Why Greed is not always Good.
The problem with staying on a Hedonic Treadmill.
According to Wikipedia, The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. Got it? Cool.
I want you to meet Levon Spencer and Trey James, two fictional NBA players who have recently won the championship with the Lakers. Trey’s career is taking off and it seems like Levon is hitting a low, the sad part is that they grew up in the same neighbourhood, got drafted the same year and have similar bodies and playing styles.
Why did one succeed and the other fail?
Levon’s Perspective.
A year ago, he won the championship with the Lakers, those were great times. Levon had played well during the season, he won the MVP award and was being hailed as the next big thing. After winning the title, he signed a ten-year contract with Nike worth $200 million, he is also signed to Verizon and Audi.
He has received a lot of money in the past year, making him one of the highest-paid athletes of 2019. He bought a mansion in Bel-Air worth $56 million and several cars including a Lamborghini Aventador, worth $400000. Despite all of this, he wants more.
He wants more endorsements, more commercials, more houses and a lot more championships. This year, he is focussed and is determined to win the title. The first game was a disaster and the Lakers won 3 out of the next 5 games. Egos’ were hurt, Gatorade bottles were thrown around, the environment became toxic.
Levon felt like he didn’t have to attend practice, he missed a few sessions but it didn’t matter, he was still MVP, he was still averaging 26 points a game, screw practice.
The pressure was getting to him, the reporters were calling him entitled and arrogant, but you got the right to be arrogant if you’re earning $28 million a season, right?
It has been five years since the Lakers won their last title, Levon is 29 years old and hurting. The press has labelled him a “choker” who can’t seem to perform when the pressure is on him. Words like overrated are being used to describe him.
His teammates dislike him, he’s having problems with management and has frequently been the subject of many controversies.
He had a run-in with a few police officers outside a nightclub in Atlanta after he called an officer a “pig” that altercation left him with facial wounds and cuts on the back, he sued the city and settled for $7 million.
He doesn’t feel like the old Levon anymore, you can see it in the way he plays, his game point average has dropped from 26 to 24.2 and there are rumours about him getting signed to the Clippers.
Those rumours turned out to be true, he got signed to the Clippers for 5 years and the contract was worth $100 million, many people called him “overpriced” who would pay that much for a guy who hasn’t won MVP in five years?
During the time he spends at the Clippers, he wins them one title and gains some respect back. He retires and admits to feeling like he wasted his potential but life moves on.
He was a good player but he could have been a great one. If you ask him where he went wrong, he’ll give you several reasons, poor management, crappy teammates, controversies and a lack of support from the media.
Trey’s Perspective.
Trey won the championship with the Lakers alongside Levon. He played well that season and got a ten year deal with Puma which is worth $75 million and signed a ten-year contract with BMW for $50 million. He bought a mansion with a full-size basketball court for $10 million and drives a BMW 8 series which his sponsors gifted him.
He has been training harder since the Lakers won and the following year, he narrowly misses out on winning the MVP award, it doesn’t matter to him, he wants to keep playing and getting better.
Trey is a fan favourite, he signs autographs and takes pictures whenever he can, every season he is getting better but he leaves the Lakers, sighting a toxic environment.
He joins Miami Heat and is well adjusted to the team atmosphere. In his first season with his new team, he leads them to a championship, at 29 he is labelled as a future G.O.A.T by the press.
He does not have a lot of controversies around his name. The only major dispute he has had are the comments he spoke about democracy in Asian countries. James is a frequent BLM supporter and actively uses his platform to support the fight against racial injustice.
He has made the Tray James centre for education and sporting excellence in his hometown. He has invested in companies like Under Armour and Spotify.
Miami Heat keeps the title for the next 3 years only to lose to the Raptors. During his last season at Miami, he wins the championship and decides to retire.
When asked if he could have gone on for 2 more years, Trey feels like he did his best and couldn’t contribute any further.
He started as a good player and retired as one of the best to ever play.
The Hedonic Treadmill.
Psychologists didn’t always study happiness, I mean Freud was obsessed with sex, and Jean Piaget studied development in children.
Psychologists started studying happiness seriously during the 1980s and one of the first tests that they did was a simple survey. They took a sample of people and asked them to answer questions on their pagers, the questions were:
- On a scale from 1–10, how happy are you at this moment?
- What has been going on in your life to cause these feelings?
Most of the people wrote “7,” no matter what.
At a meeting, 7. Watching Seinfeld, 7. Going out with friends, 7.
Even when shit hit the fan, happiness would drop for 2–5 levels for a short period and then return to 7. The same for the opposite, won the lottery, 10. After a month of winning the lottery, their happiness returned to 7.
You might not play in the NBA, but that doesn’t mean you’re unhappy. We are not happy full time, but were not depressed and listening to Radiohead all the time either, it’s more like we’re listening to Coldplay, a balanced band that you can vibe to.
This 7, plays a trick on us.
As Mark Manson says, “The trick is that our brain tells us, “You know, if I could just have a little bit more, I’d finally get to 10 and stay there.”
You get a promotion, so you want to buy a new watch, you buy the watch, you show it off to friends, you go out with your friends, and promise yourself just one beer, but is it ever really one beer?
That’s the problem with the hedonic treadmill that you’re stuck on, now you’re probably thinking:
“ WTF Bobby, what’s the point? My happiness is important, #bobbyiscancelled.”
I am not undermining your happiness, all I’m trying to prove is that you have to be motivated by something bigger than yourself.
If it ain’t broken, Don’t try to fix it.
Just because something can be improved, doesn’t mean that you have to improve it. When you look to compulsively get better, you turn into this weird self-help narcissist who only focusses on himself.
Treat self-help like a bandage, only use it when you are badly hurt and bleeding, and be prepared to take that bandage off.
How do I say this without sounding cheesy? You are enough. Don’t try to unnecessarily improve yourself and end up like the NBA player who trains too much and gets burnt out.
