In 2018, a Yale psychology professor named Laurie Santos walked into a lecture hall and asked one deceptively simple question:
“If humans are so intelligent, why are we so bad at knowing what will make us happy?”
What happened next was remarkable. Word spread across campus. Students started showing up — not just a few curious ones, but hundreds. By the time spring semester ended, nearly one in four Yale undergraduates had enrolled in her course, “Psychology and the Good Life.” It became the most popular class in Yale’s more than 300-year history. The online version, The Science of Well-Being, has since attracted over 4 million learners worldwide.
That kind of response doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when someone names something we’ve all quietly suspected but never had words for: We don’t actually know what makes us happy. And we keep getting it wrong.
The Treadmill We Can’t Get Off
Santos’s research identified a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation — the brain’s tendency to return to a stable emotional baseline no matter what happens to us. She calls it the hedonic treadmill.
Here’s the cruel irony: we spend most of our lives running toward happiness — the bigger house, the better car, the promotion, the perfect body, the relationship we’ve always wanted. And when we finally get there? The brain adapts. The excitement fades. The happiness we were chasing is already a few steps ahead again.
We’ve all seen this in lottery winners. Research shows that within a year of winning millions of dollars, lottery winners are no happier than they were before the jackpot. The brain doesn’t hold onto the good. It recalibrates. Resets. And then starts the chase all over again.
That’s the treadmill. It speeds up, but you never arrive anywhere.
This is what Santos calls a “miswant” — humans consistently and confidently predicting that the wrong things will make them happy. More money. More status. More stuff. More control. The research is unambiguous: these things have no lasting impact on long-term well-being.
What the Science Actually Says
Here’s where it gets interesting — and, if you know anything about my work, deeply familiar.
Santos discovered that the things people dismiss as trivial, temporary, or soft are the very things with the most lasting impact on human well-being.
Things like:
- Genuine social connection — not followers, not likes, but real relational presence
- Serving others — acts of kindness that move us outside our own interior world
- Gratitude — the intentional practice of noticing what we already have
- Savoring — slowing down to be present in the moment
- Adequate sleep and physical movement
- Mindfulness and meditation
- Time affluence — margin, rest, and unhurried living
These aren’t feel-good suggestions. They are among the most replicable findings in happiness research. And for those of us who follow Jesus, they should sound very, very familiar.
This Is Not New Information
Let me be direct: Laurie Santos didn’t discover anything God hasn’t already said.
What her research did was put neuroscience language around ancient theological truth.
When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” — that’s social connection and other-orientedness.
When Paul wrote, “Give thanks in all circumstances” — that’s the gratitude practice Santos says rewires the brain.
When the Sabbath was commanded — that’s time affluence and rest built into the rhythm of creation.
When Scripture invites us into community, into worship, into fellowship — that’s the relational architecture God designed long before any Ivy League course was offered.
The brain confirms what Scripture has always declared: we were not built for isolation, accumulation, or autonomy. We were built for connection.
The Deeper Wound
In my work with No Longer Stuck and through the 4-I Framework, I’ve spent years helping people understand why they remain trapped in patterns that don’t serve them. And what Santos’s research affirms, from a purely scientific direction, is this:
The wounds that keep people stuck — Insignificance, Isolation, and the relentless drive toward Independence — are the exact wounds that drive us onto the hedonic treadmill in the first place.
When a person believes they don’t matter (Insignificance), they chase external validation — money, achievement, appearance — things that promise to finally make them feel like enough. But the brain adapts. The treadmill speeds up. They’re never enough.
When a person carries the wound of Isolation — “I am alone, no one understands me” — they may numb it with busyness, success, or accumulation. But Santos’s research confirms what attachment science has always shown: no amount of external success heals a disconnected heart. Human beings are wired for secure attachment. We need each other.
And when Independence becomes a survival strategy — “I have to do this myself, I can’t trust anyone” — we shut out the very relationships that Santos identifies as the single strongest predictor of long-term well-being.
The hedonic treadmill isn’t just a neurological quirk. For many people, it’s a trauma response in disguise.
The Path to Integration
Here’s the good news — the same good news I’ve been teaching for decades and that neuroscience is only now catching up to:
The things that actually heal us are relational, communal, and spiritual.
Santos’s “rewirements” — gratitude, social connection, serving others, savoring, rest — are not coincidentally also the practices of a healthy spiritual life. Prayer, worship, fellowship, generosity, Sabbath. These are not religious add-ons. They are the very design specifications of human flourishing.
This is what Integration looks like in the 4-I Framework: not the absence of pain or struggle, but a life anchored in identity, connection, and something larger than yourself. A secure attachment — to God, to community, to truth.
Attachment theory tells us that a secure base changes everything. When we know we are held — truly held — we stop running toward things that can never hold us back. The treadmill loses its power.
A Final Thought
Over 4 million people have enrolled in Laurie Santos’s online course. Millions are searching for the science of happiness.
The church has been given the theology of it all along.
What would happen if the people in your life saw you living it — not chasing, not performing, not accumulating — but genuinely present, grateful, connected, and free?
That’s not just good psychology. That’s the abundant life Jesus promised.
If you’re tired of running and never arriving, I’d love to help you step off the treadmill. My book No Longer Stuck is a place to start. So is a conversation.
You were made for more than the chase.
Grace and peace,
Tony
Tony Portell is the founder of Helping Others Heal, author of No Longer Stuck, and Lead Pastor of Vineyard Life Church in Indianapolis. He integrates neuroscience with biblical theology to help people move from stuck patterns to lasting wholeness. Learn more at helpingothersheal.org.
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