You've probably had this experience:
You worked hard for something. A promotion, a milestone, a purchase, a relationship status. You achieved it. And then...
Nothing much.
A brief spike of satisfaction, maybe. Then back to baseline. Or worse — immediately onto the next thing, the next goal, the next rung.
We usually explain this as "hedonic adaptation." Humans get used to things. The new normal becomes normal.
But there's a deeper explanation. And it has to do with whose goal it was in the first place.
The problem with borrowed goals
When you achieve a goal that was never really yours — one you absorbed from others, through the mechanism of mimetic desire — the achievement can't satisfy you. Because you weren't actually seeking the thing. You were seeking something else: status, approval, the feeling of keeping up.
The thing was just a proxy.
And proxies don't deliver. You get the promotion, but the underlying hunger — for recognition, for validation, for proof that you're enough — remains unfed. So it fastens onto something else. A new proxy. A new goal.
This is the treadmill. Not hedonic adaptation in general, but a specific trap: chasing borrowed desires that can never actually satisfy.
The fulfilment that fades
As a test, think about your past achievements. The things you worked hard for and got.
Which ones still feel good? Which ones did you integrate into your sense of self, with lasting satisfaction?
And which ones faded almost immediately? Which ones left you feeling hollow, or just immediately hungry for more?
The pattern often reveals something. The lasting satisfactions tend to come from pursuits that were genuinely yours — things you'd have done regardless of external validation. The hollow achievements tend to be the ones where you were competing, comparing, proving something.
This isn't absolute. Sometimes authentic goals fade too, and sometimes borrowed goals provide lasting satisfaction. But the pattern is worth noticing.
A different approach
What if you could pursue goals that actually fulfil you?
The first step is brutal honesty about motivation. For each major goal, ask: Why do I want this? And then ask again. And again. Keep digging until you hit something real — or until you realise there's nothing underneath but "because other people have it."
The second step is letting go of goals that fail this test. Not with judgment — borrowing desires is human, not shameful — but with relief. If a goal was never really yours, you don't owe it anything.
The third step is harder: discovering what you actually want. This takes time. The authentic desires are often quieter than the borrowed ones. They've been drowned out. They need space to emerge.
Follow curiosity, not competition. Notice what draws you when no one's watching. Pay attention to activities where the doing is the reward, not just the having-done.
The quiet rewards
Living from authentic desire doesn't produce dramatic external results. You probably won't impress anyone with it. Your life might not look particularly successful by conventional measures.
But there's a different kind of satisfaction. A sense of fit between your life and yourself. Less anxiety, because you're not constantly measuring against others. More energy, because you're not fighting yourself.
The goals you pursue actually matter to you. And when you achieve them, the satisfaction sticks.
That's what's on the other side of the mimetic trap. It's not flashy. But it's real.
I've written more about this in Someone Else's Dream — a short book on identifying borrowed desires and cultivating authentic ones. If this resonates, you might find it useful.