Rima Grace

She'd been working in marketing and in tech, living in Los Angeles.

And eventually she got there, even reached 115K.

You know, I cried.

It was like a very big deal.

It was a product manager.

I was managing a team of engineers.

I felt like for the first time I was able to spread my wings.

And then, I kid you not, within a couple pay cycles, it already started, the luster started to fade, like so fast.

And I could not believe it because, you know, 30K is a marked difference in your paychecks.

You are feeling that.

Yeah, it's huge.

I think this happens a lot.

Attaching a feeling to an arbitrary number and then assuming when we get there, the feeling will arrive too.

That's what social scientists call the hedonic treadmill.

You know, how quickly our minds adapt to a new normal and then slide right back to our baseline of happiness.

Like one expert told me that people tend to think they'll be happier with 10% or 20% more, but then when they actually get it, the boost is usually smaller and shorter lived than they expect.

Basically what happened to Miriam.

My whole thing had always been get more money with every new job.

It was always fight, fight, fight.

There was always some like chase that I was on.