How to Stop Chasing Things That Make You Miserable

A few weeks ago, I was invited to lead a leadership workshop for a group of CEOs. I felt excited to share ideas from my new book and put them into practice with people who could make a real impact. Wouldn’t it be great if more of our leaders engaged in wiser efforts?

Then I learned who was leading the workshop the day before me: a Harvard professor, West Point graduate, and all-around powerhouse. Reading his bio lit up a drive in me: I have to beat him. I have to be better than him.

What followed wasn’t pretty. I rewrote my bio to showcase every achievement. I stuffed my slides with citations and research. And in the process, I lost sight of why I was there in the first place.

I had fallen into the very trap I was there to unhook people from: chasing status, control, and approval.

Maybe it’s not a Harvard professor you’re competing with. Maybe for you it’s chasing social media likes, a better body, or that colleague who always seems to get more recognition. Any of these sound familiar?

• “I put a lot of effort into getting people to like me.”
• “I can’t stop checking my likes on social media.”
• “I’ve achieved every goal I set at work, but I still feel like it’s not enough.”
• “I want to fit in. But the harder I try, the more left out I feel.”

What do all of these statements have in common? They reveal the same cycle: chasing after something we think will finally make us feel good. And sometimes it works—for a moment. The person you crave attention from texts you back—there’s a little jolt of relief. You get praised for your achievement—you feel momentarily lifted. You get 50 likes on your post and feel liked. You catch yourself in the mirror in pants that fit just right—there’s a flash of looking hot.

But it doesn’t last. And what’s worse, it sets up a loop in which you need more of these little hits just to feel okay, while the things that once satisfied you don’t give you the same buzz anymore.

The Science of Craving

I’ve been working on a paper with Joseph Ciarrochi and a team of researchers around the world on this very process, which ACT calls experiential attachment. Neuroscience has a name for it too: the Incentive Sensitization Theory (IST) of craving (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015; Robinson & Berridge, 2024).

Two systems are at play:

• The wanting system (driven by dopamine) gets sensitized over time—easier and easier to trigger.
• The liking system (our hedonic, pleasure-based system) adapts downward: You need more stimulation to feel the same level of enjoyment.

Research by File et al. (2023) describes this interplay. When you have low wanting and low liking of something, you feel indifferent. It’s kind of blah. When you have a lot of wants, but don’t like much, you chase things in an addictive way. But when you want less and like more, you experience balanced enjoyment. That’s where nonattachment comes in.

Nonattachment doesn’t mean eliminating desire. When you practice nonattachment, you notice the pull toward craving, but you let it go: There’s a better place to put your attention. With nonattachment you loosen your over-investment in control, needing to be liked, and feeling “good,” and start investing in being present and engaged with your values.

If you are trying to achieve a state of permanent approval, comfort, or control, you are wasting your effort. Here are some painful facts:

• Not everyone is going to like you.
• You won’t get everything you want.
• Trying harder doesn’t necessarily make things better.

It’s a beeline to suffering when you try to control the uncontrollable, and chase the unachievable. At Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman’s recent 80th birthday celebration, Joseph Goldstein reframed the First Noble Truth as “the inevitability of unwanted experiences.” And the Second Noble Truth? “Craving is the cause of suffering.” Goldstein went on to say: “Instead of thinking of the end of craving as a far-off hope, see that we can make the end of craving our practice in the moment.”

The ACT Frame

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) echoes this teaching in modern psychological language. There’s a line Steven Hayes coined that I often share with my clients: “If you are not willing to lose it, you’ve already lost it.”

Think about it: The more tightly you cling, the less likely you are to actually experience the thing you’re chasing. When you’re caught in craving, you’re not present; you’re stuck in a story about what’s next.

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For example, if I am so stuck in getting the CEOs to be impressed by me, I’ll miss out on teaching what I am there to teach. When you are attached to everyone liking you, you become inauthentic and lose your point. Attachment steals the joy of the present from us, and can push our behavior around in ways that are off track from how we really want to be.

3 Levers for Freedom

So how do we get out of the trap of wanting more and liking less? How do we unhook from attachment and cultivate more freedom and ease?

1. Become Disenchanted. Mindfulness is the first step, but it’s not just passive noticing. Try becoming disenchanted: Download the experience of dissatisfaction that comes from acting on your craving. It doesn’t feel good. Sure, you want it. But do you really like it when you get it?

Jud Brewer writes about this in his book The Craving Mind: “If we pay careful attention, we realize that the act of giving in to a craving rarely feels as good as we expect it to. In fact, the act of indulging often carries its own form of suffering.”

For example, you feel the pull to check your likes on social, but when you do, no matter whether they’re up, down, or the same, you feel bad. If they’re the same, you panic that you're not gaining steam. If they’re down, you panic about losing fans. If they’re up, you panic about keeping the momentum. The through-line is suffering. And if social media isn’t your drug of choice, you can enter weight, stocks, or number of new clients instead. We can chase after a variety of things. And it’s painful.

In ACT we describe this disenchantment as Creative Hopelessness: realizing that the strategies you’ve been using to feel better are actually making things worse.

In Relational Frame Theory, this shift is called a transformation of stimulus function—learning to see the same cue (a “like” on social media) as linked not to reward, but to suffering. That shift opens space for flexibility.

And sometimes, it takes the voice of someone really wise to remind us of what really matters. Like when my good friend and CEO at the event pointed out: “When you are trying to impress people, you are less impressive.” Ouch.

My drive to doing a good job isn’t the problem; the attachment to how I might be perceived is.

2. Ask What You Really Want. Underneath craving lies yearning. In ACT, we identify six core yearnings: connection, identity, orientation, purpose, health/vitality, and competence/mastery.

Our chasing behaviors are often misguided attempts to meet these deeper needs. The invitation is to ask: What do I truly yearn for here? Is it connection? A sense of purpose? A feeling of mastery? To feel alive in my body?

Once we identify the yearning, we can meet it in non-attached ways: connection without clinging, purpose without outcome-obsession, competence without needing to impress.

3. Meet the Want with Your Values. When you discover your core yearning, you can drop the attachment, and turn toward something bigger. You honor what you really want by digging deeper into how you really want to be.

Chasing comfort, control, approval, or status leaves us wanting more. But orienting toward values—service, presence, authenticity—leaves us feeling satisfied. With nonattachment, we want what we like, and we like what we want.

As Trudy Goodman said at her birthday: “If you want to know your future, look at right now.” Each moment of choosing values over craving is a seed of the future you want. It’s also the fruit of enjoying your life in the here and now.

And maybe that’s the heart of it: wanting what you have. Not chasing after approval, rankings, status, or control. Instead, being just you, showing up—present, real, and good enough.

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