This hardwiring has at least six interrelated consequences on our emotions

which misguide our pursuit of happiness.

1. Its preset: By default you have a baseline happiness level that you spend
most of your time at.
2. Its situational: Deviations from the baseline level are determined largely
by whatever just happened to you.
3. Its relative: Your happiness depends not on your overall condition but on
your current situation relative to your recent past or your expectations.
4. Its transient: successes and improvements generally dont provide the
expected lasting satisfaction.
5. Its acclimating: you get used to what you have, it ceases to be enough,
and you want more.
6. Its recurring: although the last success led only to fleeting happiness, you
dont learn the lesson and still expect lasting satisfaction with the next
success. Lets examine these consequences and their impact on our
emotions and behavior.
1. Preset: We each have baseline levels of happiness, contentment and
satisfaction where most of our lives are spent. These levels are remarkably
persistent and largely hereditary. A persons future happiness is much more
highly correlated with their past and present happiness than with their age,
marital status, income or net worth. Lottery winners are surprised to return
to their prior happiness levels once the initial high of winning wears off. For
most people, theres minimal correlation between how well their lives are
going and how happy they are in the moment.
2. Situational: The idea that ones emotional state should be determined by
events is pervasive; its no coincidence that the words happen and happy
share a common root. Almost every action life performs is designed to
improve its external conditions: every amoeba wriggling up a chemical
gradient, every car on the road driven by someone to somewhere theyd
rather be. But letting todays events determine todays mood is problematic
because circumstances are transient and so the happiness dissolves when
the circumstances change, as they inevitably do. Seeking refuge in the
impermanent and the unreliable lets minute-by-minute events hijack your
emotions, your mind, your self. To the extent that your emotions drive your
behavior, situational happiness reduces your authenticity, by expressing a
conditional, contingent version of you, not the absolute, essential you.
3. Relative: By default our happiness is determined relatively. Today relative

to yesterday. Actual relative to desired. Outcome relative to expecations. This

is unfortunate because if youre happy only when things are improving, or
when things turn out better than expected, then no matter what you do, your
life will be spent on a seesaw, above your baseline emotional state half the
time and below it the other half.
4. Transient: We behave as if well get permanent happiness from
achievements, but we usually get only fleeting happiness, even from
unchanging good circumstances. One blessing, one smile. Happy about the
money we just found in the street, not the pile we already had. The
sweetness of any good outcome swiftly fades as other concerns vie for our
attention, and our emotional state returns to its default level. After we
accomplish a goal or realize a dream, our attention is redirected elsewhere.
Quieting one inner voice of discontent, we hear the others more clearly. This
is good for survival, but bad for happiness.
5. Acclimating: Because our emotions were designed for circumstantial
living, we have an impoverished ability to feel emotions that didnt serve our
ancestors day-to-day survival and reproduction. Gratitude, compassion, and
awe dont come naturally. Everyday miracles go unnoticed. We quickly get
jaded, and return to our baseline happiness level. We exaggerate the
difference between our current circumstances and the next level up and
down: up so that were motivated to improve, and down so that were
motivated to not lose the progress weve made. Most people feel theyre one
step above poor and one step below wealthy. When people are asked what
the good life is, what would make them happy, their requirements ratchet up
over time as their circumstances improve. Have more, need more. Bliss
remains just out of reach, tantalizingly close but elusive, always on the
receding horizon.
6. Recurring: When you get what you wanted, you find to your surprise that it
leads only to temporary happiness. Then you immediately forget the lesson
and believe the next thing you get will lead to permanent happiness. That
promotion you got didnt bring you lasting satisfaction? That can be
explained away; the next one will. Youre earning more now than you were
before, but its still not quite enough; with the next raise youll be able to buy
the stuff you really want. This mentality traps people in a cycle of hope,
pleasure, disappointment. Forever chasing the more.