Everyone should be able to recognize the adaptation process at work. This is an amazing and critical principle to understand and more importantly to teach our kids. The new house, bigger salary or fancy sports car all produce temporary spikes in happiness (pleasure) but we quickly become used to these things and return to our baseline level of happiness. The Stoics believed that it was precisely because of this adaptation process that we should be indifferent to external conditions and events as they relate to our happiness.
I first heard about hedonic adaptation while studying Stoic philosophy. Simply stated, hedonic adaptation states that we will adapt to positive and negative stimuli that are constant. Some call this human nature while others use more scientific terms like hedonic adaptation (HA). You will take for granted your job, bigger house, new car and even your family. You will become used to all of the positive things in your life.
