There you have it, it's science! When humans go through a significant life change, the emotions this brings are temporary. Even if you achieved a major goal, the satisfaction will only last a short time before your brain re-adapts to its new situation and starts asking for more!
In the same way, if you've lost a fortune and have to go back to being poor and working long hours, instead of becoming depressed, you get used to it. The sadness this event bring only lasts a short time, then you've adapted to this new life.
What does this mean? Well, if we thought reaching a 'destination' will bring us happiness, we're wrong! Turns out our brains will adapt to the new situation really quickly and return to its happiness set point. Then we start looking for the next journey, the next goal, without actually being content. So the road we think we're travelling on never really ends.
We get most of our happiness set point genetically and from our early childhoods, but by increasing our awarness of ourselves and our reality, we can help raise it.
The crucial problem that gets in the way is comparison. We lose touch with our reality when we focus on others instead. You might be happy with your 75k salary until you make a new friend who makes 500k, then your perception switches completely.
When we stop comparing, we might realize that our wage is enough for us at the moment. If we focus on our life as it is, as well as on our dreams, we might find a lot of things we are grateful for right now. By getting to know ourselves better we can set achievable goals and gradually increase our happiness base-line. It's really important to spend more time being in 'the now' and aware of the good things in our life as it is.
Thank you for reading and I hope you found this post useful.
Until next time, Steem on!
Corina
