Improved Lives

Photo Credit

In the last few years ‘How can I find Happiness?’ has become a very important question to a lot of people. We can test for happiness, we have a happiness ranking for most of the countries in the world, and some governments are even starting to take the question ‘How can we make our citizens happier?’ very seriously.

‘How can I find Happiness?’ is everywhere.

And one of the big things we thought we knew about happiness was that as long as you had enough money to live comfortably, money didn’t affect your level of happiness. But new research has proven that wrong.

It turns out, more money means more happiness.

While the link between happiness and money seems to be pretty conclusive, the really unfortunate thing about this study is that the researchers didn’t look at what it is about money that makes us happier. Chances are good that having an abundance of green paper is not in itself making people happier, but something (probably more than one something) that we use that green paper for is making us happier.

I hasten to add that material possessions are probably not high on that list of things. I think some of the more likely ways that money makes us happier could include:

• Having more free time and more vacations
• Having less stress in your life because you don’t have to worry about money
• Having the means to achieve financially dependent goals, like owning a house for instance
• Having more money because you have a job that is challenging and stimulating (how many minimum wage jobs are challenging and stimulating?)
• Having more money could be the result of setting and achieving goals in your life, the achievement of which would also make you happy

I think the important thing to keep in mind about the above list is that money is not an absolute requirement for any of those things. Even achieving financially dependent goals could be more easily achieved by simply improving your management of whatever money you do make.

In short, happiness is a means to an end, and as long as you can be creative there is always more than one means to any end.

How to use this for positive personal growth

I certainly don’t think this means you should go get an office job and start climbing the corporate ladder. Doing that might make you wealthy which would in turn make you happy, but it would probably make you unhappy in so many other ways that the negative would far outweigh the positive.

Instead, if you want to make more money, devote yourself to doing what you love.

Doing something you love is a really great way to make a lot of money, because when you’re doing something you love you believe in it and you devote yourself to it and that kind of determination inevitably leads to success, and money, and happiness.

Further Reading:
- Economic Growth and Subjective Well-being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox (pdf) by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

Have you subscribed yet?