When you dream of being happier in the future, you probably imagine yourself content with what you have. Maybe you imagine a new house or a luxurious lifestyle. But what you really imagine is to be satisfied with these things. You don’t just imagine wealth, you imagine contentment.
This is the feeling that we all continue. But often, when reality does not meet expectations, it is because when we get something new, we immediately start to want what comes next.
While looking for and writing my book, “the art of spending money: simple choices for a happier life”, I have acquired fascinating information on the reasons why the pursuit of the continuation of happiness leads to less happiness.
1. There is always beauty in the ordinary.
The French writer Marcel Proust told the story of a young man obsessed with the life of the rich and powerful. Proust then told the young man to spend his time focusing on the artist Jean Siméon Chardin.
Scenes from daily life painted by Chardin – Food, Animals, Nature. The goal was to appreciate the objects he already had before him. To learn to appreciate the life he had rather than dwelling on the dream life he did not have. “When you walk in a kitchen, you will say, it’s interesting, it’s big, it’s beautiful as a chardin,” wrote Proust.
The lesson is to appreciate what is in front of you rather than dwelling on what you don’t have. What a wonderful analogy for money too.
2. The happiest people are not the richest. They are the most contained.
The happiest people I know are the most content. Not necessarily the richest, the healthiest, the most beautiful or the most successful. Anyone who can say: “I am satisfied with what I have and who I am.”
Some of these people spend a lot of money and live incredibly materialistic lives. But I often think of my mother-in-law, who spent three decades retired with very little money, living in a meager social security check and nothing else. She was technically on the verge of poverty. But she was perfectly satisfied in her small garden and reading books from the library.
She had little, but wanted even less. And she was one of the happiest people you could have met.
3. The more you want something you don’t have, the more you focus only on the fact that you are not happy at the moment.
For most people, there is a hierarchy of expenses that go something like this:
- If you don’t want something and you don’t have it, you don’t think about it.
- If you want something and you have it, you might feel good.
- If you want something and you don’t have it, you might feel motivated.
- If you want something and you can’t get it, you are absolutely crazy.
The sooner you can look around and say: “It’s enough” (whatever your income or your lifestyle), the earliest you will realize that you have been rich from the start.
4. Low expectations create a psychological richness.
I met half a dozen billionaires in my life-not one was as happy as my mother-in-law. It was easy to see why: his weak expectations gave him a feeling of contentment, which in turn became a huge source of psychological wealth that lacks some of the richest people in the world.
Psychological wealth is such an important concept, and with money, it comes from appropriate expectations.
5. All the happiness of life is only the gap between expectations and circumstances.
The person who has everything but wants even more poor than the person who has little but who wants nothing else. How could it be different?
It is not a plea to live like a monk. You can have a huge house, a expensive car, take an incredible vacation – and settle for all of this, appreciate it and no longer desire. It can be an incredible life.
The key is to realize that happiness is the state when nothing is missing, whatever the lifestyle you live.
Morgan Housel is the author of the new book, “The art of spending money: simple choices for a richer life“And the New York Times bestsellers”Money psychology” And “Like never“He is twice winner of the Best in Business Prize of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sidney Award. Marketwatch has appointed one of the 50 most influential people on the markets. He is a partner of The collaborative fund and is the host of The Podcast Morgan Housel.
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