19. The Truth About Why Nothing Feels Like Enough

Ever feel like no matter what you achieve, it's never quite enough? You land the promotion, buy the dream house, or reach that goal weight, but the excitement fades faster than you expected, leaving you wondering "what's next?" If this sounds familiar, you're experiencing something psychologists call hedonic adaptation, and you're definitely not alone.

In this episode of Redefining Happiness, we break down the science behind why our biggest achievements often leave us feeling empty and searching for the next milestone. You'll discover the two-part psychological process that keeps us stuck in an endless cycle of wanting more, and why happiness always seems just out of reach.

What You'll Learn:

·       The psychology of hedonic adaptation and why your brain is wired to reset to baseline happiness

·       How the "adapt and level up" cycle keeps you chasing the next achievement

·       Why thinking of happiness as a destination sets you up for disappointment

·       Practical strategies to find satisfaction and contentment in your current life

·       How to pursue goals without depending on them for your happiness

This episode offers real solutions for breaking free from the "never enough" mindset. Whether you're struggling with career satisfaction, relationship fulfillment, or general life contentment, you'll walk away with actionable insights for creating sustainable happiness.

Stop chasing happiness and start redefining it. Your journey to lasting satisfaction starts here.

And be sure to check out the FREE Podcast Resources Hub, your go-to library for exercises, templates, and exclusive content to help you apply what you’re learning each week. Use THIS LINK to get started or head to karencastillo.org and click on “Podcast.”

If you haven’t signed up yet, this is the perfect time to join. It’s free, and once you’re in, you’ll get access to every episode’s tools, including bonus downloads I don’t share anywhere else.

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Music: "Be Happy" by danamusic

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi and welcome back to Redefining Happiness. I'm Karen Castillo and today we're talking about something that I think you'll recognize right away. Have you ever reached a big milestone you've been working towards and it felt amazing at first but then the excitement faded faster than you expected? Maybe you moved into your dream house or landed a promotion or hit your goal weight and for a little while it felt great. But before long, that big thing, that big moment became your new normal and you were already looking for the next thing. That cycle where the thrill wears off and life resets to business as usual, it's not just in your head. It's something psychologists call hedonic adaptation. So hedonic adaptation is our natural tendency to just get used to changes, whether they're good or bad. When something new happens, our happiness spikes, but then over time we adjust. That big promotion that you were working towards, it turns into just another job. The new house becomes just the place that you live. And the accomplishments that you were working towards that felt like they were going to make such a huge difference in your life, they just become your baseline. And here's what's happening. There's actually two parts to hedonic adaptation First, there's the adapting itself. It's where we get used to our new situation. And then there's the comparing that comes from adapting. So think about it this way. When you're young and when you're living with your parents or maybe you're just in an uncomfortable situation and you get your own apartment, you're like, yeah, that's amazing. Like, I'm so excited. I love my apartment. This is great. Look at me. Got this great new place. But then after a while, you start thinking, oh, I hate these stairs. My neighbors are too close. I wish I had a yard. I just want to move into a house. I don't want to live in an apartment anymore. Time goes on and you get your first house and you've got your cute little house and you're so excited and you pull right up in the driveway, pull right up to your door with your groceries and you've got your little lawn and you're so excited about it, right? But then after a while, you start thinking, you know, I wish I had space to put an office outside of my living room or I wish I wish I had more space to have a guest room or I wish I had a bigger kitchen, any of these things. So then you start having that dream of the bigger house and suddenly forget all about wishing you had that little house when you were in the apartment. Now the little house is just a little house. So then you move into your bigger house and of course, once you move into that bigger house, then you start thinking, oh man, I wish I had a pool. It's so hot outside. Or, you know, I wish I lived by the water or I wish I lived in this neighborhood. with these schools. Whatever it is that you get, It becomes your new normal and then that normal becomes the thing that you compare your life to. It becomes the thing that you want to grow out of. All of a sudden that becomes not enough. So in other words, we adapt. Whatever we have, we adapt and then we want to level up. We adapt to what we have and from that new spot, we start comparing and wanting to level up again. And when we get to the next level, we adapt. to that too, and the cycle continues. Part of why we struggle with this is that we think of happiness as a destination that's just waiting for us on the other side of our goals. We believe that this achievement, whatever this may be, will finally be the thing that makes us arrive at happiness. We think of happiness as a place that's just waiting for us to get there, right? When we get to that house, when we get to the job, when we get to the You know, the income amount when we get to the perfect body, that's when we'll get to our happiness. But then when we get there, it just feels like normal life. And we think, oh, wait, this isn't it. It must be. And then the next thing, whatever the next thing is. This is where a lot of us get caught in a cycle of always chasing the next milestone, always trying to level up, always thinking of the next achievement that will finally deliver that lasting happiness. happiness that we've been seeking that's going to make us feel whole that's going to make us feel like yes this is what I've been waiting for but here's the thing by understanding hedonic adaptation by knowing what it is and that it's completely normal we can shift away from always trying to level up or at least from the expectation that that level up is going to bring us this happiness that we're running around chasing instead of feeling that impulse to compare what we have to the next thing, we can work on leaning into gratitude for what's already in our lives. And listen, this doesn't mean we stop wanting more or we stop setting goals. Maybe you still want that promotion and that's perfectly fine. But instead of focusing on the promotion itself, instead of focusing on having the new business open or having the new house, you lean into the process of getting there. Focus on the everyday stuff. steps learn that the living is in the process the achievement is just the trophy at the end and whatever we expect to feel when we get there is not going to be realistically as big of a deal as we thought it would be while you're working towards that promotion let it just be one part of your life work on other things too deepen your relationships and your connections find hobbies that you enjoy discover things in your day-to-day life that bring you a sense of achievement and and purpose and connection. This way you can enjoy your life on a day-to-day basis while continuing to work towards your goals with an appropriate understanding and realistic expectation of how much happiness they'll actually bring. The promotion, the house, the achievement, they're awesome parts of life, but they're just parts of it. They're not the whole. There's no one thing that's going to make you feel whole, like, yes, this is, you know, this is it. This is, this is everything that I imagined it to be. A good life, a really good life is a combination of a lot of different factors. So when we hyper fixate on just the one thing, we're always going to feel disappointed when we get it. That one thing is never going to check all the boxes, regardless of how much we wanted and we think that it's going to be everything. And that takes us to this week's happiness challenge. I want you to learn to spot your own adapt and level up patterns. It's pretty simple. I want you to just take a minute to think about some things from your past that you really wanted, that you thought this is going to be the thing that's going to make me happy. Maybe it was earning your degree. Maybe it was getting married, having kids, losing weight, buying the house, whatever it was that you put a lot of thought and a lot of effort and a lot of time to towards achieving with the idea that it was going to be the thing that made you happy. And now you have it. Did it have the impact on your life and on your happiness that you thought it would? When you look back at how much time and effort and weight you gave to those things before you had them, did it match up to the expectation? And that's it. Just start looking at your patterns. You have the advantage of hindsight so look back and see the things in your past that you already went through this cycle with and then maybe take a look at the things that you're working towards now maybe look at some of the things that you're thinking well actually this is the thing that's going to fulfill me this is the thing that's going to make me happy this is the thing that's going to make me whole that you're working towards right now and ask yourself is this the same feeling that i had before So hedonic adaptation isn't something to fight. It's something to work with. Our predisposition towards adaptation is not a bad thing. It's just a thing. It's how we as human beings are. And in the same way we adapt to good things, we also adapt around the bad things as well. And that's why when something bad happens, we don't necessarily carry the full weight of it our whole lives. With time, we adapt and it fades the same way it does with the good things. Thanks for joining me today. I hope this episode gave you a new way to think about the things that you're working towards and the kind of happiness that doesn't fade. I'll see you next time.