The Art of Enough: Why Getting What You Want Rarely Ends the Wanting

Think about the last thing you really wanted to buy. How long did the good feeling last after it arrived? A week? An afternoon?

Psychologists call this fading [1]Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2012). The challenge of staying happier: Testing the hedonic adaptation prevention model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(5), 670–680. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212436400. The Buddha talked about craving, and noticed the same pattern 2,500 years earlier: getting what you want rarely ends the wanting.

Neither idea is a reason to feel bad about liking nice things. Both describe how a mind works, which means you can watch it happen and do something about it.

Two Ways the Good Feeling Fades

Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky, two psychologists who study why happiness does or doesn't last, describe two routes back to where you started. The first is simple: the good thing stops producing good moments. The new phone is a small thrill every time you pick it up for a week, and then it's a phone.

The second route is sneakier, because the good moments can keep coming and you still stop counting them. Your standard moves. The nice thing becomes the normal thing, and you start looking at the next step up. Their extreme example is Michael Jackson, who reportedly said after Thriller became the biggest-selling album of all time that he wouldn't be satisfied unless the next one sold twice as much.

Work follows the same curve. [2]Boswell, W. R., Boudreau, J. W., & Tichy, J. (2005). The relationship between employee job change and job satisfaction: The honeymoon-hangover effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 882–892. As summarized in Sheldon & Lyubomirsky (2012). found a burst of satisfaction right after a voluntary job change, gone within a year. Managers who chose to stay put stayed about as satisfied as they had been.

Adaptation also does useful work. The same process takes the edge off many of life's blows, which is why psychologists generally see it as a good thing. It has limits, though: adaptation is [3]Sheldon, K. M., Boehm, J. K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2013). Variety is the spice of happiness: The hedonic adaptation prevention model. In I. Boniwell, S. A. David, & A. C. Ayers (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Happiness. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557257.013.0067, so treat all of this as a tendency. Nobody gets a promise that they'll adapt to everything.

The Buddhist Word for It Means Thirst

Buddhist psychology has a name for the pull toward the next step up: tanha, a Pali word usually translated as craving. Its plain meaning is thirst, which is a good picture of the mechanism: a drink ends thirst for a while, and then you're thirsty again. Craving is the subject of the Second of the Four Noble Truths, the Buddhist account of where everyday dissatisfaction comes from.

How Close the Buddha and the Psychologists Really Are

Close, with one gap. Hedonic adaptation describes a feeling that fades, while craving describes a pull toward the next thing. The nearest match in the research is the second route above. In [1]Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2012). The challenge of staying happier: Testing the hedonic adaptation prevention model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(5), 670–680. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212436400, each student picked a recent good change in their life. Those who came to want even more of it reported lower well-being at the end of the study, about three months in.

Neuroscience offers a second link. Kent Berridge and colleagues argue that wanting and liking a reward are [4]Berridge, K. C., Robinson, T. E., & Aldridge, J. W. (2009). Dissecting components of reward: 'liking', 'wanting', and learning. Current Opinion in Pharmacology, 9(1), 65–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coph.2008.12.014: "Usually a brain 'likes' the rewards that it 'wants'. But sometimes it may just 'want' them." Most of that evidence comes from animal studies and from theories of addiction, so it proves nothing about your online shopping. It does hand you a useful question, though: will I enjoy this, or do I only want it?

Being Content Without Giving Up on Anything

The obvious worry is that contentment makes you stop trying. Buddhist teachers praise it highly, but what they describe is closer to a test of how you hold a goal: how much does getting the thing, or missing it, knock you around? You can work hard for a promotion and still have a decent Tuesday when it goes to someone else.

If the worry goes further than this, we've written about whether mindfulness makes you too passive.

What Seems to Slow the Fade

In the same student study, two things weakened the slide toward wanting more: continuing to appreciate the original change, and continuing to experience it in varied ways. Treat that as a promising lead. The study tracked American undergraduates for about three months, relied on their own ratings, and didn't assign anyone to try anything.

Gratitude, the usual advice, has a bigger reputation than its evidence. [5]Davis, D. E., et al. (2016). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000107 found a small benefit to well-being, and no advantage at all when gratitude exercises were compared with other psychologically active exercises. [6]Cregg, D. R., & Cheavens, J. S. (2021). Gratitude interventions: Effective self-help? A meta-analysis of the impact on symptoms of depression and anxiety. Journal of Happiness Studies, 22(1), 413–445. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00236-6 found small effects on symptoms of depression and anxiety. A gratitude list is a fine small habit and a weak treatment, so if what you're feeling is closer to depression than to ordinary restlessness, look for something stronger. Our answer on whether meditation can replace therapy is a good place to start.

Practice Point: Watch One Want Run Its Course

This comes from Buddhist mindfulness practice. Sensual desire is the first of the Five Hindrances, and the instruction is to know it's there while it's there.

1. Catch a want in the wild: your thumb over the buy button, or the small pang at a colleague's holiday photos.
2. Before you act, find it in your body. It might be a lean forward or a tightness in the chest.
3. Say "wanting" silently, once.
4. Follow ten breaths, checking on the sensation as you go. Does it get stronger, get weaker, or move?
5. Then decide. You're allowed to buy the thing. The exercise only asks you to see the pull before you obey it.

Practice Point: Notice Something You've Stopped Noticing

This one borrows the two things from the student study, appreciation and variety. Tonight, pick one thing you were once excited to have and now barely register: the good kettle, the apartment with the morning light, the person at the other end of the sofa.

Spend two minutes with it in a way you haven't before. Drink the tea on the back step. Ask the person on the sofa something you've never asked them. Then write down one thing you'd miss about it if it were gone on Monday.