The more I think about it, it seems that long-term happiness is something most people spend their lives seeking OR they believe it’s something they used to have and lost.
That makes me wonder if we are truly ever happy? Or if it’s something that is always just out of reach (in the future or in the past).
We evolved on the hustle, we were selectively bred for marginal utility.
We don’t want good, we want better.
Better than yesterday, better than the next guy, whatever, don’t care. Just an uptick in one way or another.
So no, you can’t sustain that indefinitely. If you’re making constant gains, then that saturates very quickly, and betterer becomes the new bare minimum.
Chasing that is destructive as hell, same as any addiction.
If you work out how to work the system to use losses to keep wins cheap, you may just win at life.