No matter how good or bad something is, the emotional intensity fades and you settle back to where you really are. Your foundation. Your baseline. Your character.
Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a baseline level of emotion and satisfaction after positive or negative changes.
It’s a blessing because it protects you from being destroyed by loss and hardship. Without it, any major setback would permanently crush you. Pain doesn’t hold the same intensity forever, and even deep trauma eventually fades. So you can choose to keep functioning, improving, and adapting. It also keeps you from being intoxicated by temporary success. Wins and losses fade naturally, which can help you stay composed, and not overestimate any single event in your life.
So... hedonic adaptation is also "a curse" in a way because it erases the long term emotional impact of achievement, comfort, and success. Even when you work for years to reach a goal, the satisfaction is temporary and fleeting. You adapt to the new conditions quickly and they become normal. The reward you thought would sustain you forever turns out to be short lived. This creates a constant pull to seek new stimulation, new goals, and new challenges just to feel the same "high."
Without awareness, hedonic adaptation can trap you in a cycle of chasing external rewards without lasting fulfillment!
It’s the great equalizer because no matter how much money, status, beauty, or "success" someone has, they will adapt to it. Just like with death, no one escapes it. It puts billionaires and ordinary people on the same psychological playing field, in the ultimate sense.
Understanding this means I don’t expect anything external to permanently change how I feel internally. It helps me to focus on how I live day to day. It reinforces my commitment to strong character instead of irrelevant stimulation, and the journey itself rather than the fleeting outcomes. It keeps me grounded in reality.