"Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities,’ [[Aldous Huxley]] wrote, and I like to imagine the thought occurring to him as he sat at the wheel of his Lexus – the one with the in-car DVD player he was so excited about when he got it six months earlier. **You want something because you think it’ll make you happy, and maybe it does, briefly. But then the new thing loses its shine and you revert to your earlier, less happy state**. This is the ‘hedonic treadmill’, and we all seem to be trapped on it. It doesn’t just apply to material wealth, but that’s where it’s most obvious: in Britain, people are three times richer than they were in 1950, but barely any happier. So when I heard that a psychology professor at the [[University of Miami]] might have discovered some methods for getting off the treadmill, I had to know more." --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[hedonic-treadmill]], [[habits]], [[self-reflection]], [[frugality]], [[routines]], **Source** -- [[20241114100017 - B - Help!]]