Rima Grace

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.

But then suddenly when I hit 100K, I really had to sit with, wait, what am I supposed to ask for next?

Is it 115?

Is it 135?

150?

200?

I suddenly was sort of confused about what the milestone was.

And that's when the beginning of me sort of realizing, wait, I think this is all a bit of a farce that I've been made to believe was like the thing I was supposed to be working towards.

Even though more money gave Miriam more stability, it didn't give her the sense of arrival she was expecting.