If you base your sense of self-worth on success, you tend to go from victory to victory to avoid feeling awful. That is pure homeostasis at work. The buzz from success is neutralized quickly, leaving a hangover feeling. Knowing you will be looking for the bump again very soon, your brain ultimately adjusts to a baseline feeling of anti-success. After a while, you need constant success hits just not to feel like a failure. That’s what we social scientists refer to as the “hedonic treadmill.” You run and run but make no real progress toward your goal—you simply avoid being thrown off the back
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