious appreciation- being grateful, is the mental hijack to be in the NOW, not the regret of the past or the fear of the future.
This does not mean to stop achieving, merely to stop attaching your happiness to it. To find happiness, be happy. Today, tonight, tomorrow. Be in the now, consciously appreciative, smile in the arena.
But, they say “money doesn’t buy happiness but I’d rather cry in a Ferrari” haha