You know that thing you think will satisfy you?

Maybe it’s something expensive but out of your reach.

A new car or phone or computer. A promotion at work. A spouse. A home. A child.

None of those are bad things. Many of them are worth pursuing and planning for.

But none of them are going to fill that hole in your heart.

A friend recently got a new phone, and I asked, “Did it make your life better in all the ways you hoped it would?” He laughed and told me no, and I said, tongue-in-cheek, “But you had to try, right?”

There’s a concept called the hedonic treadmill (or hedonic adaptation, maybe more accurate but definitely less visual). It says our happiness levels always normalize after some change (positive or negative).

In 1978, researchers Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman conducted a study and published their findings in the article “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” The researchers interviewed two very different groups: people who won at least $100,000 in the lottery and people who became permanently paralyzed due to an accident.

What they found was shocking. Six months later, both groups reported about the same level of happiness.

Imagine winning $100,000—or losing the use of your legs. Six months later, you’ll feel about the same either way.

That can’t be right.

Or can it?

Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems?

Here’s the thing about winning a lot of money in the lottery: it strips away little joys in life. Nothing else is going to quite live up to the thrill of winning the lottery.

And then there’s the relational discomfort—now everyone expects you to pick up every tab.

And how about those who became disabled? Humans are resilient. So something as tragic as losing the use of your legs doesn’t have to be the end of your life. In some ways, it has the inverse effect of winning the lottery: daily joys become more significant, and your perspective shifts so that you appreciate what you once took for granted.

No one is going to pick a wheelchair over a sack of money. But one of them isn’t going to make your life as good as you think it is.

What’s the Deeper Longing?

You know how sometimes we eat just because we’re bored? We’re not hungry, we’re restless. Crunching on a bag of chips temporarily scratches our itch of boredom, but only until we shake the last few crumbs out.

We’re constantly trying to satisfy our deepest longings, but we tend to reach for the low-hanging fruit instead of what will actually satisfy us. C.S. Lewis spoke to this when he said,

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

The things we are looking to for satisfaction are often stand-ins for deeper needs. They aren’t bad—if we use them for their intended purpose.

Food is good! But food is bad if we think it will fill the hole in our heart instead of just the emptiness of our stomach.

Over 2,500 years before the invention of treadmills, the prophet Jeremiah named the cycle we’re still stuck in:

For my people have committed two evils: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves— broken cisterns that can hold no water. — Jeremiah 2:13

God’s people walked away from the source of life and tried to find their own complete satisfaction in all the wrong places. Their homemade cisterns were busted beyond repair and couldn’t hold a drop to satisfy their deepest longings. We do the same thing today, chasing satisfaction in things that were never designed to deliver it.

The real problem with the hedonic treadmill, no matter what era we’re living in? We try to make proximate things into ultimate things.

How Do We Unplug This Treadmill?

The reason I love the term “hedonic treadmill” is because you have to keep moving as things speed up. More of this, more of that. Amazon boxes piling up in a corner of your home. This vacation. That achievement.

Next thing you know your stuff is suffocating you but you’re still pressing Add to Cart.

The hedonic treadmill isn’t powered by regular electricity. It runs on unrealistic expectations, inevitable disappointments, and the evaporation of contentment in the little things.

I don’t know exactly how to hop off this exhausting treadmill. But here are a few things I’m trying:

  • Recording my gratitude. Melody Beattie said, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” The more grateful I am for what I have, the less likely I am to think I need something else to be satisfied. I write down the things I’m grateful for in my bullet journal and pause to thank God for those things.
  • Before every purchase I make, I remind myself, “This won’t fill that hole in my heart.” It’s a simple exercise, but I need constant reminders. Waiting to make purchases at least 24 hours on non-essentials helps too.
  • Focusing on relationships. Our deepest longings that we hope physical goods will satisfy can only be met by relationships with family, friends, and God.
  • Going on walks. The treadmill is inferior to something the Germans call Going für a Walk, in every way. And something happens in our bodies when we’re out in nature, enjoying God’s green earth.

Awareness is step one. Step two is refusing to ramp up the speed of that God-forsaken treadmill. Step three is finding what can only satisfy your deepest longings.

I’ve found that the good life can’t be reached by racing through another lap on the hedonic treadmill.

It’s found in walking with the One who made everything, and giving Him thanks, even for the stuff that can’t ultimately satisfy us.