In his song, “Successful” Drake said, “I want the money, money and the cars, cars and the clothes, I suppose, I just wanna be, I just wanna be, Successful.” Wanting to be successful, I strived for the external factors society deemed as signs of success like a luxurious car, brand-name clothes, and a decent amount of money. Possessing these materialistic items, I still felt like something was missing, so I assumed I needed more to be content. Soon enough, I was trapped on the hedonistic treadmill.
Thinking we need to work harder, be smarter or become richer to be happy is a common misconception. Dr. Srikumar Rao describes the assumption we require something outside of ourselves for contentment as the if-then model of happiness, in his Ted Talk “Plug into Your Hard-Wired Happiness.”
Dr. Rao claims we pursue these big “ifs,” which are external products, car because we assume they will lead to internal satisfaction.
The Broken Happiness Model
Following the if-then model of happiness is like putting gasoline into your poorly functioning car, which has issues like making odd noises and breaking down randomly. Having the approach, “Once (or if) the issues are resolved, then I will be happy,” you upgrade to a more expensive and higher quality blend of gasoline, which drastically improves your vehicle’s performance. You are overjoyed with your car’s production; however, this joy is short-lived because the same issues arise again. Logically, you upgrade the gasoline again, and it works well until the car gives you more problems. You are caught in a cycle of improving the gas to enhance your car’s functioning, feeling happy until the same issues reoccur causing your discontent resulting in you upgrading the blend of gasoline again. Regardless of the enhancements to the gasoline input, you return to where you started.
Similar to continually putting in better gasoline into your car to improve functionality, we regularly aim for better inputs into our lives to increase happiness. This striving is coined, “The Hedonistic Treadmill,” by Brickman and Campbell in their essay, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society” (1971). We are constantly on the hedonistic treadmill, of targeting better “ifs,” feeling short-lived happiness receiving them, then needing a bigger “if” to feel good again. Although we are working harder and achieving more, we are not feeling better.
Like the car’s functioning not improving with better gasoline, our happiness will not increase with better external factors. A better approach is to look under the hood at the engine processing the gasoline, which has deteriorated and become rusty; therefore, even the purest blends of gasoline will not fix the engine’s problems. Similar to the internal engine creating the functioning of the car, our inner attitudes, mindsets, and intentions determine our happiness. So it is essential to dig deeper into the engine that is our mind and improve ourselves internally.
Focusing on the Process of Happiness
Analogous to the deteriorated engine being the problem instead of the gasoline, the problem is the if-then model instead of the external factors (ifs) we target. Knowing the if-then model of happiness traps us on the hedonistic treadmill, Dr. Rao suggests we find satisfaction in the process of doing what makes us happy, which would be like investing in a better engine to process the gasoline. These teachings on better happiness and well-being can be summed up in this research article.
Well if we focused on the process of doing what makes us happy, how would we ever become successful?
Steve Jobs once said, “Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products…. We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and as another consequence, we’ll make some money. But we’re really clear about what our goals are.” Similar to Jobs focusing on process, Amazon CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos also understood its importance. In one of Bezos’ annual reports, there were 360 goals directly affecting the customer experience compared to only eight relating to revenue. Counterintuitively, successful people rarely focus on the external factors of success because they care more about internal factors like purpose and mindset. They know success comes as a result of the process.
Stuck on the hedonistic treadmill, I felt dissatisfied with life. Independent of the actions I took like going away to college, joining a fraternity, or making a lot of friends, I repeatedly felt temporary satisfaction and returned to normal dysphoria. To fix my dissatisfaction, I started reading multiple self-help books with the mindset, “If I read this book then I will finally be happy.” Of course, my life would drastically improve after merely reading a book (sarcasm). While reading these books, I would intensely apply the principles and forget them afterward, which is like getting a new engine for the car and not doing any maintenance. I had little consistency because I was still searching for that one intense if to make everything better.
Conclusion
Focusing on intensity changed when I watched this talk by Dan Pink, which helped me realize consistent and intrinsically-motivated behaviors create happiness.
I got off the hedonistic treadmill. I stopped investing in the if-then model of happiness and focused on improving my self-image (who I was) by adopting daily habits like meditating, running and journaling, which has given me a gradual yet lasting improvement in satisfaction and helped me learn the benefits of process over product. I discovered these external successes are desirable because we associate them with internal qualities like confidence, optimism, and hard work. Instead of focusing on the outer metrics to create inner well-being, I learned the internal satisfaction leads to the external achievement. Happiness leads to success, the internal leads to the external.
Recent Comments