For my whole life, I’ve been on the hedonic treadmill — in which satisfaction of achievement wears off almost immediately to the next goal. A day or two after a notable accomplishment, I’d start getting antsy. What’s next? Getting a job at Google wasn’t enough; now I need to be a top performer. The glow from getting a big deal with Duolingo lasted a few days; now I need to think about getting the next. I’m working on stepping off the treadmill, but it’s hard. Today, I don’t have any answers, but I will leave you with a quote from Alex Dias Riberio, a former Formula 1 race-car driver:
“Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy. For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success.”
At the very least, I do know that I want life after success. Now I just need to figure out how to get there.
