Using your gratitude lists, identify what makes you happy. Not what you think makes you happy or what society says should make you happy—but what truly makes YOU happy. Maybe it’s as simple as a cold beer at the end of a hard day of work or listening to smooth jazz by yourself when everyone has gone to sleep. Whatever it is, find those triggers and prioritize them in your life.

Hedonic adaptation is the tendency of humans to revert to a happiness baseline shortly after new positive or negative events.

It becomes a treadmill—the Hedonic Treadmill—a perpetual motion machine that keeps us running in search of the next thing.

We create this magical universe in o...