The biggest lie we’re taught about fulfillment.
I’m Hailey, and I help people outgrowing identities built on approval, achievement, and others’ expectations step into a more vital and self-trusting life. You can subscribe to my newsletter and get my articles delivered directly to your inbox here.
We’re taught to believe that once we reach the right career, relationship, milestone, or status, we’ll finally feel like we’ve “arrived.” We’ll finally be happy.
But when we arrive at the place we’d been aiming for—the promotion, the marriage, the goal—it doesn’t take long for the shimmer to wear off. Many of us feel suspiciously empty; like we should be more fulfilled, but we’re not.
Research shows that even our biggest milestones quickly become our new normal, and we end up chasing the next goal just to feel the same. This tendency to return to our baseline level of happiness—regardless of major positive or negative experiences—is known as hedonic adaptation, or the hedonic treadmill.
Especially for people who have built a chapter of life around achievement, approval, or meeting others' expectations, learning about the hedonic treadmill can be life-changing—giving us not only permission, but incentive, to break free from the narrow paths we’ve been following.
In this article we’ll explore why—and discuss which sources of joy and meaning are scientifically shown to fill our cups, and keep them filled.
“I’ll be happy when….”
Writing a book had been my dream all my life. I still have my journal from age five, filled with backwards Rs and stick-figure drawings of the boys I liked in my preschool class.
Throughout adolescence, fantasy novels offered companionship when I couldn’t find them elsewhere. As a young adult, books like Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody gave me language for feelings I hadn’t been able to name.
When I established myself in the world of coaching and finally pitched my first draft of STOP People Pleasing to agents, I was excited. When my agent got me meetings with publishers, I felt surreal, seized by electricity.
The dream was so close.
On a warm day in mid-May, my book deal was finalized with Simon and Schuster. I distinctly remember driving with the windows down, golden evening light beaming through the Olympic Mountains, as I drummed ecstatically on my steering wheel in celebration.
That night, I called my parents and told them the news.
The next day, my partner and I sat with our morning coffee, chittering happily over the details of the deal.
The next day, my editor called with edits for my first draft, ideas for titles. I paced back and forth outside, phone pressed to my ear, feeling the first hint of anxiety as we discussed quick turnarounds and looming deadlines.
The next day, one of my peers’ books got a front page review in a major publication. I felt an unwanted dose of adrenaline and concern: Would my book do well? How well? Who would blurb it? How would it compare? Would it be good enough?
Within a week, the initial high of my achievement had worn off, and unfamiliar anxieties, challenges, and metrics became my new reality. I was no longer an aspiring author; I was an author, in a saturated landscape of other authors, trying to put out a successful book.
Just like my old goal of getting a book deal, this new benchmark of having a successful release beckoned, shimmering with promise. I was willing to walk a harrowing road there, including an insanely fast manuscript turnaround, weeks’ worth of 14-hour writing days, and a summer spent catching the last rays of the sunset from the grocery store parking lot—the only outing I had energy for.
Despite careening at double speed toward a full-fledged burnout, I told myself it didn’t matter, because it would all pay off when I “finally got there.”
But the moment I hit every new goal—the press feature, the overseas book deal, the release, the reception—the promised land dissolved beneath my feet and materialized just down the road.
Like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick, I moved blindly forward—until the endless striving ultimately led to an acute burnout, a complete disenchantment with hustle culture, and an existential crisis.
This story is mine—but the psychology is universal. You’ve seen it before.
You’ve seen it in the friend who keeps chasing the next relationship milestone, becoming exclusive, then engaged, then married, always wanting more.
You’ve seen it in the entrepreneur who finally hits their revenue goal, only to immediately set a bigger one.
You’ve seen it in the person who believes “life will finally begin” after they buy the house, move cities, lose the weight, have the baby.
No matter how fervently we chase the next external milestone, that lasting feeling of arrival never quite arrives.
The Hedonic Treadmill: Striving to Nowhere
In 1971, psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell proposed that people return to a stable level of happiness regardless of external changes. They named their theory hedonic adaptation, or the hedonic treadmill.
Brickman and his colleagues surveyed three groups—recent lottery winners, accident victims who had become paraplegic, and a control group—to test how these events affected their happiness levels over time.
You would assume that lottery winners’ happiness would be permanently elevated, while accident victims’ would be permanently reduced—but surprisingly, this wasn’t the case. Study participants adapted to both good and bad changes, and their overall happiness tended to stabilize over time.
This was the result of three psychological processes happening at once:
Shifting reference points: When we reach a milestone we once aspired to, that level becomes our new normal (like me and my book deal). What used to feel extraordinary now feels standard, and this elevated baseline means we need more to feel the same level of satisfaction.
Habituation: Repeated exposure to the same situation reduces our emotional response, so what once felt exciting gradually feels normal. The novelty wears off; the emotional intensity fades.
Social comparison: It’s human nature to evaluate our happiness and status relative to others’. As we surround ourselves with similarly successful, accomplished, or settled people, our own achievements feels less significant in contrast.
As a result, no matter how hard we “run” on the hedonic treadmill, we don’t get much further in terms of lasting happiness.
Worst-case scenario, we ignore this fact—continuing to scheme, strive, and endlessly race forward—and wonder why we never reach the fulfillment we’re longing for.
Best-case scenario, we use our knowledge of the hedonic treadmill to our advantage—and instead of spending our lives chasing the next finish line, we shift to building lives that feel fulfilling now.
3 Ways We Can Use Our Knowledge of the Hedonic Treadmill for A More Fulfilling Life
1) The hedonic treadmill is justification, motivation, and incentive to stop building our lives around “chasing the next thing.”
Typically, the cycle of chasing milestones and successes looks like this:
But knowing about hedonic adaptation breaks this cycle. Instead of Step 6—assuming that our lack of satisfaction is due to not being “successful enough," or not “achieving the right milestone”—we realize that our dissatisfaction comes from the hollowness of the cycle of striving itself, because the cycle prevents us from pursuing activities (in Step 2) that enable us to enjoy the here and now.
2) The hedonic treadmill reduces personal shame by reframing disenchantment, disappointment, and burnout as the inevitable consequences of striving on a treadmill that leads nowhere—not as the result of something we did “wrong” or “not well enough.”
I can’t tell you how many times I—and the clients I’ve worked with—have assumed that our lack of fulfillment from this future-focused way of living was a personal pathology.
“I have everything I wanted, so why do I still feel empty?”
“I must be lazy, because I just don’t want to strive anymore.”
”I’m so ungrateful. I have it all and I still want more!”
The hedonic treadmill shows that burnout and disenchantment aren’t personal failings. In many cases, they’re powerful (albeit painful) awakenings, where we realize that we were sold a false promise of what made life meaningful and rich—and can now choose another way.
3) The hedonic treadmill gives us permission to diversify how we spend our time and energy.
When I was a kid, my mom gave me one Personal Day every year: a day to play hooky from school to do things like craft, roller skate, or take a day trip trip to the Jersey shore. In fifth grade (!!), I refused my Personal Day, concerned that missing a day of school would affect my grades.
In college, instead of doing a semester abroad in Greece—a place I’d always yearned to visit—I, certain I wanted to have a future in politics, chose to do a “domestic semester” in Washington DC. I spent four months alphabetizing blue file folders from 9-5 instead of wandering the whitewashed cliffs of Santorini.
When my book was coming out, I can’t begin to tell you how many birthday parties, backyard concerts, family visits, and campfires I turned down in order to create “just one more post” or “one more marketing email.”
The formula behind each of these decisions was: This is worth it, because the path I’m choosing will ultimately make me happier. But the hedonic treadmill shows this isn’t true.
When we step off the treadmill, we can finally make space for activities that contribute to our well-being in the present: community, creativity, play, service, mindfulness, connection, levity, and beyond.
When you live in a world that celebrates striving and success-chasing, it takes courage to step off the hamster wheel and build a life rooted in real fulfillment. Even when we’re aware that the hedonic treadmill leads us nowhere, it can still be difficult to take the leap and build a life designed around something more.
I would love to support you along the way. I help people outgrowing chapters built on approval, achievement, and others’ expectations step into a more vital and self-trusting life. You can learn more about my one-on-one coaching offerings here.
When striving, achievement, and appearances start feeling empty, my on-demand workshop Redefining Success: From a Life That Looks Good on Paper to a Life That Actually Feels Good helps you reconnect with meaning, purpose, and vitality.
Redefining Success is designed to help you understand why you’ve outgrown the myth of achievement-as-fulfillment and create a new personal definition of success: one oriented around not how much you achieve, but how deeply your life aligns with your values and sense of meaning. During the session, we’ll:
Make sense of why striving no longer feels fulfilling:
Explore why achievement often fails to produce lasting happiness
Reframe your disenchantment with striving not as laziness or weakness, but as natural responses to a system designed to keep you wanting
Explore your unmet emotional needs that achievement has been attempting to fill
Understand why you’ve outgrown the success-as-fulfillment story at this particular moment in your life
Illuminate the common phases of the transition from identifying with success to identifying with self, bringing clarity and structure to the transition unfolding within you
Reorient around the things that really matter:
Uncover what genuinely matters to you when you stop chasing achievement
Clarify misalignments between your values and your current relationship with work and striving
Explore the four sources from which humans get a sense of meaning—and determine the unique combination that gives you the deepest sense of fulfillment
Build a new, personal definition of success: one that centers not achievement, but aligning more deeply with your meaning, values, and contributions
Identify practical steps you can begin taking to bring your new definition of success to life
Citations
Frederick, S., & Loewenstein, G. (1999). Hedonic adaptation. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 302–329). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807–815. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022010
Schaffner, A. K. (2025, June 26). How to escape the hedonic treadmill and be happier (M. Neuhaus, Ed.). PositivePsychology.com.https://positivepsychology.com/hedonic-treadmill/
Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2012). The challenge of staying happier: Testing the hedonic adaptation prevention model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(5), 670–680. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212436400
Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61(4), 305–314. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.61.4.305
Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel, S. M. (2008). Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1045–1062. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013262
Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917-927. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.8.917
Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(1), 81–84.
Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069
Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2002). The pursuit of meaningfulness in life. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 608–618). Oxford University Press.
Lambert, N. M., Stillman, T. F., Hicks, J. A., Kamble, S., Baumeister, R. F., & Fincham, F. D. (2013). To belong is to matter: Sense of belonging enhances meaning in life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(11), 1418–1427. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213499186
Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111–131. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.111