In a March 2022 issue of the magazine The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks, a social scientist professor at Harvard, wrote an interesting article called The Satisfaction Trap. He riffed on Mick Jagger's "I can't get no satisfaction" by turning it into "I can't keep no satisfaction." He attributed our trouble keeping satisfaction to our biological need for homeostasis, which is a steady state. Homeostasis is maintained by built-in mechanisms of regulation that return extreme states, including emotional highs and lows, to more moderate ones. Satisfaction is an emotional high that the brain recalibrates to a lower set point.
If one's self-esteem is based on success, more and more success will be wanted because the bar for even temporary gratification will be raised higher and higher. Because satisfaction from success does not stick. we naturally assume that even more is needed to stem our dissatisfaction. But more does not last either. Brooks concluded, "No one has ever found that immediate bliss from a major victory or achievement will endure" (p. 25).
Brooks asserted that our natural set point is dissatisfaction accompanied by the drive always to have more satisfaction. His own path to free himself from chronic dissatisfaction was to look for intrinsic rewards rather than socially defined extrinsic rewards such as money, power, and social status. He found intrinsic successes were those that gave him meaning and his own sense of purpose.
Brooks asserted that our natural set point is dissatisfaction accompanied by the drive always to have more satisfaction. His own path to free himself from chronic dissatisfaction was to look for intrinsic rewards rather than socially defined extrinsic rewards such as money, power, and social status. He found intrinsic successes were those that gave him meaning and his own sense of purpose.