Turns Out Winning the Lottery Won't Fix Anything Either

Why we keep postponing happiness, and what actually happens when we finally get there.

Let's be honest, most of us have thought it at some point. If only I could win the lottery, all my problems would go away. And while the odds of that particular fantasy playing out are slim, we are remarkably creative at finding substitutes. If only I could get the promotion. If only we had a bit more money, a bigger place, a better job. If only I could meet the right person, move somewhere new, get through this patch. Then things would feel different. Then I could actually relax and be happy. This sense that real life, the good version, is just one or two things away. We are not unhappy exactly. We are just waiting. Waiting for the conditions to be right before we allow ourselves to properly settle in.

The lottery winner problem

Which brings us to a study looking at people who had actually won large lottery prizes. And well what researchers found was that initially there is a period of euphoria. But actually after a few months winners actually reported similar levels of happiness to people who had won nothing at all. Exactly the same! Turns out winning the lottery, might not be the solution we all hoped it would be.

If that feels deflating, it should. These are people whose entire financial circumstances changed overnight, and yet their baseline sense of wellbeing largely returned to where it started. The thrill was real. The adaptation was faster.

This is what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill. We have a baseline level of wellbeing that we tend to return to regardless of what happens to us. Good things happen, we feel a lift, and then we adapt. The new thing becomes the normal thing. The bar moves. And we start looking at what else might finally do it.

It is not cynical to say this. It is just how human beings are wired. We adapt. It kept us alive and motivated as a species. But it also means that the 'I will be happy when' formula is, in a very literal sense, designed to fail.

And look I want to make clear, wanting things is not the problem. Having drive, ambition, a sense of direction: these are genuinely good. Moving towards meaningful goals is one of the things that makes life feel alive. The issue is the condition we attach to it all: that we cannot really feel okay until we get there. That happiness is the reward for arriving, not something available on the way.

That is where things start to unravel.

The short-term bit that fools us

To be fair to ourselves, this belief gets reinforced constantly. Because in the short term, things really do feel better.

The new city is exciting. There is novelty everywhere and something that feels like possibility. The new relationship is doing a wonderful job of making you feel seen and chosen and alive. The new job has you walking in with a different kind of energy. The promotion means you can finally exhale a little. For a while, the feeling is real. And we take that as confirmation: yes, this is what I needed. The theory holds up.

Until it doesn't.

Because after a while, the new city is just where you live. The relationship settles into something more ordinary. The job comes with its own frustrations that the old one didn't have. And somewhere in the background, the familiar version of yourself, with your familiar patterns and familiar worries and familiar inner monologue, is still running and all of a sudden we think: "Okay, but maybe I will finally be happy if I just get another promotion, a bit more money, a bigger place, a better job, a new partner". And Whoops we are right back where we started.

You got there. But it turns out you did not become a different person when you arrived.

Sometimes the problem travels with us

There is something else worth saying, and it is a little harder to hear. Sometimes we focus so hard on what we are moving towards that we completely ignore what it is we are actually trying to escape. We move to a new city convinced that finally, finally, a fresh start. And three months in, we realise with a quiet horror that we feel exactly the same as we did before. Because we took ourselves with us.

Sometimes the thing driving the restlessness is not really about the city, or the job, or the relationship. It is about an underlying dissatisfaction, a lack of confidence, an old story about being not quite enough, that no external change was ever going to fix.

The person who thinks a degree will finally make them feel capable. The person who believes a relationship will fill the gap that has been there since long before any particular partner. The person who changes jobs every two years chasing the role that will make them feel like they have made it. In each case, the goal is not really the goal. It is a proxy for something else.

And the uncomfortable truth is that those things rarely reach the places we are hoping they will.

Here is the good news and the bad news

The bad news is the part we have already covered: the thing you are waiting for probably will not transform your life the way you are hoping. Not permanently. Not in the way that matters most.

But here is the good news, and it is genuinely good news: if external circumstances are not the primary driver of lasting happiness, then you do not have to wait for them. The capacity to feel okay is not sitting on the other side of a goal. It is not contingent on a different postcode or a different body or a different job title. It is available now, in the life you are actually living.

That is not a small thing. Most of us have spent years operating under the assumption that the feeling we want is somewhere ahead of us. What if it is not?

This does not mean giving up on goals or pretending everything is fine when it isn't. It means decoupling your sense of okayness from external outcomes. Working towards things because they matter to you, not because you believe you will finally be allowed to feel settled once you have them.

Where you actually put the water

The grass is greener where you water it. Not on the other side. Not in the version of your life that exists once everything has fallen into place.

Watering looks different for different people. For some it is investing attention in relationships that already exist rather than waiting until life is less busy. For some it is noticing, genuinely noticing, what is already good about where they are. For some it is addressing the thing they have been avoiding by chasing the next goal instead.

The hardest part of this is that it requires being present in a life that is unfinished and imperfect. It requires giving up the idea that contentment is something you earn by achieving enough, or by finally landing in the right circumstances.

But the alternative is spending most of your life in a waiting room. Putting happiness on hold until the conditions are right, and finding that every time you arrive, there is still more waiting to do.

The fence will always be there. The other side will always look appealing from where you're standing. That is not a problem with where you are. It is just how fences work.

The question is where you are choosing to put the water.

If you are based in the Illawarra and feel like some of this hit a little close to home, talking to a psychologist can help you figure out what you are actually working with underneath the restlessness. At Conscious Health Clinic in Wollongong, we work with p

eople navigating exactly this kind of thing. You can find out more or book an appointment at www.conscioushealthclinic.com.au.