Most of us go through our lives, never receiving a mountain of money in the post. It just doesn’t happen to the vast majority of us. That’s statistics for you.
But even when it does, we should take note of the effects that it has. The world seems to teach us that the product of hard work – financial resources – is a route to happiness. But when you study the lives of people who have mountains of the stuff, you soon find something entirely different. They’re not particularly pleased with their lives.
That’s a fascinating finding for our purposes. It means that the way you feel often has very little to do with the amount of money that you have in the bank.
The observations continue. Take people living in abject poverty in parts of Africa. When you ask them how they feel about their lives – which the WHO actually did – they report being remarkably happy. They’re at least as satisfied as people who live in Denmark, one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
So what the heck is going on here?
The first thing to note is that money doesn’t have an impact on the internal state of mind directly. Somebody who feels terrible because their family didn’t love them as a child can’t paper over that with dollar bills. Money can have an indirect effect – such as paying for therapy sessions. But that depends on behaviour. Finances are just an intermediary.
The second thing to note is that money itself doesn’t actually do anything to solve the roots of unhappiness. It can’t bring people back from the dead. And it can’t change misperceptions we have about ourselves (such as the fact that we’re worthless).
Money can indeed deal with some sources of unhappiness, like debt. But it’s powers are limited. If you read DTSS.us reviews, you soon find that the same problems that led to debt in the first place reemerge. It’s not about a lack of resources. It’s about scratching a psychological itch. People are medicating with their spending.
So, fundamentally, it doesn’t matter how much money they have in their accounts. They see financial outlay as a way to take away the pain they’re experiencing right now. If the pain remains, so too will the money problems. Millionaires can still go bankrupt.
Money won’t determine happiness, but there are psychological tricks you can use to get yourself out of a rut. For instance, you can be more stoic about existence. You can take the view that life is awful and there’s nothing you can do about it. With that as the background, you can take joy in the fleeting moments of levity that do occur.
Similarly, you can stop hankering after stuff you can never have. That way, you don’t feel like you’ve been robbed.
Furthermore, you can put your life in the proper context. You’re a small part of reality – and that’s okay. Focusing your life outwards and concentrating on some project in the world can be just what you need to provide some much-needed relief from endlessly worrying about yourself.
This is a contributed post and therefore may not represent the views and opinions of this blog or its author.
A certain amount of money to live on is conducive to feeling more secure. I remember several years ago it was determined that about $70,000 a year would give someone enough to not have money problems. Of course, that’s not conclusive. $70,000 a year in rural Ohio is enough to have pretty much what you want, good cars, a decent home, hobbies. That amount wouldn’t be enough in places where real estate values are really high, like NYC or California. I’ve been told by people who live in those places you need a 6 figure income to own a home, etc. But then I would say you aren’t middle class if you can afford to live in those places while owning a home.