Why Pleasure Fades: Diminishing Returns and Lasting Joy

Picture a traveler who finally reaches the Italian village she dreamed about for years. The meal is extraordinary. She tastes it and feels something open in her chest. Now picture the same meal arriving at her table every night for a week, then for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the same dish that once lifted her now feels like an obligation. In "From Fleeting Pleasure to Lasting Joy," an episode of The Michael Singer Podcast presented by Sounds True, Singer uses scenes like this to ask a question most spiritual teaching handles badly: if pleasure can open us, why does it so reliably leave us wanting more, and what would it take for joy to stop depending on conditions? The episode, drawn from a talk Singer gave, argues that positive experiences are not the enemy. The trouble lies in what we require from them, and in the habit of closing our hearts whenever life fails to match what we expected.

Why do so many spiritual teachings warn against positive experiences?

Singer opens by naming the tension directly. He notes that many religious and ancient teachings tell practitioners to stay away from things that please them, things that turn them on, and things that tempt them. He is not interested in simply repeating that warning. He splits the category in two. The first kind is primal and body-oriented: taste, sight, touch, smell, sound. These can feel good, and in his framing the senses themselves are not sinister. The second kind is the one that matters for the rest of the talk, because it has a different effect on the person having it.

The distinction is between sensations that simply feel good and experiences that carry something beyond sensation. Some sensory pleasures, Singer says, are strictly body-oriented. They have no lasting positive effect. They just feel good, and they draw you down toward more of the same. That pull is what binds attention to the senses, and it is why he calls the shallow kind dangerous. The more useful question is not whether a pleasure is allowed, but what it does to the person who receives it.

What is the law of diminishing returns doing to your senses?

Singer's answer comes from economics, a field he says he studied on his way to his own awakening. The law of diminishing returns, as he states it, is simple: the more you get of something, the less you need or want it.

"The more you get something, the less you need it or want it. That is a truth and you get used to it. The senses get used to it." (Michael Singer, The Michael Singer Podcast, Sounds True, 4:09)

His chef example makes the point concrete. Suppose a friend flies in the finest Italian chef to cook you the dish you once loved abroad. You accept the present. Then you are asked if you would like the same meal the next night, and the night after, and then for every meal of five days. The dish has not changed. It tastes just as good, if not better. Still, Singer says, there is no way you will not grow sick of it very soon. He is describing the mechanism behind a great deal of modern life, including the marketing logic that depends on novelty.

"So, the net result is there's no way you're going to say, 'Yes, I want to have that meal.' The chef makes it the same way. It's just tasted the same." (Michael Singer, The Michael Singer Podcast, Sounds True, 5:06)

The consequence is an escalating appetite. The senses adapt, so the same stimulus stops working, and you must find something stronger. Singer calls this addiction. A pleasure that once shocked you into delight now requires more intensity to produce the same result. Each step up the ladder costs more and returns less. Anyone who has chased a bigger rush, a bigger purchase, or a louder thrill knows the pattern, and Singer's point is that the pattern is structural. It is not a personal failing. It is the way attention behaves when it is fed by sensation alone.

Can a pleasant experience blow you away in a good way?

Singer does not conclude that every good moment is a trap. He describes a different kind of experience, one he treats as a kind of shock. Think of seeing a sunset as you turn a corner. Most of us have said that a view blew us away. Singer takes that phrase seriously. What, he asks, did it blow away?

His answer is that the experience was strong enough to clear out the internal noise. The worries, anxieties, hopes, dreams, preferences, and fears that normally occupy the mind were pushed aside by something arriving through the senses. You did not have to meditate or recite a mantra to get there. The sunset did the work.

"It blew all that garbage you have inside your mind and inside your heart that has you bound on a regular basis." (Michael Singer, The Michael Singer Podcast, Sounds True, 6:58)

There is a condition attached. Singer insists that you have to be open to the experience you are having. If you are busy with your inner dialogue, the sunset will not reach you. The mantra you do before looking at the view is valuable, but it can also keep you so occupied inside that the outer experience never lands. Openness, not technique, is what lets the moment work on you.

What does it mean for an experience to distract you from yourself?

Singer offers a practical test. Take a trip to Hawaii and bring yourself along, and if nothing shocks you out of your own head, the trip may feel boring. Go to a movie, and the theater may be sticky and hot, with a stranger beside you, and you may be aware of none of the film because you are still in your thoughts. A film that captures your attention does something different. It pulls your consciousness away from your internal chatter and toward the screen. That redirection, he says, is what makes the experience feel good.

The test, in his phrasing, is whether something distracts you from yourself. If it does, the experience can be a doorway. If it does not, you are simply with yourself, which may be fine but is not the same as being opened. Singer also warns that repetition erodes this effect. Attend the same concert fifteen times and the music is still playing, but at some point it no longer shocks you out of yourself. You start saying it was as good as last time. The newness was doing the work, and once it fades, the experience becomes ordinary again.

This is why Singer keeps returning to his opening distinction. A pleasure that merely stimulates may not be healthy to repeat, and it certainly should not be pursued all the time. A pleasure that clears away the noise and lets something higher come through is a different matter. Singer is careful here. He is not saying every intense experience is spiritually useful. He is saying the question to ask is what happens to you while the experience is working on you.

How do you enjoy an experience without clinging to it?

The episode's description makes the practical stakes clear: pleasurable experiences can open you and awaken a beautiful flow of energy, but if that flow depends on particular conditions, it will fade. The answer is not to reject love, success, or other positive experiences. You can enjoy them, learn from them, and let them pass without clinging.

Singer's broader approach is to treat each experience as a lesson in its own right. In the later portion of the episode he discusses learning from what you encounter, rather than measuring life by how often it delivers a rush. The point is not to stop feeling. It is to notice the feeling, take what it teaches, and allow it to move on. He also raises the traditional Buddhist image of clinging, and the difference between holding a moment and letting it raise you. Enjoyment that lifts you is different from enjoyment you must grip to keep alive.

Why does closing your heart keep joy out of reach?

The episode's closing argument is about the heart. The description puts it plainly: when you stop closing your heart whenever life differs from your expectations, you become open to an unconditional well-being that was within you all along. This is the emotional inversion of the diminishing-returns problem. If you need the world to match your preferences before you let yourself feel good, you will always be waiting for the next thing that works. Joy becomes something you earn and then lose.

Singer's answer is to notice the moments when you shut down because reality disagrees with what you wanted. In those moments, you can choose not to close. You can let the experience be what it is. This does not mean pretending disappointment does not hurt. It means refusing to make your inner openness depend on outer outcomes. The well-being he describes is not a reward for good conditions. It is available underneath them.

Where to go from here

This episode is one of the more compact statements of a theme that runs through Singer's work. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Untethered Soul, and the New York Times bestsellers The Surrender Experiment and Living Untethered. He had a deep inner awakening in 1971 while working on a doctorate in economics, and in 1975 he founded Temple of the Universe, a yoga and meditation center open to people of any religion or set of beliefs. The economics background is not incidental. The law of diminishing returns is the lens through which he examines pleasure throughout this talk.

If this conversation speaks to you, watch the full episode on Sounds True's YouTube channel and listen to more episodes of The Michael Singer Podcast. Begin with the question Singer keeps circling: when a good experience ends, what remains? Try noticing one pleasure this week, not to analyze it, but to see whether it leaves you more open or simply more hungry. That small observation is where the teaching begins.