There’s a saying that happiness is
somewhere between having too much and having too little.
But the concept of “happiness” can
be pretty ambiguous because happiness to one person could be misery to another.
However, we can arrive at some
reasonably consistent understandings when looking at modern human life within a
monetary economy such as ours.
If you don’t have an income or any
savings then life in a monetary economy is incredibly difficult because we all
need a source of spending in order to obtain the bare minimum necessities in
life.
And money problems have a ripple effect on your life.
And money problems have a ripple effect on your life.
They can result in an overall sense
of unhappiness, and they can create marital stress, making both spouses unhappy
in the marriage.
This means that having some money or
access to money is an essential component of achieving some degree of
“happiness”.
In other words, money has to be at
least somewhat positively correlated with “happiness”.
Okay, it’s obvious that we need
money to be able to pay for shelter, food, clothing, etc.
But you’ll notice something
interesting from the Scale of Monetary Happiness.
As you ascend the scale you find
that the things that are likely to make you feel increasingly fulfilled aren’t
the ones that money can necessarily provide for you.
Money might aid you in the process
of ascending the scale, but it doesn’t necessarily provide you with things like
morality, purpose, meaning, confidence, achievement, friendship, family,
intimacy, etc.
Sometimes
money is found to be negatively correlated with these things.
It’s true that anyone who says that
having more money doesn’t make life easier is probably lying to you.
There is no doubt that a level of income
and financial security helps to make life much easier.
Having more money, but perhaps not
too much, makes it a lot easier to work on our friendships, family, purpose,
meaning, and things higher up in the scale when you have the bottom pieces of
the pyramid pretty under control.
But this can also veer in the
opposite direction because it’s also easy to think that money is the solution
to everything, which can result in neglecting the things that really matter.
So,
let’s consider, is happiness really about “having it all”?
It seems to me that happiness really
is somewhere between having too much and having too little, because when you
get that balance right you can start focusing on all those intangible things.
And while you can’t show those
intangibles off to your neighbours with the biggest house or the best car, it’s
likely that those “possessions” are the ones which will bring more personal
happiness in the long-run.
In fact, a study on happiness determined
that:
- 50% of happiness is gene-based
- 40% of happiness is activity-based
- 10% of happiness is circumstance-based
Therefore your genetic makeup
determines your “happiness baseline”, which is what you revert to before and
after happy and unhappy events.
This baseline is the reason why
buying mega-mansions, expensive cars, jewellery, etc., don’t create long-term
happiness.
It is also the reason why events in
your life that make you unhappy, such as the loss of a loved one, divorce, and
failure, do not create long-term unhappiness.
Eventually everyone reverts back to
their genetic happiness baseline.
Since only 10% of happiness is
circumstance-based, pursuing wealth as an end to itself, will only increase
happiness incrementally.
The only true way to increase
long-term happiness is clearly to engage in activities that produce happiness.
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