A few years ago, when I was in the market for a new sofa, I got together to discuss my options with a friend I'll call Linda. Linda has an enviable aesthetic sense; when it came to a decision like this, I figured, her input would be invaluable. But I ended up surprisingly disappointed by our exchange.

"You have to spend at least $3,000 to get a decent sofa," Linda told me flatly. "Anything less than that, and you won't be happy."

Linda knew that I was a middle-income Web editor, not a big-money tech banker like herself. She had to know that a $3,000 sofa would be well out of my price range. If I bought a sofa that I could afford, she seemed to be telling me, I'd be beneath her in some way.

More recently, I was out getting a beer with a buddy I'll call Toby, an advertising executive. Toby and his wife own a beautiful four-bedroom house in San Francisco, with stunning views and a sizeable, landscaped backyard. We were talking about our friends Miles and Amanda, who had recently purchased a house in Daly City, a blue-collar bedroom community just south of San Francisco. Their new house was a tiny but cute two-bedroom that needed a paint job, a range of minor repairs, and more than a bit of yard work--a classic "starter" home, which in the Bay Area was still a bit of a stretch on the teachers' salaries that Miles and Amanda earned.

But for some reason, Toby couldn't see that. "What a dump," he said of Miles and Amanda's new home. "How could they even think about living there?"

Like Linda, Toby is not at all a bad person, not the kind of person ruled by selfishness, envy, or competitiveness. Typically, Linda and Toby are both open-minded, sensitive, and kind. So what in the world had they been thinking to say such thoughtless things?

In my opinion, the answer is that they hadn't been thinking at all. Rather, they had been experiencing a form of envy. (As the ancient Greeks knew, envy is not just covetousness. It's also the flipside of covetousness: happiness at being better off than one's peers. As Aristotle wrote, " . . . the man who is delighted by others' misfortunes is identical with the man who envies others' prosperity.") And envy is an emotion: It occurs spontaneously, without conscious thought.

Envy as destroyer
More precisely, envy is a destructive emotion. This is not a new concept, of course. The recognition that envy is something to avoid has been around at least since Old Testament times; the Ten Commandments tell us, among other things, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. . .nor any thing that is thy neighbor's."

What is it that gives envy its negative connotation? For one thing, when we're envious, our perspective is skewed; we become so focused on the object of our envy that we don't notice the events and circumstances in our lives that might otherwise cause us joy.

Unfortunately, as social and psychological studies show (and neuroscience confirms), human beings are wired to experience envy. We're built to be constantly comparing our own lot with that of our peers. "Keeping up with the Joneses," in any case, is in our blood.

We're also wired to strive for the things we think will make us happy--but to never quite achieve happiness itself. We're constantly thinking that happiness is just around the next corner--that happiness will finally be ours once we acquire the products we desire or achieve our personal and professional goals. Yet, invariably, after a brief burst of delight upon finally getting that hefty pay raise or that fancy new laptop, it's just a matter of time before we return to our usual level of happiness--and a new set of desires whose fulfillment we believe will finally make us happy (this time, for real).

More! Bigger! Better!
Why is this so? Probably because for most of the time humankind has been around on Earth, the ability to accumulate material goods meant an increased likelihood of passing on one's genes--thus, our never-sated desire for more, more, more. These days, though, when we talk about material wealth, we're not talking about necessities like nuts and berries to eat and buffalo skins to wear. We're talking about non-essentials like iPods, PDAs, and SUVs. And owning a BMW makes you no more likely to have children than owning a Toyota.

Regardless, when it comes to happiness, this is our lot: We want what our peers want--but even when we get it, we end up dissatisfied. Scholars call this cycle the "hedonic treadmill" and have shown that living life on this treadmill increases stress and undermines good health. It categorically does not lead to happiness.

Unfortunately, our culture, with its focus on materialism and glorification of competition, makes it exceedingly difficult to step off the hedonic treadmill. Every day, seemingly everywhere we turn, we're bombarded by marketing messages. These days, there are even ads printed on urinal disinfectant cakes and on the tops of city buses (the latter targeting office workers, who can see the ads when they look down on the street from their office towers). Most of these messages are aimed at trying to get us to desire things that we don't really need, at convincing us that we won't be happy--not really--unless we have this or that product.

And while it typically encourages innovation, lowers prices, and increases efficiency, capitalism has its faults--among them, that it reinforces the idea that we can measure our worth as people by how much material and financial wealth we accumulate. (Back in college, a guy in my dorm had a poster that stated this attitude quite succinctly: "He who dies with the most toys wins.")
This is ridiculous, of course. Our society is wealthier than it's ever been--on average, we've far surpassed "a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot"--yet studies show that we're no happier, on the whole, than we were 50 years ago. Indeed, if sales of antidepressants are any indication, we may well be less happy than ever.

To move forward, get off the treadmill
So, how do we get ourselves off the hedonic treadmill? What can we do to stop measuring our worth by our wealth, and start experiencing more true happiness?

Unfortunately, it's difficult to change human nature; each of us has what psychologists call a happiness "set point," or default state of happiness. But there are steps we can take to experience moments of happiness more frequently, and to make incremental improvements in our overall level of happiness.

One sure step in the right direction is to increase the sense of community in your life. Indeed, a recent study showed that the happiest people are those who spend the most time socializing. So join a club. Volunteer. Get involved in your church, or in your children's activities. Start a book group. Make an effort to get together with friends more often.

Humor is also a key component to a happier life. One recent study showed a decrease in cortisol and adrenaline (chemicals associated with stress) in participants who'd just watched videos of their favorite comedians. So take your attention off the bottom line, now and then, and share a laugh with your friends and coworkers.

Other steps to increased happiness, suggested by a variety of experts, include getting regular exercise, taking care of your health, and giving your life more meaning by serving something bigger than yourself, whether that means your community or your deity.

Perhaps even more important to achieving happiness than any of these things, though, is what Buddhists call "mindfulness" and psychologists call "flow": a sense of being so absorbed in the present moment--in whatever task you're currently involved in--that any regrets or worries you might have about the past or the future recede from your consciousness. Studies of both Buddhist monks and people who regularly achieve a "flow" state of concentration show vastly increased brain activity of the kind associated with positive feelings.

The psychologist Martin Seligman puts it as follows: The good life consists of the roots that lead to flow. It consists of first knowing what your signature strengths are and then recrafting your life to use them more--recrafting your work, your romance, your friendships, your leisure, and your parenting to deploy the things you're best at. What you get out of that is not the propensity to giggle a lot; what you get is flow, and the more you deploy your highest strengths the more flow you get in life.

Sounds reasonable to me. Much more so than, say, a $3,000 sofa.

Eric Wilinski lives near the Joneses in San Francisco.