Experts in the field of positive psychology and happiness use a phrase to describe the very human tendency to keep chasing something more pleasurable or better in life, and once we attain it, we become insensitive, or adapt, to the new and then need something more intense than the last in order to scratch that itch. Whatever progress we thought we might have made, we realize (if we have the presence of mind) that we’re back in the same place. We’ve gone nowhere really, thus their phrase “the hedonic treadmill.”
