subject: Positive Psychology Discovers We Should Seek Happiness For Money, Not Money For Happiness [print this page] Culture teaches us that I will be happy when... I live in a better home I can have enough money to travel on additional vacations I get that up-to-the-minute car, computer, outfit, etc. Fascinating study from the discipline of Positive Psychology reveals that what society is teaching us is in fact a fantasy and, significantly, it is time to amend what we advise ourselves as well as our family.
So, what does society inform us? Here is only a flavour:
Study hard at school, you want good grades to get a good job.
It is worth putting in lengthy hours in your initial appointment to get promoted.
If you exert yourself really rigorously you will get that salary rise that you deserve.
You shouldn't leave earlier than everybody else, it will reflect awfully upon you along with your bonus.
You should work hard to put away for your retirement.
Whilst I cannot argue with these, what I will do is ask the question at what time does culture inform us to actually break and enjoy ourselves? Almost certainly only at our retirement, but the gloomy reality is that the governments around the world are by now increasing the pension age. The British Government cite evidence that if they increased the retirement age to 70, then one in five persons (and one in three males) would in reality die earlier than qualifying for their retirement. Even without the pension age growing, those who make it to state pension age can barely expect to exist, on average, only more than a decade after retirement. The world wants and encourages us to be in the rat race. A good number of us only get outi when it is too late. Perhaps it is time to change what we are educated?
But we all see that wealth makes us happy. For example, it is evident that we will be happier if we win the lottery greater than something dire happening to us, such as losing a limb. Yet staggering results from Positive Psychology research confirm that even when comparing the effect on our happiness of winning millions compared to losing a limb, we are completely wrong. Research have revealed that inside two years following these two key life events there is no divergence in happiness on average between persons in these two groups.
Now think about the daily activities of the extremely rich: dream vacations, luxurious yachts, private jets, staggering houses, consuming the finest cuisine, and possessing stunning outfits and cars. They have it all; this must be the secret to happiness. Once more, we are mistaken. Astoundingly, thirty-seven percent of the people on Forbes' list of Wealthiest Americans are less happy than the usual American. Research has shown that when a person has achieved a fundamental safety net of money, increases in wealth actually have a negligible increase on our degrees of happiness.
One of the reasons that money will not make us happy is because of a principle known as hedonic adaption. This is the process by which something good has less and less of a positive impact on us over time, simply because we have a tendency to get used to it and start to take it for granted. If you have ever bought a brand new car, you will remember the moment when you first stepped in it. You felt excited and ecstatic. The next time you drove it, you still got a buzz but by the 100th journey the novelty has rubbed off.
Positive Psychology teaches us not to pursue money to make you happy but even more staggeringly, it is now revealing the secret that happiness can lead to us make more money.
Appearing in an outstanding research piece, Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues present some brilliant confirmation that happiness actually brings about financial success. For example, Diener and colleagues related measures of cheerfulness taken upon entering college with wages of these college students in their 30s and found that cheerfulness was positively allied with earnings. The most cheerful college students earned on average US$25,000 more than the least cheerful group. In a second study, Straw and colleagues discovered that happier individuals are more likely to be given better pay increases over time. So I am arguing that rather than seeking money to bestow you happiness, why dont you seek happiness more directly and it may well make you more moneywealth in any case.
