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Most of us crave increased financial security, while also failing to get any lasting happiness from it when it happens. The momentary joy of a pay increase, windfall, or even a big lottery win can often be surprisingly short-lived.
Scientists and wellbeing experts often explain this with the concept of hedonic adaptation, also sometimes known as the hedonic treadmill, which suggests that when either positive or negative life events happen, we adapt to our new reality, and return — often pretty quickly — to whatever our baseline of happiness was.
There’s an argument that hedonic adaptation is necessary for our wellbeing. It’s how we get over negative life events and manage to thrive again. It’s what people are essentially referring to when they say that ‘time heals.’ Over time we adapt to a negative event and create a new normal where we’re not sad all the time, even though the results of the event are still present in our lives.
What’s interesting though, is that we generally seem to adapt much more quickly and completely to positive events. In other words when something good happens our happiness is much more transitory than our sadness when something bad happens — which can really get in the way of achieving lasting happiness.
This is particularly relevant with monetary gains. The joy of a small windfall, raise, or bonus at work is soon over, and in the case of a raise we’ll often immediately let a little lifestyle inflation eat it up. But there are a few things we can do, to get off the hedonic treadmill.
Spend Your Money on What Actually Makes You Happy
This is harder than we realize, because our brains are surprisingly bad at predicting what will make us happy. But we can try. Studies show that for many of us experiences make us happier than other purchases, so consider spending that bonus on doing something amazing to make memories with those you love.
Remember too that science has actually put a price on happiness, to a certain extent. This study shows for example that outsourcing a chore you hate (that may only cost, say, $200 or less each month), can be worth up to $18,000 in true increased happiness levels. So it could well be worth using that sudden windfall or raise for that.
Control Lifestyle Inflation
One of the simplest ways to feel the benefit of a pay raise is to pretend you didn’t get it. That is, continue living as before and save the extra money each month into a completely separate account.
That way you can avoid immediate lifestyle inflation, and use that money (eventually) on something that’s really important to you, whether that’s a family vacation, a dream wedding or a house deposit, rather than extra small things on a daily basis that will have no impact on baseline happiness.
Practice Intentional Gratitude
This is one of the oldest pieces of advice around when it comes to happiness, and it’s backed by science.
Cultivating a sense of gratitude has been linked to increased happiness and life satisfaction, and focusing on gratitude for something very specific, like a pay raise, can mean it takes you longer to adapt to it and take the extra money for granted.
Focus on Inherent Preferences Rather Than Learned Preferences
There’s evidence that things we value inherently make us happier than things we’ve learned to value due to societal norms. So going for a daily swim (if we truly love being in the water) will make us happier than buying a designer purse (assuming we don’t have any inherent connection to the purse but rather value it because we’ve learned to put a value on it).
This ties into the ‘happiness per dollar’ concept discussed in The Simple Path To Wealth. The amount of happiness we get in return for each dollar spent depends entirely on our personal preferences. Spending a lot of money on things we don’t value, even if the rest of society does, rarely brings true happiness, unless of course our personality is such that the main thing that brings us happiness is the approval of society.
There’s no magic trick to cheat hedonic adaptation in every area of life and find everlasting happiness, but try out these strategies and see if you can try and step off the hedonic treadmill when it comes to money, if nothing else.
About the Author
Karen Banes is a freelance writer specializing in entrepreneurship, parenting and lifestyle. She writes articles, website content, ebooks and the occasional award winning short story. Her work has appeared in a range of publications both online and off, including The Washington Post, Life Info Magazine, Transitions Abroad, Brave New Traveler, Natural Parenting Group, and Copia Magazine. Learn More About Karen
